How We Grow

 You ever think about Church Growth?  You ever wonder about whether or not Cornerstone is growing?  Does it every cross or mind, is it even relevant in your life?  

There are some folks at Cornerstone who honestly never think about church growth, they attend, they enjoy the services but whether the church is growing or in decline never crosses their minds, until it effects them personally. 

They arrive and can’t find a parking space, the coffee has run out or they have to sit too close to the front.  Or if all of a sudden we didn’t have the volunteers to greet them at the door or make their coffee then they might wonder where folks went.  But it’s not on their radar, if asked they might say: Not my circus, not my monkey.

Then there are others who are asking me all the time about how our attendance is?  Are there more folks attending now then there were last year?    Others want to know what our plans for growth are, will we add more services or expand the building?  

And they want to know what Cornerstone is actually doing to grow, do we have a plan?  Because they know that in order for us to continue to grow we need to have a plan for where people will go, or we will end up in the same situation as the restaurant in St. Louise that Yogi Berra was speaking of when he said “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”

And then there is a third group and they think that any talk of church growth is worldly, that we should simply let God take care of growing the church and we should focus on more spiritual issues.

But regardless of how you view church growth the reality is the church was born to grow, just like each one of us was born to grow and everything alive was born to grow.

Listen to some of the early descriptions of the church Acts 2:41 Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day—about 3,000 in all. Acts 2:47  all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.  Acts 4:4  But many of the people who heard their message believed it, so the number of believers now totaled about 5,000 men, not counting women and children.

Eventually they just stopped counting, and so we read in Acts 5:14 Yet more and more people believed and were brought to the Lord—crowds of both men and women. Acts 9:31  The church then had peace throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, and it became stronger as the believers lived in the fear of the Lord. And with the encouragement of the Holy Spirit, it also grew in numbers.

Last week Stefan led you through “Why We Need to Grow” and he spoke about how Jesus Commands it, the Bible Illustrates it and Reality Demands it.

But that still leaves us with the question: how?  How do churches grow?

Sometimes I embarrass Angela, for various reasons. One of those times was when we went to see “A League of their Own” with a group of friends in Australia.

Perhaps you remember the movie.  It starred Tom Hanks, Madonna and Genna Davis and it tells the story of the first professional women’s baseball league which was formed during the Second World War.

And there is a  scene where Coach Jim Dugan is confronting Genna Davis’ character who wants to quit the team and  move home to Oregon.  So let’s pick it up with this clip.  (Clip for A League of their own.)

And I loved that quote, and so in the dark of the movie theatre I start asking who has a pen and paper to write it down.  Because that is not only the reality of baseball it is the reality of church growth, it is supposed to be hard if it was easy everybody would be doing it, and they’re not. 

There are only a small percentage of churches that grow on a consistent basis.  The rest?  The best case scenario is that they hold their own.  They aren’t growing but they aren’t declining, they have plateaued.  Sometimes they will say they are consolidating or just stepping back so they can get a running start at moving to the next level.  And often it might seem like it’s a plateau but once you start looking at it over the long term you would see that it is actually a gradual decline. 

But for too many churches the decline isn’t gradual.  Every year there are fewer people worshipping than there had been before.  And it wasn’t always like that, I mean before they could stop being a church of 100 or 200 they had to become a church of 100 or 200.  There was growth somewhere in their history.

Last week Stefan talked about how church growth was modelled in the New Testament, our scripture reading this morning was a letter written to a growing church by the Apostle Paul, but not one of those churches still exist today. 

So let’s start with the last verse of the scripture that was read earlier,  1 Corinthians 1:10  I appeal to you, dear brothers and sisters, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, to live in harmony with each other. Let there be no divisions in the church. Rather, be of one mind, united in thought and purpose.

So we need to begin by Preparing the Church.  Sometimes, when I talk to pastors about church growth they seem to imply that perhaps it isn’t God’s will for their church to grow.  And I’m not quite sure how to respond to that.  Not God’s will that their church should grow? 

Does that mean that it’s not God’s will that people will be reached with the love and grace of God?  Does that mean that while God loved the world so much that he sent his Son to die for them that he doesn’t want them to be reached by a particular church?  Does that mean that when Christ commanded the apostles to go into all the world teaching them, baptizing them and discipling them that he was only kidding?

