Gooding, David: 2 - What Will Make Heaven, Heaven?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, sir, for those kindly words of welcome, and thank you, my brothers and sisters and kind friends, for turning out to encourage a young preacher in his speech. Shall we read tonight from the Gospel by Matthew and chapter nineteen? Gospel by Matthew, chapter nineteen. And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished these words, he departed from Galilee and came into the borders of Judea beyond Jordan, and great multitudes followed him, and he healed them there. And there came unto him Pharisees tempting him and saying, is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said, have you not read that which, that he which made them from the beginning, made them male and female and said, for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the twain shall become one flesh, so that they are no more twain but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say unto him, Why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorcement and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses, for the hardness of your heart suffered you to put away your wives. But from the beginning it hath not been so. And I say unto you, whosoever shall put away his wife except for fornication and shall marry another committeth adultery. And he that marrieth her when she is put away committeth adultery. The disciples say unto him, if the case of the man is so with his wife, it is not expedient to marry. But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, but they to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs which were so born from their mother's womb. There are eunuchs which were made eunuchs by men. And there are eunuchs which made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should lay his hands on them and pray. And the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, suffer the little children and forbid them not to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. And he laid his hands on them and departed thence. May that same Lord Jesus who taught his disciples in that far off day draw near and teach us here this evening. For our meditation this evening, I would like you, if you will, in the eye of your heart's imagination, to come with me to ancient Palestine, and in particular to the banks of the River Jordan, at the time when the crowds were gathering around the Lord Jesus in vast throngs, ready for his final ascent on the capital city, Jerusalem. For the last many months, the Lord Jesus had been preaching and teaching and healing largely in Galilee, and more recently through Samaria, as little by little he had been coming south towards Judea. At long last, he had arrived in Judea, uh, opposite Jericho, and the crowds that followed him now amounted probably to some many thousands. For they had seen his miracles. They had listened to his teaching, and there had arisen in the crowd the expectation that perhaps, after all, this was the long-awaited Messiah. And they had gathered that as he journeyed, he was ultimately on his way to Jerusalem. Could this be the time, they said to themselves, when the Messiah will come suddenly to his temple and the son of David come to Jerusalem city? And the crowd were all agog, as you may imagine. Presently, as he moved and crossed the river and came and passed through Jericho and descended the sea cliffs of the Judean hills on the famous road and crested the brow of the hill. They were to see him call for a mule or a donkey and ride upon it. They were to see his disciples through the way with their clothes and the crowd in fervor waving their palm branches, crying, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. They thought the kingdom of God was about to appear within a very few days, perhaps within the week. It is true that according to Luke's account of these things, our Lord at that stage told a parable because some were expecting the kingdom of God immediately to appear, and it wasn't going to appear immediately. Blessed Lord, as he full well know and had told his disciples, would have to go to Jerusalem. There he would be rejected. He would be cast out of the vineyard. He would be like the nobleman that had to go into a far country to receive a kingdom, and then, and only then eventually to return to set up his kingdom on earth. But in spite of the peril, the excitement scarce abated. Many thought in their hearts that, uh, yes, within a few days now, Jesus will turn out to be the king, the son of David, the long-awaited Messiah. The kingdom will be established. Paradise on earth will begin. You can understand they're getting excited, can't you? Wouldn't you? Suppose you thought the Lord was coming next Monday. Wouldn't you feel a somewhat quickening of the pulse, and the heart would begin to beat. And suppose you thought next Saturday week the kingdom of the Lord was going to be descend upon earth, and paradise be set up on earth. Why, if you weren't excited, then it would be because you were made of concrete or something. What a wonderful thing it was. And I can feel for those people as they tramped up the hill, scarce noticing the climb, all fervid with excitement. Oh, what would it be when the kingdom was established? What would life in the kingdom be like? Marvelous. And then a strange thing happened. For while our blessed Lord stayed a while, uh, near Jordan before his last ascent. There came one and another, individuals and groups, and they put some questions to him. And