Tonight’s ‘A-Z of Christian Faith’ had reached the letter H, where we looked at two subjects for the price of one! Heaven and hell might not be mentioned as much nowadays as in the past, but it would be foolish to believe they are not crucially important for everyone. We may feel the popular images of heaven and hell are irrelevant nowadays, but actually despite the fact there are many questions we cannot answer about heaven and hell, the fact remains that we need to be sure we don’t ignore their relevance to our daily lives as well as our eternal destinies.

Heaven is best understood as being where God is and where God rules: it’s not just about fluffy clouds and celestial gates.

Jesus often spoke of the ‘kingdom of heaven’ and the ‘kingdom of God’, indicating that heaven is synonymous with God’s reign. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, Jesus said (Matt 13:31-32): outwardly small, but growing into something much bigger. It’s like yeast (Matt 13:33): you only need a small amount of yeast to make a large loaf of bread! It’s like hidden treasure or a pearl that’s valuable but may not look much to the outsider (Matt 13:45-50). Other images are developed much more: the kingdom of heaven is like a wedding banquet, Jesus said (Matt 22:1-14), and this image of a marriage between the Lamb and the Bride of Christ and a wedding feast is taken up by John in his great Revelation (Revelation 21:2-5, 9). A wedding feast conjures up pictures of joy, feasting, pleasure, celebration, and all of these are ideas that show us it’s a good thing when God is ruling and reigning. There is satisfaction and wholeness; a place without tears, where ‘there is no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’ (Rev 21:4)

Hell, by contrast, speaks of separation from God, absence from God. It’s described as a place of torment, and whilst the imagery of fire and burning may be metaphorical, the anguish of hell is real.

Jesus repeatedly issued warnings that if we turn away from God in this life, we will be alienated from God eternally. Hell was prepared for the devil and his demons (Matt 25:41), but those who persistently refuse to acknowledge God and accept His offer of eternal life through Jesus Christ will end up being separated from God for ever. One of the most vivid descriptions of hell is given in Luke 16:19-31, where we see the rich man in hell, a ‘place of torment.’ (Luke 16:28) There are many different words translated as hell in our Bibles: Gehenna (the valley of Hinnom), Hades, Sheol, but the overall picture we have is of torment, ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (Matt 8:12).

Many question how a God of love can ‘send’ people to hell, but ultimately because God has given us free will, because He wants us to serve Him faithfully but freely, He will not force us to accept His offer of salvation. He tells us that the wages of sin is death and offers us the free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ (Rom 6:23). It is up to us whether we believe Him or not, whether we accept this free gift or not. C. S. Lewis said, ‘the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; the doors of hell are locked on the inside. All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.’ (‘The Problem of Pain’) We have to trust that God’s love, mercy and justice will ultimately ensure that He does what is right.

Mark continued his sermons on Jacob’s last words this morning, looking at his prophetic words to Simeon and Levi (Gen 49:5-7). Here, Jacob condemns his two sons as being ‘instruments of cruelty’, referring back to their excessive violence against not only the man who raped their sister Dinah but the whole city (see Gen 34:1-35:1).

This incident of rape must have shaken all Jacob’s sons, but whilst the desire for revenge is understandable, Simeon and Levi used deception and apparent affability to lull the people into a false sense of security before unleashing a murderous rage which destroyed all the men in the city, taking the women and children captive and looting the city of all its wealth. Their anger may have been justified in some respects, but their revenge was excessive and Jacob now reveals his shame at their actions. Clearly, these two brothers had anger issues (which may have been responsible for Joseph’s initial troubles) and had not learned to let God be their defender.

The incident in Genesis 34 shows us that God is willing to get involved in our troubles, even when He is not the cause of them. God gets involved in the messiness of our mistakes; He prepared a way out for Israel so they could escape to Bethel and provided supernatural protection for His people (Gen 35:5). God gets involved, gives guidance and gives protection, taking Jacob back to the place of his first encounter with God.

Jacob’s words at the end of his life proved prophetic. At the first census (Num 1:23), Simeon’s warriors numbered 59,300, but by the time of the second census, Simeon’s was the smallest of the tribes (22,200 warriors) and had to share part of the land allocated to Judah. Jacob’s words about dividing and scattering came true. We should not associate ourselves with violence and hatred, but must learn not to sin in our anger (see Eph 4:26), being peacemakers as Jesus told us. Nonetheless, in the fact that Levi eventually became the priestly line, we see God’s amazing capacity for forgiveness when we sin.

The song ‘Reasons to be cheerful (Pt 3)‘ was a hit in 1979 and was inspired by a near fatal accident involving a lighting roadie. Roadie Charley almost got electrocuted in Italy by a microphone stand while leaning over a mixing desk; he was saved by another roadie, and Ian Dury wrote the song to remind us of the many, many reasons we have to be cheerful and thankful. In it, he thinks about lots of reasons to be cheerful, many of which might seem trivial to us – ‘the juice of a carrot, the smile of a parrot…cheddar cheese and pickle… something nice to study, phoning up a buddy.’ (Ian Dury & The Blockheads) We might think we’ve got nothing to be thankful about, but as the song points out, there’s always something we can be thankful for.