I do believe that there are some churches that God doesn’t want to grow, because they are aren’t the churches they are supposed to be.   Paul was afraid that the church in Corinth was heading down that road and he addressed those problem in the two letters he wrote to them.

And while I think it is God’s will that all healthy churches should see growth I also believe that there are times in the life of a particular church that it would be unhealthy and unhelpful for Christians or pre-Christians to become part of the group.

And so the church needs to be prepared for growth, no quarrelling, no divisiveness, and no bitterness. In the book of Revelation there are letters addressed to 7 churches and in those letter Jesus addresses issues that are keeping those churches from being all that can be.  Issues like they had lost their first love, their love for one another and their love for God, that they had accepted false teachings in the church.  Teachings about doctrine and teachings about moral behaviour. 

And so in order for a church to be prepared for growth they need to be prepared to be the church.

You’ve often heard me quote Bill Hybels who says “The local church is the hope of the world.”   But that’s only a part of the quote the full quote says  “The local church is the hope of the world.  When it’s working right.”  

But it’s not just about the “Church” in general.

In his second letter to Timothy Paul instructs Timothy with these words  2 Timothy 2:15  Work hard so you can present yourself to God and receive his approval. Be a good worker, one who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly explains the word of truth.

So, along with preparing the church it’s also about Preparing the Pastor  I have been around the block a couple of times and I have discovered that some pastors grow churches and some pastors don’t grow churches.  That is a reality that cannot be denied. 

You can check, there are pastors out there who have never consistently pastored growing churches.  The previous pastor might have seen church growth and the next pastor might see church growth but they don’t. 

That doesn’t mean that they aren’t men and women of God, it doesn’t mean they don’t have a great prayer life or that they don’t love Jesus,  it just means they can’t grow a church, or at least they can’t if they continue to do what they’ve always done and continue to act like they’ve always acted. 

One of my favourite sayings comes from Mark Twain who said “If you always do what you’ve done then you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”  And we all know the definition of insanity “Doing the same things over and over again while expecting different results.”  And you might be thinking it was Einstein who said that.  Probably not, it also been attributed to Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain.

As one commentator wrote, “It’s not surprising that it has been attributed to Einstein, since everything but the Book of Genesis has been attributed to him at some point.”

And so some pastors will go through their entire ministry doing the same thing year after year without seeing consistent growth in the churches they are serving, but they never change the way they do things, they keep doing the same things and they keep expecting different results.

Oh they might have a year here or there when things pick up,  but in reality the church has either plateaued or gone into decline.

Now this is where it get’s tricky, because there are pastors who do see growth, consistently in whatever church they are in.  Oh there might be a year here or there that they see a decline or things plateau but the trend is normally one of growth.  And the scary part is that there aren’t a lot of those pastors out there.  Right now on our district there are probably fewer than a dozen.

Why is that?  Why are some pastors capable of growing a church and some aren’t?  Well I have discovered that if you suggest that it’s because they are talented or skilled at what they do then there are those who would say that is vain the real reason is that  that God has chosen to work through them. 

But really which is more vain to say that 1) Someone has skills and abilities that allow them to grow a church or 2) That they have God’s favour upon them? 

I’d rather have someone tell me that they are more skilled at something than I am rather than that God loves them more than he love me.

We all understand that we aren’t all naturally gifted at all the same things.  I can’t sing.  That’s not a spiritual issue that is reality, I love to sing but I’m really horrible at it.   

Now, not only can’t I sing but if you know me at all then you know, surprisingly, that I am not comfortable meeting new people. 

It’s not that I don’t like people, or I  mind getting to know people, I’m just really uncomfortable in the process. 

I wasn’t here last Sunday because I serve our district as director of Global Partners, that’s our overseas work.  And I need to represent our district occasionally at events, last week I was in Holland Michigan for a conference.  I really wasn’t looking forward to it because I didn’t think I would know anyone at the event, so it was looking like a day of meeting new people. 

I can’t do anything about the singing, I’ve tried.  Not going to happen outside of a supernatural work of God.  And people who sing can’t understand why I can’t sing.

And people who love to meet new people can’t understand why I find it really uncomfortable, not just a little uncomfortable but really uncomfortable.   

But that is something I can do something about, so I work hard at being able to meet new people, I’ve read books, watched videos and I go out of my way in order to intentionally do it.  

I’m still not comfortable, still don’t enjoy doing it but I do it.  Why?  Because it’s important for Cornerstone and important for the Kingdom.

