Heavenly Hope In The Face Of Earthly Hardship

Well, now I get the privilege of introducing my dear friend and colleague in ministry, Dave Durnland. I don't know him as well as some of you here, but I've gotten to know him well over the last 16 years as we've served together. Boy, when it comes to stories, I think the Lord has given me more stories than I could possibly remember because I've experienced things I couldn't possibly imagine with this guy.

I knew Dave kind of in college. We were in the same graduating class, although he was much older than I was, coming later to school. And then Dave served down at Grace Chapel in West Liberty for 25 years. And during that time, as we got our pastors group together, and Dave was a leading founder of that, we got to know one another well. I've always appreciated Dave's help in explaining to Becca how wrestling does honor and glorify God, although I don't know if she's ever believed it yet.

But you still have a chance. We've been together in, as I think about it, we've served together in Romania most of the time, but Romania, Moldova, Azerbaijan, and Mongolia. I can remember one time sitting, we were in Azerbaijan, I think for the first time, we were sitting under this statue of Lenin, right, the founder of the Soviet Union. We're sitting under this statue of Lenin looking out over the Caspian Sea and saying, whoever would have thought this, whoever would have thought that two small town pastors would be sitting on the Caspian Sea under a statue of Lenin.

It's amazing. It was in Azerbaijan that I got the nickname Dr. Spoon. we were in a restaurant and Dave and Buff, Buff was the other guy. I can't remember Buff's last name. Powers. Powers.

Yeah. His name is Buffington Powers. All right. He was another pastor. And so we, we were in this restaurant and he and, and Dave are talking about this guy in this Muslim country and he's carrying this book around and he left the book here and he did this with the book and I'm sitting there thinking, what are they talking about? And finally it dawned on me and I said are you guys talking about the Bible And they going shh be quiet We in a Muslim country You don say things like that out loud So that where I got the nickname Dr Spoon because they said, you are not the sharpest instrument in the drawer.

Just so you know, he's not the kind, gentle guy you always think he is. All right? we were we were so Rashid was the guy's name told us we're going to go to this woman's house they called her grandma somebody he said I want you to meet me here at this certain place and so we went there and there's this taxi driver and he's trying to get us to get in a taxi and we said did Rashid say that he were supposed to go with them we said yeah I think he did we said do you know grandma so-and-so. And the guy said, yeah, sure.

I know right where she lives. Oh, this must be the guy. And it's just as we were about ready to get in the taxi, Rashid shows up and goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't go with that guy. You come with me. And we're thinking, where was that taxi driver going to take us? Where was he going to drop us off?

If he was going to drop us off at all, we didn't know. But I'll never forget that. That was a fun one. The other thing I remember from one of those Azerbaijan trips was, this was the first time, Dave had this blood pressure thing going on, and this was the first time it ever happened, but his blood pressure dropped to like zero, and he's sitting in his seat all by himself, and he's saying, oh man, do I feel really terrible?

I think I'm going to die. He told us this later. I think I'm going to die. Oh man, I wish Susie was here right now, and he passed out. Of course, no one knew it. It was an early morning flight.

They figured he was sleeping. We get to Vienna and he tells us this story. And one of the other pastors and I are like, what in the world? We need to get you to a doctor. We need to get out of this airport and get you a doctor. And he's going, no, I'll be fine.

No, you won't. Yeah. So you know how Dave is. We could not prevail upon himself to see a doctor. So at one point he says he's going to the bathroom and I go in with him. He goes, what are you doing?

I said, you think I'm gonna let you go to the bathroom by yourself after all that? Right? No way. So here's the modus operandi he says. He says look if that happens to me again the key is pump my legs and that get me going again Okay Right Am I right Yes I right So another flight it happens And so there all this group of people around Dave and I go around come around back and I'm standing there going, pump his legs!

Pump his legs! Of course, I didn't know if anyone understood English anyway. But anyway, we could go on and on, but I won't. I won't. Dave and Sue have been particularly love servants of the Rue Baptist Church, and we have loved being a part of that ministry. And I know Dave has said it to our church, and I'm going to say it again. the Lord has given us an opportunity to serve in places.

