Unmixed and Unending Joy

The Revealed Nature of Heaven's Joy

0:03 This sermon was preached on Sunday evening, November 13th, 1983, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. One of the verses that several of you have quoted to me in the course of these studies on the subject of heaven is the well-known verse which the Apostle Paul quotes from the Old Testament, in which we read,

0:37 And often you've quoted the more familiar language from which this is taken in Isaiah,

1:04 which God has prepared for them that love him. But the Apostle goes on to say, But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God. And then he goes on in the passage to say that what was veiled in the past and is now unveiled is revealed in words not which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Spirit teaches. And those words are the words which we now have in this book that we hold before us, the Bible.

1:45 And all we can know for certain about the inheritance that awaits us is that which God has been pleased to reveal in the very words which the Spirit has chosen, and how much we feel our need of the same Spirit to open our minds, that we may be able to see the same Spirit as God has revealed to us. And that we might understand those precious words. Let us then seek his face again for the blessing of the Spirit as we seek to understand the words of God.

2:19 Our Father, we confess again that we have felt so keenly in these past days our own weakness and limitations as creatures and as sinners, as we have sought to concentrate our minds, upon the glories that await the children of God. And yet we thank you that you have revealed these things for our edification. And we pray that the Holy Spirit will be given to us tonight in copious measures that we may understand more accurately and may have a firmer grasp upon the inheritance so dearly purchased for us in the blood of God. In the blood of your own dear Son. Hear us and draw near to us then in the ministry of the word we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Heaven as a Place of Unmixed and Unending Joy

3:21 Now although God has stamped upon the consciousness of each one of us and all of his creatures made in his image, that is all mankind, that haunting awareness that we are not just animals, and that when we die that's not the end of it all, in spite of that haunting consciousness common to all mankind, we are utterly dependent upon the word of God written for any certain and clear knowledge of what lies beyond the grave. Man cannot escape the haunting consciousness that the grave is not the end of it all.

4:15 But when they begin to pursue that haunting consciousness to some clear understanding of precisely what lies beyond the grave, they cannot find the answer in themselves, they cannot find it in scientific investigation, they can find it in no other way than in the scriptures of God. And therefore with the scriptures open before us, we have been seeking for some weeks now to answer, first of all, these two basic questions, what is hell and who is going there? And now we've been wrestling with the question, what is heaven? And God willing, next week, the question, who is going there? And in our answer to the question, what is heaven, we have seen from the scripture, we have seen from the scriptures that whatever heaven is, it is at least these five great realities set before us in the word of God. Heaven is a place as well as a state or condition.

5:31 Secondly, heaven is a condition of the perfection of soul and of body. Thirdly, that heaven is a place of unwearied service, joined together, to perennial rest and refreshment. Fourth, heaven is a place of the perfected communion of all the saints of all ages. And then that which we struggled to grasp in some little measure last Lord's Day evening, heaven is the realization of the direct sight of and immediate communion with God and the Lamb.

6:13 Now tonight, we come to examine the first part of the scripture, and the final element in the biblical answer to the question, what is heaven? And the sixth thing that heaven is, according to the scriptures, is this. Heaven is a place of unmixed and unending joy for all of its inhabitants. Heaven is a place of unmixed and unending joy for all.

The Gospel's Promise of Joy vs. Earthly Mixed Joy

6:45 Heaven is a place of unlimited joy for all of its inhabitants. and all of the redeemed. Joy, bliss, happiness, these commodities universally sought, for oh how elusive they are. And with our Bibles in our hands, and with an eye to perceive reality as we see it about us, it is no understatement to say, that there is no heaven.

7:16 There is no true joy, bliss, or happiness apart from the salvation of God in Jesus Christ. It is for this very reason that one of the distinguishing marks of the gospel is that it and it alone brings true joy to sinful man. You remember when the angels announced the birth of the Lord Jesus, they announced it in this language. We bring you tidings of what?