So the pastor needs to prepare himself to be all that God would have him to be if the church is going to grow.  And that may involve stepping outside their comfort zone and maybe even changing their behaviour.

But let’s continue, in his letter to Titus Paul tells the preacher he’s writing to in this letter  about the behaviour that is expected from various groups in the church and he finishes by saying:

Titus 2:10 . . . Then they will make the teaching about God our Saviour attractive in every way.

So now we need to look at Preparing the Church  Now in case you are thinking that I’ve slipped a gear I know that this was the first point.  In the first point I was speaking about preparing the “Church” spiritually but now I want to talk about preparing the “Church” in the practical sense. 

Might I even say working at making the church more attractive?

What happens at your home when you are expecting guests?  I would suspect that if you are like most of us you tidy things up and are on your best behaviour.  I’m not talking about being phoney but simply putting your best foot forward.

You ever sell a house?  When you know there is going to be a showing you do your best to make sure that everything looks the very best it can.  You might have it staged,  you paint where it’s needed, you get rid of the clutter, you clean up.  You do all the things that you’ve been putting off.   It would be dishonest if you showed them somebody else’s house but you do everything you can to show your house in the best possible light.

That is one of the reasons we refreshed the carpet this year that’s why when I walk back across from Tims and see garbage on the lawn I pick it up and it’s why Tamara and the gardeners work so hard keeping the gardens looking fresh. 

And Kudos to Ben and Kaitlyn Slauenwhite, two of the youth at Cornerstone, who adopted the garden around the big rock by the driveway and kept it weeded and tidy this past summer.   

And you can make a difference, if you are walking across the parking lot and see a piece of garbage just stop and pick it up.  I love the fact that we can drink coffee in the worship centre, but if you spill it, just tell one of us so we can clean it up, because fresh wet coffee is a whole lot easier to clean up than dry coffee.  And I promise we won’t think any less of you.

And it means being courteous to our guests, every once in a while we  have a baby who objects to being in the service.  And folks at Cornerstone are usually pretty good about that, they understand that can be distracting and take the little one out, but sometimes that doesn’t happen.  Sometimes it’s a guest and they aren’t comfortable leaving their baby with strangers.    Let me give you a hint, glaring at them will not make the little one any quieter nor will it endear you to the parents. 

And if you arrive and someone is sitting where you normally sit then making them feel uncomfortable isn’t an awesome way to react.

One of our challenges at Cornerstone is parking so how can we make sure that there are parking spaces for our guests? 

There is all kinds of parking off the pavement.  Both up by the corner where I park and over on the side where the rest of the staff parks.  It might mean walking another 20  or 30 feet but really in the light of eternity is that all that far?  Some folks have started parking on Gatehouse and that is another option especially if you are concerned about not being able to get out of the gravel area in a timely manner. 

It might mean moving over so there is room for others in your row, even if it means you won’t have an extra seat between you and the person next to you, most of them don't bite.  The reason we spent the extra money and put racks under the seat is so you’d have a place to put your bible and purse.

And just take the time to be helpful and friendly.  For a lot of people coming to a church for the first time can be a little intimidating. 

I mentioned that I was away last week, I was in Holland Michigan for a denominational function where I was representing the district, and I can be really cheap when it comes to booking flights.  I figure that a travel day is pretty well shot anyway so If I can save some money by making an extra stop I figure that’s money that can be used somewhere else. 

So I flew from Halifax to Philadelphia and then to Chicago and then to Grand Rapids and then I rented a mule and wagon to get to Holland.  Just kidding about the mule and wagon it was actually a Ford, they wouldn’t upgrade me to the mule. 

When I landed in Philadelphia my boarding pass for my next flight didn’t have a gate number on it, so I went over to the Airline counter presented my ticket and asked what gate my flight was leaving from.  The lady punched some keys on her computer and without looking up handed me back my boarding pass and said “A3”.  “A3”? 

I didn’t have a clue, I looked up and I was at B something, people are going every which way.  “Excuse me” I replied “Where is A3?”  She looked at me as if I had just asked what colour blue was and said “It’s down to the end of the corridor and turn left”, as if everybody would know where A3 was and really in her world everybody did know where A3 was.  The problem was I wan’t from her world.   

