CHS Downtown sermon | Tim Henderson+

Hey, guys. Welcome to CHS Downtown The Table. We're so glad you're here. We're just a privilege to be here with you as we share a meal and get into the word of God together. My name is Tim. I think I know most of you, maybe all of you, and it's just really a privilege to have you. And Cole, thanks for coming and leading worship with us. Love you. So glad that you could be with us.

Hey, a couple of things before we jump into the scriptures tonight. I want to remind you or let you know that Barb sends out an email every month with volunteer needs for the month ahead. So when you get that from Barb, if you don't get that, we'd love you to be on that list. You could speak to Barb right after. But when she sends it out and needs to get folks to help volunteer, we would love you to respond to that. There's a handful of you that work tirelessly week after week, and so many that show up to help. Just this week, Mary Beth did all of our laundry to keep all the things going. We'd really be grateful for you to respond so she can coordinate the volunteers to do the stuff that we need.

And then second, I want to remind you that we have a couple of things going on in August. Right now, tonight, I think probably a lot of our friends that would normally be here are at this other worship night going on downtown at Elwood Park. So August is kind of a month to do wonky things. Some folks are there. This same time next week, we will not be here. Rather than coming here at seven, we really want you to come to our main campus at 5:00. We're going to have our kickoff event as the year begins. So don't come down here next week—it'll be locked. But do join us at our main property, 6011 Merriman. It's going to be our chance to kick off the year and be with friends, be outside, and be happy. And eat. There'll be lots of food—barbecue. It'll be a great time. There's no formal program. It's really a social. It's a ton of fun. So we want you to come and be with us for that.

Alright. Barb, any other news you want me to cover? Okay. Great.

Can I invite you guys to stand for just a brief moment in honor of God's word? I'm going to read this passage to you from the gospels. This is the gospel according to Matthew chapter 25. I'm going to pick it up in verse 31. It'll have some bearing on where we want to go tonight.

When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory, and all the nations will be gathered before him. And he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. And then the king will say to those on his right, "Come, you who are blessed by my father, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world." — Matthew 25:31-34

That's the gospel. You're welcome to have a seat.

Christian Happiness Series

Now, what we're doing tonight is we're going to continue our series that we picked up. We started two weeks ago on Christian happiness. Does anybody happen to recall that Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon years and years ago—by years, I mean like three hundred years ago—arguing that Christians should be the happiest people on earth for three irrefutable reasons? Do you guys remember what they are? What are the three pillars of Christian joy?

Our bad things turn out for good. Our good things can't be taken away. And the best is yet to come.

These things are inarguably true, right? All things work together for the good of those who love God. It's really true. And there's such permanence to his love and his mercy and his grace and his kindness—it's never going to go. Jesus invites us to store up things where moth and rust can't destroy. And that's all great news. But tonight, I want to talk with you guys about this concept that the best is yet to come, because it really is. The best is absolutely yet to come.

So here's what I'm going to tell you a little bit about the future in a very compressed form. You ready?

In this next year, some really horrible things are going to happen, and some astonishingly beautiful things are going to happen. The year after that, more glory, more beauty, more amazing fall and interspersed with some really, really painful, shockingly terrible things. We're going to continue in this mingled nature of good and bad at both times. Good and bad at the same time, going on, both of them together until Jesus comes back. That might be sometime this year. It might be before the end of the year. It might not be till you're all dead. Your children's children's children. We don't know. But he's coming back.

After this mingled time of mixture of good and bad, what's going to happen is that Jesus is going to literally, actually, physically, genuinely come back to the earth. And when he does, he's going to raise everybody who's ever lived from the dead. Every living person from all the centuries will be raised from the dead to stand before him. That's one of the things that's going on there in Matthew 25 in that passage you just read, or the passage right before it actually—that he's going to raise all of humanity across the millennia. And when he does, he's going to separate humanity like sheep from goats. Some, those who are his enemies, will be destroyed. Others who love him, he will grant to them the ability to live forever in a perfect world. He's going to give eternal life. Those that love him, those that have bent the knee to him, those that have come under his saving mercies will live for a hundred million billion years, and then forever after that in a world of endless and increasing joy. And it's going to be absolutely bonkers when it happens.