7:53 Great joy, for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And there is no great joy apart from the knowledge of the Savior who is Christ the Lord. Furthermore, in a text such as Romans, Romans 14, 17, we read, The kingdom of God is not comprised of eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. One of the distinguishing marks of the privileges of being, or the privileges of those in Christ's kingdom, is that they have joy rooted in the Holy Ghost. A joy found in companionship, with righteousness and with peace. Or we could take Galatians 5, 22. The fruit of the Spirit is joy.

8:57 Or 1 Peter 1, 8. Though you've not seen him, Peter says, yet believing in him you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Or Paul's word in Romans 15, 13. Now the God of peace, fill you with all joy and peace in believing.

9:20 And these texts and others could be brought to underscore the same point, clearly assert that it is an exclusive privilege of the gospel to bring true joy. And wherever the gospel comes with power, it always brings with it some of that measure of true spirit. Spiritual joy. It is impossible for the Holy Spirit to indwell a man or woman, boy or girl, and for that person not to experience something of the fruit of his indwelling, namely joy, along with love and peace, and all of the other dimensions of the ninefold fruit of the Spirit. It's impossible to be introduced into the kingdom of God by the new birth, and not to have, some measure of joy in the Holy Ghost, along with an imputed righteousness and peace with God, and something of the peace of God. However, the Bible that makes it clear that the highest, richest, most abounding joy experienced by any child of God in this life is at every point, to some degree,

10:48 a joy that is mixed with sorrow. Whatever joy comes in the dynamics of grace here and now, it is never a mixed joy. It is always joy mingled to some degree with sorrow and with grief. And whatever point a Christian may, experience in his Christian life where it seems as though his consciousness is one of unmixed joy, it will not be long before he realizes it was not unending joy.

11:32 And so I have chosen these two words carefully and purposefully in asserting that heaven is a place of unmixed and unending joy for all. For all of its inhabitants. While we are here, whatever joy we know, we do indeed mourn and grieve over our remaining sin and the sin that is about us. And any professed joy that's supposed to be the joy of the gospel that is not mingled with grief and pain for sin is a satanic delusion.

12:18 Beware of the gospel. Beware of the gospel. Beware of the gospel. The gospel that promises and professes to bring its adherence to unmixed joy in this life.

12:29 It will be a gospel that takes lightly the reality of sin. For Jesus described the subjects of the kingdom in present tense verbs when he said, Blessed are those who are continually mourning for they shall be comforted. Blessed are those who are continually mourning for they shall be comforted. As long as the reality of remaining sin is our earthly companion, we will with the apostle be forced to cry sometimes with greater intensity than others, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

13:13 And no man says those words with felt spiritual experience with a thirty-two-tooth grin on his face. If he doesn't say them with tears coming out of his eyes, he says them with a tear-drenched heart, O wretched man that I am. Furthermore, we mourn and grieve with our brothers and sisters who pass through seasons of grief and when we hear our Lord saying to us through the pen of the apostle, weep with those who weep as well as rejoice with those who rejoice, we take that. Seriously, we're not content simply to come with some pious drivel and pat them on the back and tell them the joy is the Lord of your strength, brother. Rejoice in the Lord. There's a time when they sob and we draw near until the felt realities that produce their tears are ours by way of spiritual empathy and we weep with those who weep. That's Christianity.

14:18 This chuck a man under the chin with a shallow word of biblical promise, this is cruelty. It's not Christianity.

14:27 We are to weep with those who weep. Furthermore, according to the scriptures, whatever heights of joy we may know, as long as we're in this tabernacle, we groan. We that are in this tabernacle, Paul says, 2 Corinthians 5, we groan being burdened, longing to put on our habitation from heaven and furthermore, whatever joys, we may know in the Christian life. Alas, so often that joy is clouded by spiritual declension, spiritual dullness and by backslidings of heart and oh, what a grievous thing it is to discover in yourself a backslidden heart.