When someone arrives at Cornerstone the first time, they don’t know where to take their kids, where to grab a coffee or where the bathroom is and they might not be comfortable asking, I wouldn’t be.

That’s why we have big signs that say nursery and washrooms and children.  But if someone is looking lost, take a minute and ask if you can help.  In a lot of cases it’s super helpful if you say let me take you over to where you sign your kids in or I’ll introduce you to someone in the nursery. 

You might not want to offer to walk them to the washroom but you know what I mean. 

And if you are on greeting or in one of the children’s ministry areas it is always helpful to be there and to be on time.  It’s just awkward to take a guest somewhere and the person who is supposed to be there isn’t.

Some folks don’t necessarily need to be talked to when they come to a church the first time, personally I’m good with a smile and a nod.  But others are looking to connect, and you can usually tell.  If you see someone standing looking lost, then introducing yourself is always a good place to start and mentioning that there is coffee available is a good icebreaker.

And it might be outside of your comfort zone, if I was going to do what I am most comfortable with my office would be right off the platform and I would stay in my office and just magically show up on the platform when the service started and then when the service was over I would disappear into my office again.

Instead I come down early and try to find folks I don’t know that I can talk to and following the service I greet people at the door.

When I plan the service and write  my message I need to remind myself all the time to be clear in my preaching, that not everybody who comes to Cornerstone was brought up in Sunday School or learning bible stories at their mother’s knee.

So let’s go back to the question from last week, Why? Why Should we grow?  One of the people I did know at the conference was Chad McCallum, Chad is director of Mobilization for Global Partners and recently his 10 year old son Miles asked him “Dad if telling people about Jesus and them saying yes means that they would got to heaven then why wouldn’t everybody want to tell people about Jesus?”

Miles had a good question, and why wouldn’t everybody want their church to grow if that meant reaching more people so they could go to heaven?

Let’s finish today with the words of Coach Jimmy Duggan “It's supposed to be hard, if it wasn't hard everyone would do it”, and God’s promise from Joshua 1:9  This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

The End of the Story, The Story of the Book #11

When I was a teen one of my favourite singers was folk singer Harry Chapin, you probably know that from my many references to different songs that I’ve used in messages through the years. 

And one of my favourite Harry Chapin songs is a song called 30,000 pounds of bananas.  And it based on an actual event that happened in Scranton PA in 1965 when truck driver Eugene Sesky lost control of his tractor trailer which was carrying, you guessed it 30,000 lbs of Bananas. 

It is assumed that the brakes on  his truck failed and by the time it reached the town its estimated speed was 140 kmh.  Sesky flipped the truck in an attempt to keep anyone from being hurt and was killed in the accident.

It was a folk song.

But if you ever heard Chapin in concert he tells about how in writing the song he actually wrote four different endings to the song before he found the one that he recorded.  And each of the different endings puts a different twist on the song.

If you have ever read Ernest Hemingway’s novel “Farewell to Arms” you might be surprised that he wrote 47 endings before he found the one he finally used to conclude the novel.  In 2012 “Farewell to Arms” was republished with all 47 alternate endings.

If you’ve read the book then you might remember how the book ended, it told about the the death of Frederic Henry's lover, Catherine Barkley; "It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain."

One of the rejected endings was, “That is all there is to the story. Catherine died and you will die and I will die and that is all I can promise you.”

Completely different ending.

Maybe you remember this great ending to a classic movie.  But that wasn’t the original ending, that showed Butch and Sundance dying in a hail of bullets and their bodies lying in the sun.

Back in the 80s and 90s there was a series of Children’s books called “Choose Your Own Adventure”  Anyone ever read those?  Even if you haven’t read them you know the basic concept.  You come to a place in the story where you make a choice, if you turn left then you continue to read and get one ending or if you turn right then you skip to page 232 and get a completely different ending. It’s like the author couldn’t decide which way to go. 

Some movies that come out on DVD come with different endings, you can see the good guys win or you can see the bad guys win. 

Sometimes you read a book and it has one ending and then you see the movie and it has a completely different ending. 

The ending of this book is kind of like that, you get to choose how the story ends.  You come to a place where basically if you have committed your life to Jesus Christ your ending is found in Revelation chapter 21 verse 7 and if you’ve never committed your life to Jesus Christ then your ending is found in Revelation chapter 21 verse 8. 

And the great thing is you get to choose the ending.  Nobody else can choose for you, it’s your decision and yours alone.