when he answered them, their brows knitted and their faces fell. For they began to perceive what life in the kingdom of God would be like when it dawned. And the more they listened, the more dismayed they began, be- began to be, till some of them in the end became quite disgusted and said to themselves, well, if that's what life is going to be in the kingdom of God, if these are the rules of behavior that the King Messiah will lay down for his people. Are we sure? We want to be in the kingdom. Certainly they were sure that if life was going to be like that in the kingdom, they didn't want it to start right now. They had no intention of living like that now. For that way of life sounded to them to be disastrous, guaranteed to undermine every pleasure they knew. So it was that about a week or so later, the great majority of that crowd joined the others in Jerusalem, deserted, and ultimately crucified him. It is a long way between then and now. And we belong to a different dispensation and belong to the church. Though surely our heart beats too with the expectation that one day the Lord Jesus will so come as his apostles saw him go. He shall ask of the Father, and the Father will give him the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession. He shall sit on the throne of his father David. He shall rule from shore to shore. Oh, what joy it will be to see him reigning, glorified, adored. Ours is an even greater and more glorious hope. We look for the Lord to come and take us home to the Father's house on high. We look to be with him and with him eternally. Have we never thought what life will be like when we're with him? Have we never spent five minutes thinking what it is that will make heaven, heaven. What will it be in its essence that will make heaven the heaven we expect it to be? The answer to that is, is it not, not the golden streets... by themselves. Not even the fact that there shall be no more curse and no more sickness and no more sorrow. At least I'm going to put it to you now that the thing that will make heaven heaven at its very heart is this: it will be the way people behave in heaven. What will it be? What will it w- be that makes heaven heaven? Well, my brother, my sister, it will be the way the blessed Lord Jesus behaves towards you. Will it not? It will be the way we behave towards him. It will be the way we behave towards one another. And if it should be that we could get inklings of what heaven will be like when we arrive and how people will behave when they get there. Well, then, of course, if it is true that we're longing to be home and longing to be in heaven, we shall want to create a little bit of heaven on earth already, shouldn't we, and to anticipate it a bit, and we shall want to behave as far as it is possible here and now in the way that people are going to behave when they get to heaven. And so it seems to me that we can take lessons from these far off days and from these far off people, as we listen to them talking to the Lord Jesus and the Lord Jesus talking to them about the standards of behavior that would mark life in his kingdom. And by the time the evening is out, we shall be asking ourselves, can we match up to that? And how similar will be behavior of those whose t- whose inheritance is in glory. The first question that they brought him then, according to Matthew nineteen, as the crowds milled around him near the banks of the Jordan, was a question brought by the Pharisees. They came tempting him as usual and saying, is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause. What they meant was as follows. The Pharisees had read in the ancient law given by Moses that if a man found some unpleasantness in his wife, then he might give her a bill of divorcement and put her away. And the learned rabbis had exercised their minds and their moral judgment, and let's hope also their moral conscience, in deciding what the Old Testament scripture meant when it talked about this un- unpleasant thing that a man might find in his wife. Some rabbis said that the unpleasant thing mentioned would be some serious moral failure, some grievous infidelity towards the marriage, and that and that only would justify or permit a man putting away his wife. On the other hand, there was other, there were other rabbis, and one in particular, who preached a much more popular view. They said that the unpleasant thing that a man might discover in his wife could be anything of the s- anything you care to mention. Suppose his wife developed, uh, for instance, an unpleasant skin disease. Then the man was perfectly entitled to give her a bill of divorcement and send her away. Suppose her teeth dropped out. That was a disaster in those days because there weren't any false ones. Suppose her teeth dropped out and she wasn't so pretty as she used to be. And the man was perfectly entitled to regard it as an unpleasant thing and give his wife a bill of divorcement and put her away. Indeed, the unpleasant thing could be almost anything under the sun if she burnt the potatoes or spoiled his breakfast, made his bed the wrong way, or didn't always do exactly as he told her. So they were divided in Israel as to what this unpleasant thing was on account of which Moses' law permitted a man to divorce his wife. And they came to the blessed Lord Jesus and asked him about the question, what do you say? Is it allowed for a man to put his wife away for just any old cause whatsoever? Whatsoever. And he answered them, have you not read that he which made them from