Scriptural Proof of Unmixed Joy in Heaven

15:15 So you see, though joy is an indispensable commodity of saving experience and one of the unique commodities of the life, the gospel in this present state, it is never unmixed, nor is it unending joy. But blessed be God, one of the cardinal blessings of heaven is that it is a state, a place, a condition, an eternal experience, if I may use the terminology, of unmixed and unending joy. And for the true church, child of God, no little part of the glory of heaven consists in that great reality. Now let's turn to those scriptures which teach us that heaven is a place of unmixed joy. We have the clear statement of our Lord in the parable given to us in Matthew 25,

16:21 Matthew chapter 25,

16:32 and beginning with verse 14, we have, we have the parable of the man who goes into another country, calls his servants, delivers his goods to them, one five talents, another two, another one, and then the parable tells us in verse 19, after a long time, the Lord of those servants comes and makes a reckoning with them. Obviously a reference to the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, at which time there will be a reckoning with all men before his judgment throne.

17:12 And he that received the five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, you delivered unto me five talents. Lo, I've gained other five talents. His Lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things.

17:31 I will set you over many things. And we looked at that, phrase in conjunction with the idea that heaven will be a place of active, responsible service. I'll set you over many things. But now we concentrate on the last phrase.

17:46 Enter thou into what? And here the entire inheritance is described in this one simple phrase. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.

18:04 And we find exactly the same terminology with regard to the man who took the two talents and brought a return to his Lord. In verse 23, his Lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over a few things. I'll set you over many things.

18:22 Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. Now this is a fascinating phrase, the joy of thy Lord. Is it the joy of thy Lord? Is it the joy of thy Lord?

18:37 Is it the joy that thy Lord has prepared for you? Or is it the joy that is your Lord's which he deigns to share with you and all his faithful servants? Linguistically and grammatically it could be either. And frankly, I don't have a clue to say which one it is with dogmatism, but this much is certain.

19:01 Whether it is the joy which is the Lord's in his own eternal dwelling, now shared with all his faithful servants, or whether it is the peculiar joy prepared by the Lord for his servants, this much is clear. The dominant characteristic of the inheritance into which the faithful are ushered is joy.

19:30 Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. Now was there no joy in the heart of the servant who was the Lord's servant? Now was there no joy in the heart of the servant who out of love to his master served him? Why, of course there was.

19:44 The very flavor in which the servant seems anxious to appear before his Lord and say, You gave me five and I've traded for you. He had no narrow conceptions of his Lord as that unprofitable servant who called him a hard man, narrow-hearted and tight-fisted. No joy in his service whatsoever. Obviously the faithful servants had joy in their service.

20:09 And whatever joy they knew while they were administering the stewardship of their Lord, it was but an earnest, but a down payment, but a preview of the consummate joy that was theirs upon the return of their master. And isn't it interesting that when the Lord Jesus would underscore the great reality of the kingdom to come, and our place in it, He describes it in this pregnant terminology, enter into the joy of thy Lord. And that's what it will be. Unmixed joy. It was an entrance upon joy undiluted by grief and groaning and sorrow and pain. It was the joy of the Lord. Joy.

Heaven's Unmixed Joy: No Tears, Death, Mourning, Crying, or Pain

21:08 Joy unmixed. But now we add to this clear statement of our Lord in Matthew 25 the graphic descriptions found in the book of the Revelation. And I ask you now to turn to two of them in particular. First of all, Revelation chapter 7.

21:31 Revelation chapter 7. Remember now what we're seeking to see from the scriptures, that heaven is a place of unmixed joy. Verse 13 of Revelation 7. One of the elders answered, saying unto me, These that are arrayed in white robes, who are they, and where did they come from?

21:56 And I say unto him, My Lord, you know. And he said unto me, These are they that come out of the great tribulation, and they washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and they serve him. There's that concept of unwearied service.

22:19 They serve him day and night in his temple. And he that sits on the throne shall spread his tabernacle over them, the immediate presence of God. And they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun strike upon them nor any heat, for the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall guide them unto fountains of waters of life. And now here's the climactic statement.

22:53 And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes. And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes. Here is a situation, a state, a condition, in which everything that would provoke a tear is forever banished. God wipes away every tear from their eyes.