The church, not just me or Dave, but our church has had a significant impact in other areas of the world because we've gone over with our experiences and our folks praying and the things we learned here. And I think the Lord has blessed that. So it's really a privilege to have Dave and Sue here. I'm going to ask Dave now to come and share the word of God. and pray God's blessing on them.

Thank you, God. It's always nice when they know which stories not to tell, too. All right. We love each other, but what do we love more? God and His Word, right? So I'm going to ask you to turn to 2 Corinthians 5, verse 1 through 8.

I'll read that. that will be our text of study for this morning. 2 Corinthians 5, verses 1-8. And I'd like you to stand with me as we show respect for the Eternal One as He speaks to us and says, beginning in verse 1, Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.

Meanwhile, we groan, longing to be clothed in our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by light Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come. Therefore, we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in this body, we are away from the Lord.

We live by faith, not by sight. And we are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. This is God's word. Father, thank you. Thank you for giving us your word. Thank you for speaking so clearly to us.

And we pray that your spirit would enable us to pull back the darkness of our heart so we can see your truth, open the ears of our hearts so we can understand it. And we'll thank you now and forever through Christ. Amen. Please be seated. From this passage today, I would like us to think about heavenly hope in the face of earthly hardships. Now, if you're going to understand this passage, you have to do it the same way you understand every other passage.

Context is king, right? You must understand the context into which these words were written. So when you think about 2 Corinthians chapter 4, Paul reminds us that in this world, as we live our life for Christ, we are living in bodies which are like jars of clay. So in other words, he's telling us our bodies are frail, they're fragile, they're very, very breakable.

In verse 8 and 9 of 2 Corinthians 4, he says we're hard-pressed on every side. But we're not in despair, we're persecuted, but we're not abandoned. We're struck down, but we're not destroyed. And so simply stated, what he's saying is life is not easy. Paul refers to all of that then in verse 17 as a light and a momentary affliction and I want to say how is that possible?

How is it possible that this life of struggles is just a light and momentary affliction? I have a friend who is a pastor behind me behind the Iron Curtain. He pastored in a small town like this in the time of the Soviet Union. One day the military police walked into his church. They pulled out their rifles and pointed them at the people. Drove all the people out of the church and then marched my pastor friend out of the church.

Took him to the Danube Canal where there was a prison. And they incarcerated him in the Danube Prison Canal. Weeks turned into months for him. Months turned into years for him. And every day he did the same thing. He pounded on massive rock cliffs, beating those cliffs into small pebbles of stone.

He did that on a daily diet of a piece of stale bread and a little water. By the time he was released from prison, the bones were protruding through his skin like a hanger protrudes through a shirtless, a sleeveless shirt. He's finally released. It takes him three months to walk across the country, the dirt roads and the open fields and across the mountains until he finally gets home.

As he's approaching home, his father's out in the field watching the sheep. and he sees this hideous looking, ghostly looking person struggling to cross the field next to him. And so he goes to help the man and suddenly he realized that it was his own son. He carried him home and his wife nursed my friend back to health. And the moment he gained just a little bit of strength, He was up and he was out into the village, going door to door, sharing the gospel, telling them, come to church Sunday, come to church.

He went to church that Sunday morning to open the church and there were military police there and they said, this church is closed. He said, sir, your job is to close churches. Mine is to open it. It's open today. not long after that I was blessed with the opportunity to share God word with his church family it was the last Sunday that brother would serve Christ as their shepherd And I just sat and watched him and tears were washing my face as he walked around and he touched each one on the shoulder, rubbed their back, whispered to the little kids in their ears, the shepherd was doing his work, he was loving God's little sheep.

His life came to an end soon after that because his physical body had been beaten and persecuted and destroyed so much. And I think Paul called this a light and momentary affliction. And I say, how in the world is that possible? How is it possible that this life of struggles, difficult and uneven roads, heartaches, broken relationships, persecution, disease, infirmities, amputations, declining health, failing minds, insults and cruelties?

