Corona Devo 342

What will Heaven be like?  

It's a very real question.  But it seems like we don't have many concrete answers.  Just by the very nature of Heaven and when we "go" there (after death), there have not been enough (any?) personal narratives to give us the true "scoop".  

Today's scripture pointed me toward a different question to ask about Heaven.  Instead of "What will Heaven be like?", perhaps a more revealing question would be "What will be Heaven not be like?"  

We want to picture Heaven as a "perfect" earth, a best-case-scenario emotional/physical/spiritual place.  And perhaps that may be in part true (time will tell!), however, I believe that Mark 12:18-27 gives us a "type" of behind-the-scenes glimpse as Jesus chastises the Sadducees for their misinterpretation and their pride-in-assumptions of the after-life.  

One of the main foundational beliefs of the Sadducees was that they did not adhere to any type of "resurrection" of us/our souls after death.  They attempted to "prove" their theory by making up a cockamamie story about a woman whose husband had died, and so (as was customary back then), the dead-husband's brother married her, but then he died, so another brother married her...  The riddle was not only far-fetched, it was ridiculous.  The Sadducees were (in their own way) trying to prove the ridiculousness of the idea of resurrection and us "picking up where we left off on earth" when we get to Heaven.  However, Jesus went on to correct them and the ridiculousness of their "thinking" about Heaven.

18 Then Jesus was approached by some Sadducees—religious leaders who say there is no resurrection from the dead. They posed this question: 19 “Teacher, Moses gave us a law that if a man dies, leaving a wife without children, his brother should marry the widow and have a child who will carry on the brother’s name. 20 Well, suppose there were seven brothers. The oldest one married and then died without children. 21 So the second brother married the widow, but he also died without children. Then the third brother married her. 22 This continued with all seven of them, and still there were no children. Last of all, the woman also died. 23 So tell us, whose wife will she be in the resurrection? For all seven were married to her.”

24 Jesus replied, “Your mistake is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God. 25 For when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. In this respect they will be like the angels in heaven.  ~Mark 12:18-25

Heaven's not going to be "what we think".  Because, the truth is, we can't think/relate/absorb the holy and pure state-of-existence that Heaven will be, simply because it will be like nothing we've ever known.  But make no mistake: if we know Jesus today, we will know Him in Heaven and we will go (and be!) in Heaven with Him.  

And that was the next point that Jesus made to the Sadducees, and that He makes to us today: we will be present in Heaven.  We will not lie-in-state and be viewed by others.  We will not be buried in earthly dirt and never "live" again after our last earthly breath is exhaled.  Quite the contrary--says Jesus, and He uses some of the biggest names in the Hall of Faith to prove His point: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

26 “But now, as to whether the dead will be raised—haven’t you ever read about this in the writings of Moses, in the story of the burning bush? Long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died, God said to Moses, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ 27 So he is the God of the living, not the dead. You have made a serious error.”  ~Mark 12:26-27

Ouch!  When Jesus calls you out on making "a serious error", then your thinking is wrong. 

The point Jesus made to the Sadducees was that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been dead on earth for many years when God said to Moses, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ (Mark 12:26 and Exodus 3:6).  God was speaking in present tense to Moses about these three men who died hundreds of years earlier--because they had been resurrected in Heaven, and were living.

It is BIG brain stuff, but it is also a real-time Biblical example that proves the faith-belief that Christ-followers hold of our resurrection in Heaven.   Point taken: the Sadducees had made a serious error.

I realize that we (often unintentionally) make serious errors in our assumptions about Heaven.   It is human-nature to envision it as a perfect-earth-experience. We so desperately want to know what it will be like, but the more I understand, the more I truly believe that we cannot understand.

But for today, it is enough to relax and rejoice in the fact that we will understand one day, because he is the God of the living, not the dead (Mark 12:27).

Blessings,

sarah

https://sarahsundy04.blogspot.com/