23:26 And then we turn over to Revelation 21 for an exposition of how it is that God wipes away those tears. Here in the vision of the new heaven and the new earth coming down out of heaven, we read Revelation 21.1, And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away, and the sea is no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, that's the church.

23:58 And if you doubt my word for that, simply read on verses 9 and following, where John is taken in vision to see the new Jerusalem, and he sees the church, the wife, the bride, coming down this city foursquare. I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes. Now here's the explanation. And death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.

25:03 The first things are passed away. And as I was mentioning to my wife this afternoon, though I trust I preach with as much conscious dependence upon God tonight as I did last week, I'm going to preach with a little less frustration. Because when we're determined to stick by what Scripture says, Scripture gives us very few materials with which to expound what it will mean to have face-to-face vision of God. And all you can do is state it and stand back amazed and overwhelmed with wonder.

25:43 But you see here, God describes what a state of unmixed joy will mean, in terms of negatives to which we can now relate. You see the difference? God doesn't give us many positives to describe what it will be to have immediate communion with God and face-to-face vision of God. He simply states it.

26:06 Here he says, unmixed joy, well what will that mean? God says, I'll help you. And he describes it in terms of negatives to which we can readily relate. And the first great negative is, that there shall be no more death.

26:24 Now think of all the grief and the sorrow that surrounds the awful intrusion of death upon the human race. In the day that you eat, eating of that fruit, you will die. And the seeds of death were sown in that moment of disobedience. Spiritual death became an impasse.

26:50 It became an immediate reality. And then that which leads dust-to-dust began to work in Adam and Eve upon the moment of their sinning. There was the agonizing work of causing an unhealing earth to yield its produce. Adam and Eve began to feel aches and pains.

27:13 And the seeds of death, in terms of their mortal bodies, and the seeds of death, in of the torture of soul that they would feel when they see their own firstborn become a murderer and slay his own brother, and all that surrounds death, the pain and the grief of the graveside, the disappointment of the life cut short, the horrible, frightening specter that this body, the only reality I have ever known of my own existence, to think that it should be eaten of worms in a few years, but death will be no more. And then God goes on, as it were, to expound and expand on some of the things that grow out of this situation in which the curse and death are still with us. Death shall be no more. Death shall be no more, and since death is no longer with us, neither shall there be mourning.

28:22 There will be no black shrouds to show respect and heaviness of heart for a departed loved one. No mourning. No outcry. None of that sob that comes from the depths of the soul of one who has seen a loved one, a child, a husband, a wife.

28:46 None of that sob that comes from the depths of the soul of one who has seen a loved one, a father, a grandfather, a friend, a neighbor, a noble leader, cut down and taken from us. No longer will there be the outcry, the mourning, and I love these two words, nor pain, nor pain. That mysterious thing that the doctors continually try to analyze, what is pain? Everyone knows what it is, but no one knows what it is.

29:20 Everyone knows what it is. You kids know what pain is, don't you? When Papa puts his hand or his belt on your behind when you've been disobedient, or Mama takes that spoon, you know what? With your bad heart, you do things that are naughty.

29:35 Mommy and Daddy have to spank you. You know what pain is, don't you? But when people try to analyze precisely what is pain, it eludes them. But we all know the reality of it.

29:47 Many of us, the older we grow, pain is a constant complaint. It's a companion to us, whether it's just an arthritic joint, or whether it's something that becomes more severe. And what a blessed thing to know, no pain. Your joy in communion with God is so often interrupted because of physical pain, physical limitations.

30:13 Here, the text tells us, no death, no mourning, nor crying, nor pain. Why? For the first things, all of the things pertaining to the present heavens and the present earth, under the curse of God, the first things are passed away, done, forever put behind us. All of the things that have intruded themselves upon us in this present state as a result of the fall, they shall all be passed away.

30:52 There shall be no death, no mourning, nor crying, nor pain, for the first things are passed away. That's unmixed joy. Unmixed joy. Joy that will not know one millisecond of interruption, just as it will be unbroken face-to-face communion.