 And really we don’t get many decisions in our life where the choice is ours. When we are young our parents make our decisions for us and once we are married and have children decisions are made based not only on what’s in our best interest but also what’s in the best interest of our spouse and children. But here is a decision that you get to make all by your lonesome. 

And in order to help you make that decision we are going to take a look at the two different endings to the story, so you can decide which direction you want to go, because that's important.

In the book Alice in Wonderland we read this encounter “One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. Which road do I take? she asked. Where do you want to go? was his response. I don't know, Alice answered. Then, said the cat, it doesn't matter.”  

So as we come to the end of the story it would be wise to know where we are going because as Yogi Berra said “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else!”

So here we are at the end of the story.  We began our summer series, “The Story of the Book” in July and over the past 11 weeks we’ve toured the Bible. 

Through the period we looked at the Pentateuch, the Historical Books, The Books of Poetry and Wisdom, The Major Prophets and the Minor Prophets.  Over the past four weeks we’ve looked at The Gospels, the Book of Acts, the Letters of Paul and the General Letters.  Which brings us to where we are today, the end of the Story. 

And here we are at the end, the book of The Revelation, did you catch that there’s no S, it’s not many revelations, never has been, never will be it’s only one revelation. 

Sometimes it’s called The Revelation of John, but actually it’s the Revelation of God to John. It says that in the first verse and so I guess that makes the Author God. 

The human author or scribe is identified as John who wrote down the revelation and sent it to the seven churches in Asia.

The book was written around A.D. 90 to warn the 7 churches of Asia against falling away from their faith.

Although we don’t know exactly which John this was, tradition holds that it was John the Apostle who wrote this book while an exile on the Island of Patmos which is located in the Aegean Sea just off the coast of modern day Turkey .

And so that brings us to the end of the book, the part where you get to make a decision.  Actually the decision is one that needs to be made now, the result of that decision will echo in eternity. So you ready? Here we go.

At the end of the story there are two destination, not one, not three but two.  And every person who has ever lived, every person who is living now and every person who will live until the end of the story will wind up in one place or the other.

Now when I was at Bible College studying homiletics, which is how to preach, they taught us that if you were going to deal with a negative topic and a positive topic in the same sermon you ought to deal with the negative topic first. Which makes sense.

So we are going to start with Revelation 21:8  “. . .their fate is in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” The first thing we want to look at is  1) Where You Don’t Want to Go!

Today when we talk about the alternative to heaven we call it hell.  Which is one of several different names used in the Bible to describe the final destination of the unrighteous. 

The term Sheol in the Old Testament or Hades in the New Testament are used interchangeably and literally mean the place of “Departed Souls.”  In some instances the term is used to simply mean the grave or death, and in other instances it refers to an actual place, what we call hell.

In the New Testament there is a word that is used by Jesus almost exclusively for hell and that is the Greek word Gehenna which is a form of the Hebrew phrase that means “The Valley of Hinnom” which was a valley Southwest of Jerusalem. 

Now I know that’s not very nice to refer to a specific area as Hell.  In 1981 I joined the Crew of a salvage tug in Miami and it had just come from Brownsville Texas and I asked one of the crew what Brownsville had been like, and they described it as being like Hell without your friends.  

But you have to understand the history of Gehenna.  It was in this valley that the Canaanites worshiped Baal and the god Molech, they did this by sacrificing their children in a fire that burned continuously.  In the book of 2 Kings 23:10 we discover that King Josiah put an end to this worship and “defiled” the valley so it would be unfit for even pagan worship.

By the time of Jesus this area was used as the garbage dump for Jerusalem, into it was thrown all of the filth and garbage of the city, including the dead bodies of animals and the bodies of executed criminals.

To consume all of this, fires burned constantly.  Everybody knew what it was like and when the wind blew from that direction, everybody in the city understood its awfulness.  To the people Jesus spoke to there could be no worse fate then spending eternity in Gehenna. 

And so Jesus said “do you want to know what hell is like?  All you have to do is look at Gehenna. The garbage, dead bodies, the fire and the smell, now multiply that by eternity and that’s what the  unrighteous have to look forward to”

And so hell could be described as God’s “Cosmic garbage dump.”  Everything that is unfit for heaven is thrown there. 

Sometimes because of the symbolic nature of the description of hell people question whether it will consist of actual fire. 