How is it possible that we can look at it in any way and say it's a light and a momentary affliction? And then Paul gives us the answer in these first eight verses of 2 Corinthians 5. And what he does here, he contrasts this earthly life that we're living now with a picture of the heavenly life we'll have when we are taken to be with Christ. In this contrast, Paul gives us tremendous, tremendous hope.

You're going to see that he talks about a building, an eternal house. So he talks about a new dwelling place for us. Then he'll talk about new clothing for us. then he'll talk about a new way of living in relationship to Christ. So as we walk through the afflictions of our earthly life in these frail bodies which are like jars of clay, this contrasting promise is going to sound absolutely amazing.

It is so far from our normal earthly life, it almost sounds too good to be true. but I want you to know if you are a genuine follower of Christ, this is the absolute truth. Paul assures us of that when he starts out verse 1 of 2 Corinthians 5 by saying and we know He did not say we hope He did not say well, I think maybe this is how it will be if we keep our fingers crossed and everything goes our way. No, he said, we know.

Paul is saying, we have been told. We possess information about what the future will be for everyone who is a follower of Christ. Let me illustrate it this way. Can you remember when you were little children growing up with your parents, your mom and your dad? And let's isolate on the little girls. You were growing up with your mama, and your mom told you the secrets of making bread or baking a pie or making beef vegetable soup.

And she taught you how to mix each of those ingredients in. Then how long you had to wait until you put it in the oven. And then how long before it would be totally baked or boiled. And your bread, your pie, your vegetable soup turned out great. And it still does today. Why?

Because you know what your mama taught you. It was correct. It was right. You possess accurate knowledge. You know. In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul says this.

He says, he was caught up into the third heaven. Verse 4, he says, he was caught up into paradise. And then verse, that was verse 4. And then verse 7, he says that he received there revelation that went beyond any other things that he had never known. Surpassing great revelation. In simple terms, you know what he's saying?

His heavenly father taught him and he taught him what he's sharing in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 1 through 8. So Paul possessed good, accurate, correct, reliable information. He knows about our future heavenly bodies. He knows about life in heaven. And so He can write 2 Corinthians 5 and say we know What I sharing with you is the absolute truth because my father taught it to me Now let move on and look at that truth he was taught because there you see the life which lies beyond this world and in eternity for us.

We'll find out in verse 1 that when we leave this world, we will be given a body which endures eternally. Notice verse 1 again. Paul says, we know that if the earthly tent we live in, that's our body, is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Every human being has a physical body, which Paul refers to as their earthly tent.

Our body provides housing. It provides a dwelling place, a residence for our soul or spirit. So our soul and spirit and body are weaved together into one being. It is through our body that we relate to this earthly world. Or as Paul says, we live in it. Our body enables us to experience life, right?

It's through this body we smell, we hear, we taste, we touch. Our body also enables us to express ourselves in various circumstances of life. We can smile, we can frown, we can speak, we can hang our heads, we can move our hands. So it enables us to show others what's going on inside of us. And our body also allows us to enjoy the pleasures of life. Becca can go dig in her garden.

And I can avoid that. I can drink coffee. But it's through our body that we enjoy the things of life, right? As we live year after year, though, in our body, we grow weary. Or as Paul says in verse 2 and 4, while we are in this tent, we groan and we are burdened. Eventually our body is worn down and it's torn down.

Paul says in verse 1, it is destroyed. You just can't live in it anymore. Like a tent, which you use on camping trips several times a year, finally it wears out. Oh, finally you have to take it down, and one last time you fold it up and you discard it. You throw it away. Now let me ask you a question.

You've got to be honest with me here. How many of you like to go camping? Yeah, I knew this crowd would. You really enjoy that. You like to sleep out with your kids and with your grandkids, have a wonderful time, right? I don't. my son's here, and he and I, when we stay out overnight, we like it to be under four or five stars.

Now, Sue convinced me one time to take our family camping, and I think we were either traveling from Ohio to Texas or Ohio to Colorado, I'm not sure, but to be a good father and to be a good husband, I agreed. And so at the end of this day of driving and driving, we finally stopped and unpacked the car. I'm exhausted already. And the sun is just baking me and it's baking the ground.