31:24 It will be unmixed joy. With perfect bodies, glorified bodies, perfected souls, in a perfect environment with nothing but sinless associations, God, angels, redeemed sinners, in an environment that has been utterly transformed by the power of a returning Lord and all the curse. Purged from it, an environment no longer unyielding and hostile, but perfectly consistent with and adapted to all of the realities of the glorified humanity. And everything we will look upon will cause our joy to expand. And everything we hear will cause it to increase. And everything we see will cause it to spring up like a well within us.

32:23 Blessed be God. Blessed be God for the prospect of a heaven of unmixed joy.

Heaven's Unending Joy: Reigning Forever and Ever

32:33 The same Bible that teaches us that heaven is a place of unmixed joy teaches us that it's a place of unending joy. The conditions which make it unmixed will never change. There will be no death. Not the intrusion of death once in a millennium to remind us of what we have.

32:58 What once was, no death, no sin, no pain, no curse. And added to those negatives, those blessed positives of looking upon the face of an unchanging God and upon the Lamb in the midst of the throne, the infinite source of blessedness. You remember that beautiful picture that the river of the water of life, where does it come from? It comes.

33:29 It comes out of the midst of the throne of God and of the Lamb. That river that is the source of the life of heaven flows out from God and the Lamb. And therefore, because that God is eternal and infinite and unchanging, the Word of God teaches us that our joy will not only be unmixed, it too, like God, will be. Unending.

34:01 And how is it expressed in the language of Scripture? Well, look at Revelation 22 and verse 5. Here, after this vision of the river, clear is crystal that proceeds out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, Revelation 22, 1. We read in verse 5, And there shall be night no more, and they need no light of lamp, neither light of sun, for the Lord God shall give them light, and they shall reign forever and ever.

34:40 It's a Greek idiom, literally translated, as you see, in the marginal rendering of many of your Bibles, unto the ages of the ages. And it's the classic terminology used to express eternity. There are times when these words, obviously, do not mean eternity, but there are other contexts in which, if they do not mean eternity, unendingness, then the Bible has left us without language to describe the concept of unendingness. And where we read in this passage, they shall reign forever and forever, it is an explicit assertion of the unendingness of the stillness, the state secured for the redeemed by grace, so that the unmixed joy has added to it the glory that it will be unending joy. It's like the text in Matthew 25, 46, and these shall go away unto eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. And the language there is parallel language, the same language, the same kind of usage is found with reference

36:06 to the smoke of their torment. Revelation 14, 12, and 13, the smoke of the torment of the damned ascending up unto the ages of the ages, forever and ever, and they have no rest, day nor night. God cannot accommodate Himself more clearly to speak of unendingness than to use that word, to use that phrase, to use that combination of words. And that is the glory of the heaven that awaits us, and particularly the joy that is ours.

36:40 It will be unending joy. We shall reign in that state of no curse, no pain, no sorrow, no death, forever and forever. Now I'm very conscious, dear people, that we enter a kind of mental paralysis in the very effort to think of unendingness. And I've read many illustrations that try to illustrate eternity, but all they do is cloud the issue.

37:13 You've just got to be willing to feel that measure of mental paralysis. Everything we do is in terms of the pressure of time. We think in terms of yesterday and tomorrow. We think of terms of eight o'clock this morning, 10 o'clock tonight.

37:31 Our whole life is geared to that moment, that recurring cycle of darkness and light and 24 hours constituting a day, and seven days a week, and 52 weeks a year, and 10 years a decade. Why? God has made it that way. But again and again, he tells us in those beautiful pictures in the book of the Revelation, no night there, no sequence of night and day.

38:00 So to talk about a billion years and to use illustrations about birds picking up, drops of water, and depositing them somewhere until they empty the oceans, my friends, it's futile. It's futile. It's futile. I've heard all the illustrations, alas.

38:16 In the past, I even used them.

38:21 But I find they haven't really helped. Because you see, the flaw in all of them is thinking in terms of our present state of affairs in which everything is calculated in units of time. And all we can do is assert the Word of God says. It will be joy unending in all the glory of that blessed revelation.