The Bible describes this. Sometimes there are these subtle hints, these little tantalizing moments, and sometimes it actually goes into great detail about what this is going to look like. I don't know if you have any favorite passages about that, but one of my favorites is Isaiah 35, which you may not even think of. I don't even know what Isaiah 35 is. It's not one of those passages that we tend to look at a lot, which is weird because it's amazing. We should know what it says. But even if Isaiah 35 isn't your go to, there's plenty of places where the Bible paints this picture. I want to read to you Isaiah 35. Just listen to it first, and then we'll unpack it a little bit as we consider what we mean when we say the best is yet to come.

The desert and the parched land will be glad. The wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it'll burst into bloom. It'll rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, splendor of Carmel and Sharon, they will see the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our God. Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way. Say to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong. Do not fear. Your God will come, and he will come with vengeance, with divine retribution. He will come to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped? Then will the lame leap like a deer and the mute tongue shout for joy? Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool. The thirsty ground, bubbling springs, and the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow. And a highway will be there. It will be called the way of holiness, The unclean will not journey on it. It'll be for those who walk in that way. Wicked fools will not go about on it. No lion will be there, nor will any ferocious beast get up on it. They will not be found there, but only the redeemed will walk there, and the ransomed of the Lord will return. They will enter Zion with singing. Everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. — Isaiah 35

I think that's a strong finish. It's going to be amazing. All of the sadness of these days, this mingled mixed story, all of the sadness will flee like being chased. And it says that joy and gladness will overtake you. It's like the image of being overtaken, in my mind, is like a wave or a tsunami. There'll be no escape from the joy and the happiness that will gobble you up. When this happens, you want to be there because it's going to be absolutely extraordinary.

I want you to notice there are so many things here. This would be a passage, Isaiah 35, worth reading and rereading and pondering and holding on to. Let's make a couple of quick observations of what it is, and then I'll give you guys a chance to discuss it over some bread and wine.

Transformation

First thing is it's going to be transformation. It's going to be a time where one thing changes into something else. Listen to the number of things that are transformed. Here's how he does it.

He says, "the desert and the parched land is glad wilderness rejoices and blossoms." What it's saying here is that the things that are dead and barren or ugly are going to become alive and beautiful.

I grew up in Southern California. Have you guys been to Southern California? Who's been there? Actually been there, instead of just seeing pictures? You been there in the summertime? What is it in the summertime? It's just a desert. It is brown and dead. It's terrible and ugly. I mean, the beach is nice, but everything else is brown. I grew up in Southern California. My sister lives there. We vacation there pretty frequently. Whenever we're there, I'm always just struck by how absolutely ugly it is, which is weird because Southern California is supposed to be this amazing place with everything wonderful, but it's just dirt. It's just dead and ugly.

When I was just there about a month ago, I was talking to my sister Robin and saying, "What is going on? I know you guys get so much press, but you live in a desert." She's like, "Oh, you just always come at the wrong time. You should be here in the spring." She says, "You should have been here in 2019 during the super bloom."

So what is the super bloom? Have you heard about the super bloom? These hills the highways cut through—all these hills, it's just dirt and an occasional avocado tree. But every once in a while, in 2019 was the last time it happened, they had what they call a super bloom, where all these California poppies just spring to life. This thing that right now looks nothing like this—it explodes into a world of color. Robin said it's extraordinary, but it's a nightmare because everybody on the highway stops their cars. They just stop, get out of the cars, take pictures because it's so outrageous.

If you just go to California super bloom, you'll find photograph after photograph of amazing color. This is what Isaiah is saying. This right here is simply a foretaste of this global transformation that is coming.

The Transformations Coming

Look what else is going to change. He says that feeble hands will become strong, and I think there's a promise that that is going to come to pass—that knees that give way will become steady, that fearful hearts become fearless, that the wicked will be put down. That's another transformation. The wicked will be slain.

He goes on and he says, the blind eyes become seeing eyes, deaf ears become hearing ears, the lame can jump, the mute can speak. All of that body stuff, I just think that's simply whatever your maladies are. Some of you are pre-malady and some of you are post-malady. Is it fifty? Is it when things start breaking in your forties, fifties? All of it that's breaking and dying—your vision, your ankle—it's all gonna be undone. Blind eyes will see. It's not just these four things, but all of your mechanism that breaks, it will all be renewed. Those that were born with spina bifida will be able to walk.

All the sadness—as Samwise says, all the sad things are gonna come untrue. He says the sand will become a pool, the dry ground will become a spring. All you guys, what's gonna happen when Jesus comes back, raises the dead, and restores all things is all of the badness, all the things that you just don't like about living in this world—it's all going be unmade. All the sadness, all the loneliness, all the brokenness, it's all gone. It's going be transformed.