And I'm trying to put this tent up on rock hard ground. By the way, this was the old days. It wasn't a pop-up tent. This was the ones you had to pound the stakes in, you know, and they'd bend. And so finally I got it up and I got all my little boys laid down in that tent. and I fell down next to him in exhaustion and off into deep sleep. Sometime around midnight, I'm shocked.

Like Niagara Falls is falling on our tent. And rain is just coming down and lightning is shining like a spotlight on us and the thunder is just shaking in our ears. And then I realized that everything in our tent was floating. that included all my boys and their mama. And so I went on a rescue mission. You can imagine the rest of my night. I'm rescuing Susie.

I'm rescuing my boys. I'm trying to get our food and save it. I'm trying to get our clothes and stuff it all into the car. Now folks, you know what the problem is with tents? They leak. They get rain soaked.

They drip. The ground underneath becomes like a muddy river. They let in the cold. In simple terms tents are very weak vulnerable dwelling places They just don last They don last Our earthly tent as Paul calls it our body is just like that Our bodies are weak and vulnerable. They wear out. And they finally will fail us.

As God's children, we don't need to despair in the face of that reality. We don't need to lose hope as we see that truth. Paul tells us we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven not built by human hands. Just like the temple that was built on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and it was more permanent than the tabernacle made of animal skin so they could travel through the wilderness, so too our heavenly bodies will be eternally durable in contrast to this temporal earthly body.

To emphasize this point, notice carefully that Paul makes an intriguing contrast here. Notice he says our eternal bodies, our body in heaven is not built by human hands. The body we live in on this earth was received from our parents, right? It was built by human hands. It's made of flesh. But in heaven, Paul says, we have a building or body that is from God.

Paul is pointing out a great, great contrast here. Earthly body from parents in contrast to eternal body from God, right? The clothes you are wearing today all have a manufacturer's label in them. So too does your earthly body. The tag says made by flesh by your parents. made of flesh by your parents. Your eternal body also will have a manufacturing label in it.

Made in heaven by God. For it will be made personally by our heavenly Father for you and for me for every child of faith I want you to think about that The eternal sovereign The ancient of days. The holy, holy, holy one of heaven will make a body for you, for me. And it will come from his infinitely perfect hands. we will have a body which will endure forever.

Secondly, we will be given an entirely new look in heaven because we'll have new clothing. This is in the next few verses. To speak of the end of our earthly life, again in verse 1, Paul says, we'll be destroyed. That word pictures something being torn down, something being demolished. The same word is used to speak of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.

You folks know AD 70, the Romans come in and they tear down and destroy the entire temple on the mount there. And even though the Romans left behind these huge stones lying one upon another over there, the temple itself is totally destroyed. When we think of death and we think of the decaying of our bodies, we wonder what we will be like in our heavenly bodies.

We wonder, will anyone actually recognize us? Will they know us? I'm asked that by wives all the time. Am I going to recognize Timmy when I get to heaven? Right? Right?

And Plato used to say, you know, that we'd be just naked beings. We wouldn't have any body. We'd be disembodied spirits and just wander around in heaven. Well, you know what? In this passage, Paul gives us a few clues which hint to the answer to this question. And it doesn't agree with what Plato said.

He does it by speaking of clothing. He says in verse 2, as we struggle through the afflictions of our earthly life, we at times begin longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling he says in verse 2 Verse 3 he says when we are clothed we will not be found naked With these words Paul pictures us putting outer clothing on over what we already wearing That's literally what that word means there. To have on over.

If you want to trace it out, you'll find yourself ending up in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 53-54, where he's talking about something very similar, because he says the perishable will be putting on the imperishable. The mortal will be putting on immortality. He's using a word that says it'll go on over. And so Paul is picturing a person putting something on over what they're already wearing.

Susie and I last weekend were over in Wapakoneta. And you know the Armstrong Space Museum was there. Before they got out to walk on the moon, they were just in regular clothing. And then they pulled on these space suits and an oxygen tank on their back and a helmet over their head. and they get on and they get out and they can walk in celestial air, right?