The Trustworthiness of God's Promises

38:49 And lest you think that that's just some kind of a wishful hope, it's as though God again knew what we were made of. And it struck me in my preparation that at both of these points in Revelation 21 and Revelation 22, after He sets forth some of these most exotic glories that await us, notice what God says. Revelation 21, verse 5, after speaking of this unmixed state of joy, or this state of unmixed joy, verse 5 of Revelation 21, And he that sits on the throne said, Behold, I made you. Make all things new.

39:32 And he said, Write, for these words are and true. They are worthy of your trust, for they are true.

39:47 They present concepts that our minds cannot fully grasp. We stagger and we feel the paralysis when we attempt to focus upon them, but they are trustworthy and they are true. Likewise. In chapter 22, after speaking of that glory of the unendingness of our state, they shall reign forever and ever.

40:12 Verse 5, what does verse 6 tell us? And he said unto me, These words are faithful and true. And my friend, all you can know about heaven is what you have in the words of God. And they are faithful, trustworthy words.

40:33 They are worthy. Of my pinning all my hopes and expectations upon their validity. They are true, trustworthy words. And an hour is coming in which I shall know unmixed joy and unending joy.

The Practical Relevance of Heavenly Hope: Motivation for Christian Living

40:56 And so will every true child of God. Well, you may ask me tonight, Pastor Martin, I can see getting excited about these concepts. And perhaps occasionally. Occasionally indulging the luxury of thinking of what my prospects are.

41:14 But really, is there any practical relevance to all of this?

41:20 My friend, if you even ask that question or think it, you show an abysmal ignorance of the Bible.

41:26 Because according to the word of God, it is this hope, intelligently and believingly grasped, which is one of the major motivational factors in true biblical Christianity. Let me just give you a couple of suggested lines. And that's all they are. They're not exhaustive.

41:46 It's relevant in relating to opposition, which comes to every true Christian. All who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. That's what the word of God says. Well, in the midst of persecution, what is it that nerves us to press on in unyielding allegiance to Christ and to his ways?

42:07 Well, listen to Christ. Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and say, all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven.

42:29 In the midst of feeling the pain of opposition. And it is pain. And that opposition sometimes comes from the members of your own household. Your neighbors.

42:42 You feel their cold shoulder. Work associates. And friends at school. Or one-time friends.

42:49 You think God wants us to go around clapping our hands and clicking our heels when we feel that pain of rejection? Of course not. It causes grief to us. But in the midst of that grief, we rejoice in what?

43:08 Great is our reward in the place of unmixed joy. It will be unmixed joy. Because no one there will reject me for loving. Christ.

43:19 No one will cut me off and isolate me because I want to do his will and follow him. Everything about that will spur me on to serve him more devotedly. To want to do more for him in a growing cycle of loving obedience. And the return of praise and adoration to the Lord who has redeemed us.

43:47 You see how relevant it is? Or again, it's as relevant as your purse strings when it comes time to say, What will I do with what's been entrusted to me in terms of my being able to earn a living? Jesus said in Matthew 6, Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust corrupt and thieves break through and steal. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.

44:18 It's as relevant as what you do. It's as relevant as what you do with your purse strings. How you apportion the balance in your checkbook. How much goes into savings.

44:27 How much goes into stocks and bonds and lands and houses and cars and possessions.

44:35 It's just that.

44:37 If you're seeking to find your joy, it'll be reflected for where your treasure is, there will your heart be. And where your heart is, that's where your pen goes with your checks and your hand goes with your money. That's how relevant it is.

The Practical Relevance of Heavenly Hope: Enduring Martyrdom

44:57 It's relevant. It's relevant if the time should come when some of us would be called upon either to deny Christ, to spare our lives, or to seal our testimony with our own life's blood. You better have this hope burning brightly and intelligently in your breast. Listen to the moving, moving account in Hebrews 11.

45:22 Speaking of the heroes of faith, we read in Hebrews 11 in verse 35. Let's back up to verse 35. Verse 32. What shall I say more?