What Won't Be There

That's number one. Second thing, notice this. Notice what's not there. There's a whole bunch of stuff that's going to be omitted. Look at the last stanza here, verses eight to ten. Isaiah says, "There's going be no unclean people, no wicked fools, no vicious beasts."

That first one should give you pause if you have any hope or expectation to be there yourself. One of the greatest things that God has accomplished is that he has devised a way that unclean people will actually be able to live in a place where unclean people cannot be. When you look at this thing that says no unclean people would be there, you should be worried because you're probably not clean. None of us are clean.

But he has figured out a way to destroy sin without destroying sinners. I'm going to be there. I'm going to see it all happen. I'm going to live in it forever. But I am by no means a person who has lived a clean life. And the promise of the gospel is that God takes undeserving people who have soiled their hands, who have done all sorts of unruly things, and he's figured out a way to make it so that those very people whose lives have been marked by badness and brokenness will nevertheless inherit a place where only the pure can dwell.

It is incredible, and undeserving people will partake of it. You might partake of it, if you really are in him. So there's no unclean people except us. It says no wicked fools, no vicious beasts. I think that just means that all of these things that are injurious and damaging and evil will be removed forever. And what will remain, all that's gonna survive there, will be enjoyed by an undeserving people who have been invited by unfathomable grace into unimaginable glory, and you want to be there.

Now, if you get this—if you get your head around the reversals that happen, all the things that won't be there—then you might begin to get a sense of, like, this is going to be good, and I want to be there. But when you do that, you've only gotten one dimension of the glory because we haven't really talked about the duration of it. And at some level, intellectually at least, you know that this is going to go on forever and ever and ever again. But it's really hard to get your head wrapped around eternity.

One day, not very long ago, Kelly—my wife, Kelly—was at the beach with her dad, and they were looking at the ocean with all of its vastness. You just look out and it's just blue for as far as the eye can see, just endless sea. And he said to her, "Kelly, do you know what's really cool about the ocean?" She said, "What, dad?" And he said, "That's only the top." Think about that. When you've gotten your head around the enormity of the ocean, you haven't. You're looking one millimeter deep. This thing goes down forever and ever and ever again.

And so it is. If you get your head around, if you could somehow grasp the majesty and the happiness and the splendor of the world to come, you have to then multiply that by forever. How do you do that? You can't even get your head around that. So I want to give you just one single aspect of eternity to help you think about what it means if this goodness is perpetual, goes on forever.

Developing Skill in Eternity

Think about it through the lens of your own competence, as great or as little as you might find that to be. Are you aware of the idea that you get better at things the longer that you do them? Have you noticed this about yourself? You start doing something with fumbling, clumsy steps, then you get better and better and better at it.

Malcolm Gladwell talks about how many hours does it take to get to mastery of something. What's the magic number? Ten thousand hours. So the idea is, if you play a violin for ten thousand hours, you're gonna be pretty good at it. But it takes a long time to get there. Eventually, you die.

Imagine how great would you be as a musician if you had ten thousand hours, but not ten thousand. What if you had fifty thousand hours? What if you had ten million hours practicing this skill? Can you imagine how good you would become at a thing?

Or pick somebody that's already good. Pick Lin-Manuel Miranda. Let's say his second musical, Hamilton, was outrageously good. If he were in Christ and continued this skill that he has, what would his fifteenth musical be like? What would his twenty thousandth musical be like? Can you imagine what it would be like to just develop a skill and how much fun it will be to be better and better at something over all of time?

Imagine if you wanted to be a gymnast. You're living in a world forever where you have no injury, no possibility of death, but you can just practice. You become a gymnast. A thousand years of becoming a gymnast, you would be better than Simone Biles. You would be incredible.

If we get tired of that, you decide you want to be a rock climber. Tommy Caldwell is amazing. Adam Ondra. If you look at these guys, they are some of the greatest athletes in the world. You could be better than they are if you continue to do this thing.

Or let's say what you love is scientific discovery. Do you understand that in the world to come, we're not just going to sit around doing nothing? We're going to be learning and discovering. It's going to be the world's largest Easter egg hunt because God has made a hundred billion galaxies, and we're going to have all of time to explore them. Think about it like this.