Don’t deceive yourself, the reality will be worse than any description that a person could conjure up, and it will last forever, and ever and ever.  It’s worse than can be described and longer then can be imagined.

But who is this particular verse talking about?  It has to be speaking of somebody because it says: their fate is in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. Whose fate?  Well eight specific groups are listed; this is not meant to be an exhaustive group but an illustrative group.

Cowards, The idea being conveyed here is not someone who expresses fear but someone who at one time or another professed to be a Christian but turned away from their faith because of some type of persecution. 

It might have been physical as in the case of the early church where believers were afforded the opportunity to deny Christ in order to save their lives. 

And while some took that opportunity a great many others were willing to surrender their lives instead of denying Christ. 

Jim Elliot was a missionary to Ecuador who was killed by members of the tribe he had gone to minister to, it was Elliot who said “A man is no fool who loses that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” 

The martyrs understood that they would die anyway eventually.

On a more subtle level, people have denied their relationship with Christ in order to gain friends, a spouse or an economic advantage in life. 

Those are the people that Jesus is referring to here.  There are some who would say “then those people didn’t have a real relationship with Christ to start with.” Ok, that’s fine but the end result is the same.

2) Unbelievers This is the group who rejected the claims of Christ. They didn’t have the confidence in the salvation that Christ had to offer.  And so they  simply refused it. 

Perhaps they sought the road to heaven in some other means, followed another god or another creed or trusted in their own goodness.  For some it was simply that they refused to believe anything, that there was a heaven or a hell or a God they were unbelievers.

3) The corrupt This is an all inclusive term which take into account all types of immorality.  It’s translated by some as the vile, or the abominable. And it means those who are religiously and morally filthy. 

4) Murderers  Pretty simple here, the takers of life. I take a very strong pro-life stand, although I probably don’t talk about it as much as I should these days.

But I would suspect that those who kill the most defenceless members of our society, the unborn would fit into this category as well. 

One commentator says “These are not only those who have actually taken the life of another in an intentional, evil way, but also those who have hatred in their hearts which motivates murder.”

And he references that back to 1 John 3:15 Anyone who hates another brother or sister is really a murderer at heart. And you know that murderers don’t have eternal life within them.

5) The immoral.  The reference here is to sexual immorality.  And I know that when I speak of the sexually immoral everyone has a mental picture of someone.  But this statement encompasses the full range of sexuality practiced outside of heterosexual marriage. 

Sorry, I know there are some out there who are saying “Yeah But?” no “yeah buts”.  The bible is very clear that God created sex, it’s a gift and for our own protection it is a gift that is only to be enjoyed inside the institution of marriage. 

And there are those who are saying “What do mean for my own protection?”  Unwanted pregnancies, aids, sexually transmitted diseases, emotional hurts, need I go on?  

6) Those who practice witchcraft  Again let’s not narrow this down to one activity.  And in our minds we see the witches in their black capes and pointy hats gathered round a caldron chanting Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn, and cauldron bubble.  But this encompasses the whole range of the occult and the supernatural, including by not limited to witchcraft, divination (that’s talking to the dead), astrology and the psychics hotline.

 

7) Idol worshipers If you worship something other then God, you are an idol worshipper.  Doesn’t have to be a little stone shrine that you bow down to, it could be your career, your hobby, your children, money etc.  Anything that takes God out of first place in your life is an idol.

8) All liars  If you’ve hung around me enough then at one time or another you’ve heard me ask the question “You know where liars go?” and then answer it with “Ottawa”.

Here is the reality folks. Liars go to hell.  A liar is any person who does anything to deceive. They might pervert the truth or simply manipulate it, they might convey a wrong idea by speaking or by remaining silent but they are not honest people.  They may lie by word or by deed.

And never forget that half a truth is a whole lie.

A transition is in order at this part of the message and so I will tell one of my favourite stories which I have told numerous times.  The story is told that when Calvin Coolidge was Vice-President of the United States he was chairing a congressional meeting that was becoming very heated.  During the meeting one Congressman stood up and told another, “Sir you can go straight to hell”.  Well the victim was understandably upset and looked to the Vice President for support and saw that he was reading a book. 

“Mr. Coolidge” cried the victim “Did you hear what he told me to do?” “Yes” replied the Vice-President, “But I checked the rule book and you don’t have to go.”  Well friends I have checked the rule book and you don’t have to go.