45:34 For time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah of David, and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of the fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to flight. armies of aliens, women received their dead by a resurrection, now notice, and others were tortured, not accepting, and literally in the Greek it is the redemption. You'll see it in the marginal reading of some of your Bibles. Not accepting the redemption that they might obtain a better resurrection. In other words, someone came to them and said, look, you continue in your course, of confessing Christ, and obeying Christ, and the price is death.

46:38 Now here's the price to avert death. Here was a price offered to redeem them from death. A kind of resurrection, you see. A kind of coming back from the dead.

46:54 The sentence of death was put upon them by their opposers. Now they come and say, here's the price of your release. Do you want, as it were? A resurrection from the dead?

47:06 The text says no. They wanted a better resurrection.

47:11 A better resurrection! And they refused the redemption price for this pseudo-resurrection. And they said, if my neck must undergo the guillotine, the guillotine it must be. If my body must be sewn in an animal's skin and thrown to the lions, and throw it, but I'm convinced that my Lord has purchased for me a heaven of unending, unmixed joy.

47:46 And He will give me grace for this interim of pain, of sorrow, and of grief. I'm convinced if a bloodbath were let loose on the church in America tomorrow, probably the vast majority of professing Christians would accept it. Accept any redemption from martyrdom.

48:13 Because if we are faithful in little, we're faithful in much. In a soft, anemic Christianity that won't deny itself the comfort of the easy chair Wednesday nights to pray, it won't deny itself food and other things, occasionally even to fast and to cry to God. A fat, flabby, self-indulgent evangelicalism is a sitting duck for mass apostasy. In a time if God allows the unsheathing of the sword of open opposition to the gospel.

48:51 I tell you, my friend, you better feed your soul upon this hope. Until you become what those blessed people in Hedon's were, they were identified as what? Soldiers.

49:04 Their eye, their heart, their affections were fixed on a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker was God. Not a Christian retirement center in Florida.

49:17 It's sickening to see the ads pandering to this anemic, self-centered, earthbound evangelicalism at every level. Full-page ads in Christianity Today, Moody Monthly. I never thought I could be a successful businessman while a Christian. And it shows him standing by his new car and with his golf bag over his back and telling you, how you, like him, can really make it big in a Christian organization.

49:46 What an abomination in the sight of God. How contrary to biblical Christianity.

49:54 Take your bucks.

49:59 They'll be burned up when Jesus comes to.

50:03 Take your prestige. Take your titles. Take your names. What are they?

50:11 And we have such a prospect as this. Unending, unmixed joy in the presence of God. And of the Lamb. Well, those are just a few lines of thought as to the relevance of it all.

The Choice: Unmixed Joy in Heaven or Unending Torment in Hell

50:27 As I seek to bring this word to a conclusion, let me press this simple question upon your conscience tonight. We've been contemplating heaven. What is it? And we've sought to concentrate upon one element of what the Bible reveals about heaven, namely, that it is a place of unmixed and unending joy.

50:51 Do you remember when we asked the question, what is hell? One of our points was that hell is a place of unmixed and unending torment and woe. Everything that heaven is, hell is not.

51:13 Do you like pain? Anybody here like pain?

51:19 God appeals to that innate fear of pain in man.

51:24 My dear friend, man, woman, boy or girl, if you choose a course, of opposition to God and to His Son, indifference to His cross, indifference to His claims, what you're saying is, I'm prepared to meet Almighty God and let Him pour out upon me the vials of His wrath that will bring me to a state of intense, unending, unmaking and woe. And that's not the language of a preacher trying to scare you to Christ. It's the language of Christ. He Himself who used this terminology again and again.

52:04 Outer darkness, there is the weeping, the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Nothing but weeping. Nothing but wailing. Nothing but gnashing of teeth.

52:18 Why? Because hell is a place of unmixed and unending torment and woe. And those are the issues set before you. As clearly as Pastor Nichols laid before us, two Lords, as clearly as Pastor Nichols laid before us, two Lords, as clearly as Pastor Nichols laid before us, two Lords, days ago in the morning, with regard to propitiation.