They can walk on the moon because they're clothed in a different way. You can think of it as winter clothing. We live in our houses and we have clothing on, but when you go out in the winter cold of Ohio, you put on a jacket and a hat and gloves and a scarf. So Paul says in verse 4, we will not be unclothed. Instead, we will be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, or we will be more completely clothed in our eternally amazing resurrection bodies.

So what is mortal, he says in verse 4, will be swallowed up by life. I love that. What is mortal? Dying, right? it's going to be swallowed up by what lives and lives eternally now you might be thinking wow brother Dave you know what I'm into it but I don't know if I'm able will I be able to be ready for all this stuff and I'm going to have this resurrection body and be able to carry on all this that goes with it you know what You will be ready.

God will make certain of that. God is working in your life. He is working in my life as a follower of Christ right now to make sure you'll be ready. Did you notice what Paul says to us in verse 5? Now it is God who has made us for what? This very purpose.

He made us for that heavenly dwelling. And he has given us the Spirit as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come. You know our problem? We think the Spirit is like a stamp that goes on a letter. And it makes sure it gets to its destination. That's what we think sealing of the Spirit is.

Listen, the Spirit is transforming you in your heart, in your mind, in your internal being. So that you'll be ready for that resurrection body and ready to live in that resurrection state forever and ever. God's at work. And God is working right now. He's working within your heart and internal being and my heart. and he's preparing us so that we'll be ready for the resurrection and the eternal body forever and ever.

Many things about our eternal resurrection body and life are unknown. But some things we can know. Because our building from God and the clothing of our heavenly dwelling are brand new, guess what? They'll be like a brand new house and brand new clothes. everything will work perfectly. Boy, are Becca and I glad to hear that. Our knees will work perfect, right?

Everything's going to work. Our hearts are going to work perfect. There will be no malfunctions, Brother John, in the resurrection body. None at all, right? We also know that Jesus was recognizable in his resurrection body. And therefore, we can be confident that we will also be recognizable.

We can be confident that we will know each other and find joy in personal fellowship together. We can also be confident that our perfected heart or inner being and our perfected resurrection body will work perfectly together forever So let start thinking through that Our bodies will reflect us at our best before the Lord and before each other. Isn't that great to know?

We're going to be far, far better people than we are in this world. I want you to think about that. I think my son's a pretty good guy. He's going to be a whole lot better. Michael's going to be a whole lot better in heaven. Because we're going to be reflected as the perfect people we become in Christ.

Our new bodies will never deteriorate. They'll never ache with pain. They'll never, and I love this one, they'll never find difficulty expressing what's in their heart and in their mind. Think about that. You ever wanted to tell someone how much you love them, and you haven't been able to get it all out? Yeah.

That day, it'll be different. You'll actually be able to tell them how much you love them. You ever want to tell a church family how thankful you are they stood with you through good times and bad times? Other churches didn't stand with you, but they did. Did you ever want to tell them those things, but you could never get it to come out? That day you'll be able to say it all, and you'll be able to say it clearly, and they'll understand what's in your heart, in your mind, in your soul, totally.

That'll be a good day. Because Susie will finally know just how much I really love her. There will be no inner tension within us where there is one desire struggling against another desire. That's something to think about. Yeah. There'll never be a time when you long to do what's wrong, but you know you ought to do what's good.

You'll always desire to do what's good. I'm ready for that day. I'm ready for that day. Right? Yeah Because all of us struggle the same way Right We struggle against this We know we shouldn do that and we want to do it but we know we ought to do good We won have to struggle that way anymore And I'll say that's a hallelujah day because we will perfectly display Christ's likeness.

We will never run out of energy. We will never run out of the ability to do good things that we desire to do. Why is that? because we will function by spirit life principle, not by blood life principle. Now, we function with strength from the life that's in our blood. We will function by spirit life principle in that day, and we will always be energized.

We'll be better than that Energizer bunny that they show on TV, right? We'll just keep going and going and going and never wear down. That'd be good, huh? Yeah. In eternity, loving our fatherly God, loving his wonderful son, loving the blessed spirit of Christ, and loving each other with all of our heart will always flow unhindered from us. It'll be free flowing.

