Message of the Week

The Little White Community Church

Scripture:  II Cor. 12:1-6

June 30, 2024

Message: “I Can Only Imagine!”

by Pastor George Gnade

Intro. 1. In Gen. 12:1-3, God spoke to Abraham and told him to leave his country where his father lived and go to a place where God would send him. That is how and why Abraham moved to the land of Canaan.  

a. Because God promised to give him this land, it became known as “the promised land.”

b. But Abraham never received the land. In fact, his descendants would not receive it till hundreds of years later when Moses led the people Israel out of Egypt.

2. After traveling through the wilderness, Moses brought them right up to the Jordan River. That is where he died and Joshua took over instead.

a. He had sent spies to examine the land and found it to be a very prosperous place to live. It became known as a land “overflowing with milk and honey.”  

b. What a wonderful gift from God! It soon became known as the land of Israel.  

3. But a lot happened in between.

A. Let me share some highlights with you.

1. First Joshua led Israel in the conquest of the land.  You could say he guaranteed Israel would be there to stay. 

2. But the very next generation forgot all about Joshua and stopped following the Lord. That created a conflict of interest. God wanted His land to be committed to Him. But many in the land had a different opinion.

a. As a result, God would punish the land to get their attention. Then He would raise up leaders, called judges, to deliver them.

b. If you know your Bible, the judges eventually were replaced by kings. Saul was the first. But he didn’t do things God’s way.

3. So God raised up David and then Solomon. David was a man after God’s own heart and wrote many of our Psalms. 

a. But even he sinned and got involved with Bathsheba. That messed up everything again. 

b. The only good news was God’s promise that the kingly line would continue through David till God sent the Messiah, the one who would save His people from their sins.

4. Considering how the sins of the people kept messing everything up, this was the best news of all.

B.  But through all of this, consider what happened to the so called “promised land.”

1. While it began as a very prosperous land, all these ups and downs caused God to remove His blessing from the land.  Famines and wars destroyed much of it.

a. Just as God had blessed them in the days of Joshua, He blessed them again in the days of David and Solomon. 

b. Solomon was one of the riches kings who ever lived. Israel reached the peak of its power under him. He built the most beautiful temple the world has ever seen so God’s people could worship Him.

2. But Solomon’s sins ruined all that. The kingdom was divided and would never be the same. In the days of Daniel, Babylon would come and destroy the city and this temple and take the Israelites into captivity.

a. By God’s grace, God miraculously restored the land to them 70 years later. Another temple was built.

b. But the new temple was so small people who remembered Solomon’s temple mourned over the loss.

3. But God is good. He caused King Herod to rebuild the temple as a favor to the Jews. It was very beautiful. By the time Jesus was born, the Jews had become captives of the Romans. When Jesus came to His temple, the Jews rejected Him and the Romans crucified Him. But Jesus accomplished what He came to do.

a. He died on the cross and paid the penalty for our sins. He did the one and only thing that could and will guarantee the ultimate end of this endless cycle.

b. He promised everyone who would believe in Him that He “would go and prepare a place for them (John 14: 1-3)” and someday “come and take them to be with Him” where they and we who believe will live with Him forever.

C. Sadly, even the coming of Jesus did not solve the problem of the Jewish people.

1. Many rejected Jesus, and in 70 A.D., Jerusalem was destroyed again and the temple was destroyed also.  The Jews were scattered all over the world.

a. Meanwhile, Jesus sent His disciples into all the world to tell people about His promise of salvation and eternal life.

b. While the temple in Jerusalem has yet to be restored, Jesus created a new temple, called the temple of the Holy Spirit. Ever since He arose and ascended into heaven, Jesus now lives in the hearts of those who love and believe in Him. That means we are also now part of God’s new temple! We must never forget who we are.

2. In I Peter 2:9, we are called “God’s chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people who belong to God, that (we) may declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.”

a. To help clarify what happened, in vs. 10, Peter continues: “Once you were not (God’s) people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

b. This was written to Messianic Jews as well as believing Gentiles. Presently, we are all “one nation” under God, under the kingship of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The miracle is it no longer matters where we live!

Christians today can be found all over the world.

D. But what does all of this have to do with our passage that we read today!

1. Just as God gave Abraham an opportunity to live in Canaan long before the promise was fulfilled, so God gave Paul an opportunity to see what God’s new world will be like when Jesus comes again.

a. Somehow God brought him to the third heaven to see what heaven is like. The first heaven in our sky. The second heaven is what we call outer space.  The third heaven is where God Himself dwells. 

b. Unlike anything down here that will always to ruined by sin, God’s new creation, what Jesus called “the new heaven and earth that will come down out of heaven” (Rev. 20), that place will never experience sin or suffering or death. In that place, no one will cry or mourn. 

2. That place is the real promised land.  That is where we will live with Jesus forever. Paul said it was so fantastic he was not even allowed to say much about it. In II Cor. 12: 3, Paul calls this the real “paradise” of God. 

a. He was given this privilege because of the terrible sufferings he endured while serving Jesus, sufferings explained to us several times in this book ( See II Cor. 4:7-13 and II Cor. 11: 22 -3).

b. I believe this experience of Paul was written for thousands of Christians, especially in our day, who are suffering and sometimes dying because of their love and faithfulness to Christ. God wanted to assure us this place is real and sometime soon, we will be there too.

In Conclusion: 1. Just as Joshua saw the promised land of Canaan, and Solomon was allowed to see Israel ‘s glory days, so many Christians believe our country was given to primarily Christian people who fled to our country to avoid persecution.

a. We have seen how blessed a nation can be that seeks the Lord.  As you all know, at one time we were called a Christian nation by people all over the world.

b. Just as the promised land of Canaan, overflowing with milk and honey, did not remain that way as the sinful ways of the world gradually took over, so our own country has and is being destroyed as God is no longer wanted and the world’s ways are replacing the teachings of the Bible.

2. But God’s permanent “promised land” is the place Jesus has prepared for us.  That land will never see sin or experience death. That is the place too awesome to even describe. Paul saw it, and someday we will see it too.

3. We began this message talking about Abraham who lived in Canaan before Israel possessed the land. But when the Jews sinned and were scattered, in Heb. 4: 9, it says, “There remains a place of rest for the people of God.” In Heb. 12: 10, it says: “for he waited for the city which has foundations whose builder and maker is God.”  That is “the new heaven and earth” that Jesus will give to all of us. We “can only imagine” how beautiful it will be. 

4. I beg all of us not to throw it away in exchange for the pleasures of the flesh or to avoid persecution.  Jesus asks us to remain faithful to the end. And by God’s grace, we will.  By God’s grace, we will all receive it together. Amen.