the beginning made them male and female, and joined the two together that they might be one? Therefore, gentlemen, said he, what God has joined together, let not man put a Santa. You say, he's talking about the Garden of Eden, isn't he? Yes, that's right. He's talking about paradise, the lovely garden of Eden. You say, what's paradise got to do with it? We're living in a broken, fallen world. How could you possibly insist upon the regulations that were laid down in paradise? Oh, but wait a minute, I thought the crowd were expecting the kingdom of God to appear a day or two now, now shortly. I thought they were looking for the coming of the great and glorious kingdom of God with all its paradise, its glories and joys. And if they were really looking for paradise on earth, then surely, when it came to marriage, they wouldn't be content with less than the rules of paradise itself. Ah. Ah. Father, they hadn't got quite that far in their thinking, had they? You see, they had their concept of what the kingdom would be, as the two on the road to Emmaus put it to the Lord Jesus, uh, some days later. They said, you know, we had expected that this Jesus would be the one that would liberate Israel. Their idea of paradise, their idea of the coming millennial reign of Christ would first of all be political liberation. The Roman overlords would be booted out. And now when you went to Jerusalem, you wouldn't see foreigners, Englishmen or Romans living in the big houses and the big palaces you'll see. The locals would enjoy it as they had a right to, and all the foreigners would be booted out. And then, of course, the wealth would be redistributed, and every man would sit under his vine and under his victory. Wouldn't it be delightful to have a beautiful nice patio with the modern windows, you know, uh, and who knows, a little bit of uh, uh, air conditioner and whatnot, and not only a farm that could keep you in good food and clothes, but perhaps a chariot or two. It would be bliss. And of course, a beautiful wife. In other words, it was going to be the things that made the reign of the Messiah so enjoyable. And they'd forgotten, hadn't they? What will make his reign, even his reign on earth, so delightful? It won't be simply the things that there is an unstinted supply of carrots, or kiwi fruit instead of bananas, or the latest style bathrooms, or the most powerful chariots that ever were. The thing that will make his kingdom so delightful is that as king, he will insist on certain standards of behavior. It will be the way that people will treat each other. For this is paradise, isn't it? They said, why did then Moses allow us to write a bill of divorcement and put our wives away when they displeased us? Our Lord replied, it was for the hardness of your heart, gentlemen. And we may add it was God's mercy to protect the women of those days. You'll just imagine some old baron, because his wife had a pimple or something on her nose, he gives her a bill of divorce, and because she's got middle-aged anyway, and puts her away and takes up with young shiny, bright new things, so to speak. And God, in his compassion for the wife, lays down rules and regulations that limited man's cruelty in those far-off days and guaranteed the wife, any rate, her right of, uh, of maintenance, her part of the property. God God mercifully massively limiting limiting. the cruelty of selfish men. But you don't want that kind of behavior, do you, says Christ? It wasn't so in paradise, you know. And I, says our blessed Lord Jesus, for all who follow me, I propose to insist on the original standards of the ideal. Now, I have no intention tonight to discuss with you the thorny problem of div- divorce. Though, as the years go by, if the signs are true, we will not only continue to get weather from the western side of the Atlantic, and we get a lot of that, don't we? But the standards that now prevail in America will come here too, and divorce will increase in leaps and bounds. Someone ought to talk about it. It would need someone more qualified than I. And our young people ought to be warned in advance, didn't they, and taught in advance what are Christian standards. Lest there happen here what has happened elsewhere, so widespread. Young people enter into marriage thinking that if it doesn't work out, the Christian thing to do is to divorce, and that to forbid divorce is unchristian. It is well for people to be instructed by those that are able in advance, is it not? Pray remember, my older brothers and you, my older sisters, who have the charge of training the younger women in the assembly. Upon you rests a very large responsibility as elder sisters to train the young women. They weren't brought up in your generation. They're being brought up in a very different world with very different standards, and they do need gracious and loving and kindly instruction how to behave in a Christian fashion. But tonight I'm thinking of further things. I'm thinking of heaven. And you will say to me, so what relevance has all this got to do with that? Because when we get to heaven, there isn't going to be any marriages. They neither marry nor are given in marriage, so what has this got to do with that? Well, as I say, it isn't quite the matter of divorce I'm interested in. I'm interested at this particular moment in the reaction within the disciples' hearts and minds when they heard what the Lord Jesus had got to say. Lord, they said. Well, Lord, if that's the attitude you're going to take, if that's the situation between a