Eph 1:3 reminds us that God has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. The old hymn reminds us to ‘count our blessings’ and ‘name them one by one.’ There is a lot to be gained from listing things for which we are thankful and reminding ourselves of the myriad ways in which God blesses us day by day.

Jesus once told a story about ten lepers He healed. (Luke 17:11-19) He said that only one of them came back to say ‘Thank You’ to Him. What about the other nine? Why didn’t they come back? Why was it left to the foreigner, to the Samaritan, to come back and give thanks for his healing? I suspect that the ratio of nine to one is sadly true of us today – it’s so much easier to forget to be thankful and to simply carry on with our lives without stopping to thank God for all His blessings, love and help.But if we take heed and dig deep for the ‘10,000 reasons for my heart to find’ (Matt Redman), we’ll feel better in ourselves, bless other people and please God. Win, win!

Prov 17:22 says ‘A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.’ 1 Thess 5:18 reminds us to ‘give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.’ The Bible has much to say about thankfulness and gratitude, but so often, we need to be reminded of the many reasons we have to be cheerful.

The Biblical phrase ‘give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures for ever’ occurs lots of times in the Bible (see 1 Chron 16:34; 2 Chron 5:13; Ps 106:1; Ps 107:1, 8, 15; Ps 118:1, 19, 29; Ps 136:1-3, 26; Jer 33:11.) Ultimately, we can give thanks to God no matter what our circumstances or temperament, because thankfulness is rooted in who God is and what He does, and not in ourselves. We looked at 5 reasons to be cheerful:

1. God is good (Ps 119:68) and since He never changes, His goodness is there all the time, even through heartache and misery. We know that even when heartache hits like a hurricane (‘Even If’, Kutless), that does not change God’s nature and we can hold on to all we know is true about Him. Rom 8:28 reminds us that God will bring good from every situation.
2. God loves us unconditionally and nothing can change that! Rom 5:8 reminds us that whilst we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Not only does God love us, but we are assured nothing at all can separate us from that love. (Rom 8:38-39)
3. God never leaves us (Heb 13:5). No matter what we go through in life, we don’t have to go through it on our own. Jesus said he would not leave us as orphans (John 14:18), but has sent His Spirit to be with us at all times. We find we have life and hope and power to do the right thing when we allow God to live in us, and so we realise we don’t have to be a Christian in our own strength; we have all of God’s strength to help us and we are never alone.
4. God has a purpose for our lives (Jer 29:11), so our lives are not meaningless. We are called to join in God’s good work by letting other people know of His love, by becoming Christ’s ambassadors. (2 Cor 5:17-21)
5. That purpose goes beyond our lives on earth. The fact that God raised Jesus from the dead so that He is alive for evermore means that we have a hope beyond this earthly life. Even when our bodies die, that’s not the end of the story. Even if on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where it really counts, God is making new life. (2 Cor 4:16) The fact that Jesus was raised from the dead and is now alive for evermore means we have the hope of resurrection from the dead in the future. Paul says that Jesus is the ‘firstfruits’ of all who have died. (1 Cor 15:20) Jesus’s resurrection is God’s sign to us that there is more to come, that we don’t have to be afraid of death, because Jesus has defeated death.

These reasons to be cheerful are indeed good medicine for our physical, spiritual and emotional health, and will help us to connect with people positively!

Tonight’s ‘Churches Together’ meeting looked at the topic of thankfulness and gratitude. We made crosses where we wrote our own reasons to thank God:

Our reasons were varied, including thanks for our families and friends, pets and animals, food and places. On the notice board, we also looked at things we are thankful for:

A taster session is meant to give you an idea of what something is like; it provides (to continue the food analogy) a flavour of what is to come. Universities run ‘taster sessions’ for would-be students, giving them the opportunity to attend lectures and visit departments so they can decide if a particular course is to their taste. Leisure centres may offer taster sessions so that you can discover if you would like to do particular sports. Slimming World classes sometimes hold taster sessions when people can try out the recipes they recommend to decide what they would like to eat in future.

This is a ‘taster session’, so to speak, for next week’s Bible study, when we will be looking at 1 Cor 15:12-34. In this passage, Paul is looking at the certainty and hope of the resurrection of the dead because of Christ’s resurrection. A key verse is ‘But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead.‘ (1 Cor 15:20)

‘But God…’ is a phrase found in many Bible verses, some of which I looked at at the start of 2013 (see here.) It’s a phrase which completely turns the situation around. ‘But’ is a ‘conjunction which is used to introduce a phrase or clause contrasting with what has already been mentioned.‘ Paul has been looking at the dire situation we would be in if Christ had not been raised from the dead (a situation which includes still being in our sins and being pitied above all) and affirms categorically that we are not in this position because Christ has indeed been raised from the dead! A similar phrase can be found in Acts 3:15 and Acts 10:39-40, where we see the contrast between the hopelessness of death and the hope of the resurrection.

Last time in the Bible study, we looked at the foundations of our faith and how to explain the gospel to those who do not yet believe, determining what is really essential to be saved rather than simply interesting to know about. The picture below goes even further: ‘defining the gospel in two words – but God.’ God’s intervention in history in the person of Jesus Christ is what the gospel is all about.