52:36 Either Christ bears the wrath of God for you or you bear it in your person. So likewise I set before you the way of life and of death, and I am not at all ashamed to present what some would call mercenary, selfish motives. My friend, will you welfare of adeption that leads to unmixed and unending pain! Or would you join those who are on their way to a place of unmixed and unending joy.

The Narrow Way to Life and Joy

53:09 That way stands before you in Jesus Christ and in the gospel. He opened up that way by His own perfect life and by His death upon the cross for sinners. And He says to us in the gospel, enter in at the narrow gate. Oh yes, it is a narrow gate and it is a compressed way, but thank God it leads to life.

53:35 It leads to life.

53:38 I would not be true to the gospel if I told you it was a wide gate. It's a narrow gate. You've got to leave your love of self, your pride, your self-righteousness, your self-sufficiency, your self-will. You've got to sell out to Jesus Christ, lock, stop, and barrel, with no hidden print, no mental reservations.

54:06 Lord Jesus, I'm yours. That's it. And then you don't breathe easy as though it's over because you get through that gate and you look around and say, this is wonderful. This is the gate that leads to life.

54:19 You say, yeah, but it's a way. And you know what the way is? It's a narrow, compressed way. It's a way beset with all kinds of dangers.

54:29 Beset by many enemies. But it's a way that leads to life. And my friend, if you want that life of unmixed and unending joy, there's only one way to get there. Through the gate and along the way.

54:40 There is no other option before you. God's boxed us up and hedged us in. And oh, I plead with you, choose life tonight. And you choose life as you choose Him who is the way, the truth, and the life.

Living Recklessly for Christ in Light of Heaven

54:59 And dear child of God, don't be battered into thinking this pie-in-the-sky, by-and-by religion somehow is not respectable in the sophisticated social consciousness of the 20th century. Take all of that business and burn it. We will serve this generation best and most fervently and zealously in direct proportion to which heaven burns in our vision and in our hearts. This is where we're going.

55:31 We can afford to be a little reckless. Not irresponsible, but we can afford to be a little reckless. We can afford not to hedge all our bets and take risks for Christ and His kingdom. We can afford the luxury of saying, Lord Jesus, I'm Yours.

55:52 I have but a few short years to serve You at best. Nothing else matters. Lord, I'm expendable. Use me that I might take a few others with me who in that day will stand resplendent with the glory of Your redemptive grace and power.

56:12 And together we will know as the preacher could never have told us what it is to be in a place of unmixed and unending joy. Oh, may God grant that You be there with me. That's the thing for which we labor. That's the thing for which we pray.

56:34 It is to that end we plead with You. Don't slight the claims of Christ and the overtures of grace in the gospel. Professing Christian, don't sell your soul for a pittance. Reject anything and everything that makes you the least bit indisposed to press on in that narrow way.

56:56 It and it alone leads to life. Anything that indisposes you to love that way, to walk that way, to stumble in that way, is a mortal enemy. Treat it as such. That's reality.

Prayer and Hymn of Hope

57:24 Oh God, our Heavenly Father, how we thank You for the glorious prospect that awaits us. No death, no sorrow, no crying, no tears. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Oh, make the word effectual tonight to the encouragement of Your people and to the calling of some to Yourself.

57:53 Hear our cry for Jesus' sake. And now in closing, let's sing together a hymn that has been much in my mind. In preparation, I hope it's been in the minds of a few of you as you've listened to the word tonight. Jerusalem the Golden.

58:12 I believe it's number 604. Hymn number 604. Here we have the language of Scripture concerning the new Jerusalem, the perfected church in the presence of God and of the Lamb. And we confess our faith response to that glorious prospect.

58:35 Hymn number 604. You will notice that the words of this hymn go way back to the 12th century. That's the 1100s. And the hope that burned in the heart of Bernard of Cluny is the hope that burns in our hearts tonight.

58:52 Hymn number 604.