How much time do you have any idea how much time has elapsed between Kitty Hawk and Apollo Eleven? What's the span of time from those two things? Do you know? Forty-nine years. Pretty close. Sixty-six years. Kitty Hawk was 1903. In 1903, we had the first powered flight. It lasted twelve seconds and went 120 feet. Sixty-six years later, boom, we went a quarter of a million miles to the moon. That's in sixty-six years.

What the heck? What are we going to learn in sixty-six thousand years? What are we going to learn in ten million years? Can you imagine how completely insane it's going to be? The things that we will learn and discover and accomplish if we have all of time. It's not going to be if you have some vision that the world to come is going to be like the 1800s and we're just going to be like the Amish forever—it's not true. It's not true. There's gonna be learning and discovery and expertise forever and ever. And it's gonna go on and on and on.

The Creator Himself

Not only are we gonna discover all these things that the Creator made, but we're gonna discover the Creator himself because he is greater than his creation. He himself is infinite. And we will have all of time to explore him, to get to know him in a world marked by love and joy and happiness. And it's going to be absolutely amazing.

What happens, you guys, as we begin to ponder these things and start to imagine what would it be like—is the anticipation of future happiness floods back into this moment of present pain to produce real joy. Because all of that happiness, all of it, is heading your way. If you are in Christ, you will live in a world of endless happiness with constant discovery, constant joy, constant intimacy. And if you will anchor your life on this—this world that is coming but that is certain to be yours—if you'll anchor your life on this, and you should because Jesus purchased it for you, then you can be happy in him forever. Yes. But it actually becomes yours to savor now in the midst of some really yucky stuff.

That vision, if you would obtain it, will allow you, help you, resource you to kind of release your grip on worldly things because so much more is coming. There will be plenty of time for you to do things that are outrageously happy. And that frees you up right now to spend your time, your money, your energy, your very self in service to others.

There's time. There will be unimaginable happiness. But these days—and the opportunity to love people and to serve people, to serve the lost and to bring them with us—these opportunities are fleeting and the door is closing soon. What you do in these days will matter forever.

Bearing Suffering Through Vision

This vision of the world also enables us to cheerfully bear the suffering because there's some yucky stuff that is coming. There are evils in this world, but none of it can do us any real harm. This is the vision that undergirds Paul's life. He writes about it. You see it most clearly, I think, in various places, but you see it really clearly in Second Timothy, his last letter.

He says things like, "That is why I am suffering as I am." He's like, "I'm a herald. I'm an apostle. My job is to go proclaim the gospel to people, and I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna help them receive it by faith. And I'm convinced that he's able to guard what I've entrusted to him for that day. I'm gonna get everything back. It's gonna be fine. So therefore, I can spend my days like this."

He says in another place, "To live is Christ and to die is gain." He is convinced that this life, right now, these precious hours are all about obtaining the world to come and to help others obtain it as well because he can see it and it's real.

The Vision and Our Purpose

I think that the more that this vision grips us—which is to say the more accurately that we see the world, the more conscious we are of the happiness that comes to us—the more that we will begin to long for that world, that we'll spend our time and our energy on helping other people obtain it as well. And as we do that, the bonus is that as we get our eyes off our own momentary happiness and onto the eternal happiness of others, our momentary happiness actually increases as we are participating with God in the great work that he's doing for all of time.

Because in Christ, your bad things do turn out for good. They will. But there are bad things. In Christ, your good things will never be taken away, and they are abundant. And in Christ, the best is yet to come.

Table Discussion

What we want to do tonight over the table is you'll find in a few minutes—we'll get you the stuff. You just have a couple of short questions. But I want you guys, around your tables, to have a chance to consider: Do I ever think about this? Do I have an active vision? Am I aware of Isaiah 35 or Revelation 21 and 22?

Are there other places that you kind of go to meditate, to anchor your life on this? And if not, what would happen if you did?

What would happen if when you were making your budget for the year, what would happen if you were allocating how you were going to spend your time, what would happen if this future happiness was shaping the present decisions that you make?

What if, not just when you're making decisions about all the good things that you can spend at your pleasure, but what about when you get the cancer diagnosis, when you are suffering deeply, how would it matter to you if that vision were rich, powerful, if you believed it was true—not some silly religious fairy tale, but it's actual, it's actually gonna happen.

I'll let you guys have a chance to process that together at the table, and then we'll come back up, we'll pray, and we'll sing a song and go home. You ready?