We sing a song, prone to wander, Lord I know it. prone to leave this one I love. We'll never sing it in heaven because it will never be true again. We will have free flowing love for Him and each other there forever. And finally, Paul tells us in verses 6-8 that we'll experience a new way of living. With these words, Paul is now reaching the culmination, the apex of the contrast that he's been presenting to us.

The contrast between the life of faith that we live in our physical bodies here on earth, and that's contrasted with our coming future life of face-to-face living with Christ in eternity. Notice, he says in the latter part of verse 6, as long as we're at home in the body, we're away from the Lord. While we're living in this physical body on earth, we're away from, we're absent from, we're not at home with the personal presence of Christ.

And so verse 7 we live by faith not by sight In contrast Paul says in verse 8 to be away from the body we are at home with Christ then We are no longer living a long distance faith then. Instead, we are seeing Him face to face living a personal, expressive experience in relationship with Jesus Christ. we are experiencing life in his presence we will actually be fulfilling the prairie praise in john 17 right i think in verse 24 he says father i desire that all those that you have given me will be with me where i am and see my glory will be fulfilling his prayer that we will no longer need to live by a long distance faith because we're living this way with him, face to face. Maybe I can illustrate it this way.

When I was in the United States Navy, we were sent to Vietnam. We were over there for a year. The only communication I had with this precious little one came through letter writing. We had, all of us sailors, we longed for the day that the the mail would finally reach our ship. And when I received a letter from Susie, the very first thing I did, I'd grab it and I'd smell it.

Yeah, because it smelled like Susie. It had Shalimar on it. And I knew that she had written it. And then I'd start to devour it and read it and reread it. And I'd think about every word in that letter. And I'd trust everything she said.

I remember one letter she wrote. she said, Dave, I'm teaching Jeff, that was our oldest son, to say daddy. She had a picture up on the wall and she'd say, daddy, daddy. When I came home, he said, daddy. He hadn't seen me. He's just a tiny little guy. Everything she wrote, she'd say, I love you.

I'd read that and I'd believe it and I'd structure my life by that. I'd even take the letter to bed with me and I'd read it again before I went to sleep. I was living by faith, right? I had faith in our relationship and I lived by everything she wrote in those letters. A year later we pull back into Naval Piers at Norfolk and I remember running down that gangplank and I threw my arms around Susie and Susie threw her arms around me.

And we began living in a face-to-face relationship. And wow! It was better. It was way better. It better in every way that you can imagine. And that long-distance relationship was gone.

And now we're face-to-face. And experiencing joys that can't even be imagined in a long-distance relationship. You know what? those of us who are genuinely committed walking with Christ can confidently look forward to that face to face relationship He's our hope and our everlasting joy we live this life in frail bodies, right? we live in bodies that are like jars of clay the afflictions, the trials the troubles of life that we pass through are often fierce.

They're often intense. But in contrast to what lies ahead in our future life, they're just a light and a momentary affliction. So we have great hope. Remember, God has made you for a purpose. He has made you with a purpose. God has designed you.

He has designed me. He has designed all of us to live beyond the grave Solomon said God put eternity into our hearts This yearning this existential longing that so real within us God designed that He put that there because He created us for the purpose of living with Him in the new heaven and the new earth forever. In a new body, with new clothing, and a new face-to-face relationship with Christ.

You know what? I want that for every one of you. If Christ is only a game to you, if He's only a passing word to you, if He's only what you say on Sunday because all the rest of the people here say that, I'm appealing to you. Become a repenter. Turn away from the life that loves yourself and turn to loving Christ. Trust Him.

He'll transform your life. And He'll give you a hope beyond this failing world. Let's pray. Father, work Your work of grace in each one of us today. Each one of us are at a different place. Each one of us look at You, acknowledge You in different ways.

But there's a way that You want all of us to come to You. it's through faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone so bring all of your children to yourself now so that we can enjoy you forever in Christ we pray Amen