And maybe you have Obeen checking things off the list and figure that you have already made your choice and there is no hope.  Listen to what the bible says in Hebrews 10:22  let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.

You see verse 8 is only half the story, if we go back to verse 7 we read Revelation 21:7 All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings, and I will be their God, and they will be my children.    Which brings us to

2) Where You want to Go! So who goes there?  Vs. 7 said all who are victorious, but what does that mean?  The who are defined in John 3:3 Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”And then in John 14:6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”  

And the blessings are defined in verses 1, 3 & 4 of Revelation 21.  The first one is a little abstract because it says And the sea was also gone.  Now for someone like me who loves the ocean, this doesn’t necessarily sound good. 

However if we allow ourselves to see the ocean from the perspective of the original readers of this book we begin to understand.  2000 years ago the sea was an uninviting and hostile environment. 

Without a compass the only safe way to go to sea was to stay within sight of land, and so when the Revelation was written this was a poetic way to say that confusion, turmoil and danger would be no more.   

The blessings get clearer as we go along.  In verse three we discover God’s home is now among his people!  If hell is the absence of all that is good and all that is pure, then heaven is the presence of all that is good and all that is pure. For it is in heaven that we come into the presence of the almighty God, the creator of the universe. 

We will be restored to what we were created for and that is to have fellowship with God.  We will be in his presence and in the presence of all that is good. 

In the next chapter we are told the result of this will be that there will be no more night or darkness because of the presence of God.  And listen to what will be missing in heaven.

There will be no more death.  Never again will the old enemy death crouch next our bed or the bedside of a loved one.  I am a firm believer in heaven, I think it’s a wonderful place, and I truly believe with all my heart that heaven is better than earth. 

But I still weep at the funerals of believers, not because they are in heaven but because they had to die to get there, and I’m truly believe that while most Christians don’t fear death that we do fear dying. 

I spoke about this last week and how  most of us would agree with Woody Allen who said “I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

It’s the fear of the unknown, of not knowing how we will die, not knowing if it will be peaceful or painful.

It’s not wanting to be separated from our loved ones, even for a little while.  The Bible calls death the enemy, and it is the enemy but it is a defeated enemy because while we may die physically we will never die spiritually.

There will be no more sorrow.  When I think about not having any sorrows I think about not having any regrets. No regrets, no what ifs, or if only. 

I am the world’s worst second guesser.  Take me to a restaurant and after I order the nachos I say darn I should have had the fajitas.  Let me buy anything and after I get it I think I wonder if I should have shopped around a little more? And the worst part is that I’m not smart enough to stop looking. 

If I buy a car, the next week I’ll be looking at car ads, shoot if I had of waited a week I could have got a better deal.  I wonder what would have happened if I had of. . . When I get to heaven there will be no more regrets and with no more regrets there will be no more sorrows.

We won’t think about missed opportunities because there won’t be any missed opportunities, we won’t dwell on dumb mistakes because there will be no dumb mistakes..  There will be no more sorrows.

There will be no more pain.  Think about the pain that we go through in our life, from birth to death. Physical pain, emotional pain, pain caused by sickness, old age and accidents. 

What’s hurting right now?  Your knees, your back, maybe you have a headache or a toothache. Maybe you can’t pinpoint it exactly you just know you hurt and you’ve hurt for a long time. 

There’s great news folks, if you are a Christian, when you get to heaven there will be no more pain.  None, zip, zero, nada, no pain.  Sometimes I marvel that we are so eager to hang onto a existence of pain. 

And we can talk about what heaven will have, the streets of gold, the gates of pearls, the walls of precious stone, but I’m looking forward to what it doesn’t have. No death, no pain, no sorrow. 

Some of you are thinking “Denn you spent more time on Hell then you did on Heaven”, yeah, well so did Jesus. 

You understand that the Bible exhausts human language in describing heaven and hell but here is the reality, heaven is more glorious, and hell is more terrible, than language can ever express. 

And this we discover at the end of the story, everybody here will end up in either heaven or hell and it will be decided by only one person and that person is you. 

So let me leave you with the words of my favorite philosopher, because it was Yogi Berra who said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” 

You are at that fork right now, which path will you follow, which destination do you want to arrive at?  We’ve told you before the promise of the Bible is this, confess your sin, ask for forgiveness and you will live forever with your Creator and Saviour.