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“Written
in Heaven”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: Luke 10:16-20
“Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you,
but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
Dear sisters and brothers, there is a joy shared with us, through the
very faith of our Lord Jesus Christ that touches our hearts and our
souls at a deeper spiritual level than even the most extraordinary
experiences we may have in our lives.
The First Letter of Peter
expresses it this way: “Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not
see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and
glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the
salvation of your souls.” We
are being embraced by the truth of Jesus Christ which is an
indescribable and glorious joy.
We all have some amazing experiences in our lives where we are surprised
by joy. I have a friend who
was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Kerrville, TX.
A local health care center asked the church if they would receive
a young man with Down Syndrome into their church ministry.
Of course, they said yes, and the young man began coming to their
church. He could not recite
the Apostle’s Creed or the Lord’s Prayer. He could not read the hymns.
However, he smiled and was so full of happiness and joy every
Sunday at church. He had
one brown suit and wore it every Sunday to church.
After about a year in the church, the boy came down with a serious case
of cancer, and was sent to a hospital in Galveston.
My friend, the Rev. Tom Currie, was going to the hospital to see
him, and Tom was thinking to himself, “O Lord, what can I do to help
this young man. I don’t
know what to say to him that will help him.”
When Tom walked into the boy’s hospital room, the young man smiled and
then cried as they were together. The
young man spoke a sentence that seemed to use “home” and
“church” as a synonym. “I
want to go home, to church.” And
Tom replied to him, “Cecil, you will be going home soon.”
The young man was lying in the bed in his pajamas, and when Tom looked
in the closest, he saw that the only clothes Cecil had was the suit that
he always wore to church. As
the boy noticed Tom looking in the closest, he started crying again
because he had his suit to go home to church, but he did not have a tie.
Tom looked him in his eyes with love, took off his own tie, and
handed it to him. And at
that moment, Cecil was relieved of his pain and fear and filled with the
very joy of God’s presence in his life.
The pastor and the young man were both ambushed by grace.
There will continually be events in our lives where we will be
ambushed by grace, and surprised by joy.
However, what we are being told this morning is that we may experience
joy though faith that is even more substantial that the joy we might
experience through certain endeavors. What God knows about us, better
than we know about ourselves, is that we have a tendency to take pride
in the positive experiences we have in our lives.
From the passage we read in Luke, Jesus had recently sent out 70
Samaritans into gospel ministry in their area.
The Samaritans and the Jews had certain political and religious
hostilities between each other. Therefore,
Jesus’ embracing them as disciples shows God’s universal desire for
all humanity. And when they
came back, returning to Christ, after their ministry experiences, they
are amazed and returned in joy saying, “Lord,
in your name even the demons submit to us.”
However, Jesus says to them, “Nevertheless,
do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that
your names are written in heaven.”
There are always times of misery and pain in our lives.
Even though Jesus is the Son of God, he learned obedience to God
through his own times of suffering.
Yes, in the midst of our distressful times, we will continually
be ambushed by grace. And,
there is also the greatest level of joy we may ever have through the
very faith of Jesus Christ.
“Rejoice that your name is written in heaven.”
Rejoice in the very message of the good news of God in Jesus
Christ that God is giving you in your life. The most amazing truth in
our lives is the message that God gives to us about the unconditional
love that he has for us, and what God has already accomplished for us in
Jesus Christ.
Before there was any creation, God existed.
Actually, God did more than exist, God was being, God was living,
and God was loving. God was
not merely just some impersonal, aloof spirit alone in some kind of
existence. God was, and is,
the persons of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit in love.
God is love in these persons, and God’s ultimate decree was to
create a heaven and a universe and a creature that would be what and who
God could bring into God’s love.
Heaven was created by God. Our
world was created by God. In
the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was
God. And the Word became
flesh and lived among the people of the world.
Before there was any creation, God the Father and God the Son,
communicated with one another in the Holy Spirit, loving each other in
divine love. And their
will, decision, and actions were that they were going to create a
creature called human beings. And
the Son of God, the Word of God, was going to become a human being.
By becoming a human being, that is how God was going to include
us in God’s life and love.
The Son of God becoming a human being was not plan B to God because
humanity fell into sin. Had
Adam and Eve, and you and me, every one of us, not fallen into sin, the
Son of God would have still come into being a human so that He could
give to us the love he knows.
The Son of God, in Jesus Christ, died on the cross, and was raised from
the dead, and returned to God the Father in our new humanity.
The Son of God now knows the love of God in the Holy Spirit with
a human brain, a human conscience, human emotions, a human will, and
human abilities. Jesus
Christ has human faith in God the Father, in the Holy Spirit.
And the greatest gift God gives to us, right here and now, in
these days of our lives, is the faith of Jesus Christ, realizing that
who we already are, in Jesus Christ, is in heaven.
One of my favorite brothers in Christ was a colleague of mine at South
Oak Cliff High School. He
had been an English teacher for over 40 years.
He is one of the godliest men I have ever known.
We connected with each other in the faith of Jesus Christ.
He is Mr. Hunt. He
died unexpectedly last Sunday. And
we all believe that Mr. Hunt is in heaven.
His name is still written in heaven.
Now, he has a far more complete knowledge and experience of
heaven than he did before he left this time and place.
And the day will come when he is totally resurrected in his new
humanity. He is one of the
greatest men of God I have ever known.
And I believe that right now, he is not taking pride and
rejoicing even in Christian works that he participated in here; he is
rejoicing that in Jesus Christ, his name has always and will always be
with him in heaven. And, he
is rejoicing that this is true for you.
The greatest love in our lives is to love the Lord our God with all our
hearts, souls, and minds. We
do not need to take pride in ourselves, but as we grow in our hearts,
souls, and minds in the awesome truth of who we have already been made
to be by God, that we are already included in God’s home and family,
and that Jesus Christ lays down his faith in our hearts, souls, and
minds, we experience the greatest joy in all reality, the joy of God.
Let us pray…
Amen |