man and his wife, well, Lord, they said, did he hear me? Well, it would be better not to get married then. I mean to say, Lord, I mean, why get married, surely? And in that moment, perhaps they didn't realize what they were doing, did they? For out it all came what their concept of marriage was. Lord, I mean, why do, why do men get married? Why, surely, Lord, it's for the pleasure and for the joy and to be comforted, uh, and to have somebody to make the breakfast and make the bed, Lord, and uh, so long as she's pretty and lovely and behaves nicely, well, it's marvelous. But, Lord, are you going to say that if she fell ill or lost her beauty or something, I've got to still carry the woman? Well, Lord, there's no point in getting married like that, Lord. You'd be better single. All of a sudden, we see what their attitude of heart had been. Selfishness, their concept of happiness, their own self-centered enjoyment. The wife there to minister to that, and if she did it, she would be loved, and if she didn't do it that like like they wanted, she would be divorced. As for any concept of love being loyalty, it doesn't seem to have been there. Of any concept of true love being a loyal relationship between two persons, not their. Their wives were servants, their wives were toy things, and if the toy got broken, it was ditched. But I hope before they get home to heaven, they're going to be changed, aren't you? Don't you? Just you think for a moment, as I jump once more from one level to the next, tell me, what, my brother, what, my sister, is going to make heaven, heaven for you. You'll say, I'm thinking it over. My heaven will be grounded in this, the love of Christ to me. Tell me about that love of Christ, my dear brother. What does it mean to you? Oh, you say the love of Christ is this. Ah, who can tell it? While we were yet sinners, while we were ungodly, while we were rebels. He loved us then, and gave himself for us then that we might be reconciled to God. Oh, who shall tell the love of Christ towards us all these long years of our pilgrimage on this earth, and how many blots and blemishes and wrinkles he has seen upon our spiritual countenance, has he not? How many irritations, how many rudenesses, how many uncouth behavior patterns in our personalities he has seen, and who shall tell the marvel of it tonight? He loves us as always he's loved us. He will never cease to love us. For as a man should love his wife, so Christ loves the church and gave and gives himself for her. Tell me, is not this the basis of your whole enjoyment of glory? I trow it is. Just you think arriving in heaven, ah, thinking you've got an eternity to spend there. So you're taking every opportunity to get the heavenly omnibuses or whatever they provide to go around the walls of the New Jerusalem and spy out your estate, and day after day, day after day. You discover the glories and the wealth of that heavenly abode till your heart can scarce take it in. Imagine what it would be if one day there were a circulated rumor that Christ had lost interest in you and was proposing to divorce you. Not all the gems and gold and diamonds of heaven combined could prevail to make heaven heaven any longer. This is heaven. How you say I've got this comfort, my dear good man preacher. You've forgotten, haven't you? When I get home to heaven, I shan't have any wrinkles, blots or blemishes. I shall be perfect, you say. Congratulations. So you say Christ won't have any reason to divorce me. All right. You'll be content in heaven, will you, if Christ doesn't divorce you? You know what you mean. Well... supposes he ceases to be interested in you. He's going to have a few millions up there, isn't he? Suppose he started to neglect you and treat you just like where? A thing or a toy, you know, like my lord and lady in the stately house. They've got some deer in the deer park, you know. Well, they're pleasant to look at, but they don't go around kissing them every morning, do they? What ho, you say, they're just ornaments, they are. And when you get home to glory, and in the great throng, should it ever become apparent to you that Christ has lost interest in you, or merely one of the ornaments, merely a toy, and he passed you by on the heavenly staircase and didn't even say a word. Say, would your heaven be big enough then? Oh, you say, no, no, no, no. My heaven would be this forever and forever and forever. I was conscious that the Son of God personally loved me and treated me as a person, took an ever and eternal and continual interest in me. My brother, my sister, I can assure you that thus it should be. The blessed Lord who died for you when you were ugly is ugly could be, will forever love you, not as a toy thing, but as a person, and love you and be interested in you forever. Then it seems to follow in my thinking, if that's how we expect heaven to be, and we want to be there, shall not some of the glories of heaven begin to shine upon the way we behave now in our home? Apparently those of dear disciples have got a long way to go, hadn't they? In learning the way that heaven behaved. Oh Lord, they said, if that's your standard of behavior, oh, well, our humble estimate, it'd be better not to get married. The Lord wouldn't let them off that one, would he? Gentlemen, he said, not all can receive this saying that I'm about to say. There are some eunuchs born that way. Some have been made so by human cruelty. To some is given the gift of remaining unmarried for the kingdom of God's sake. Gentlemen, said he, don't you suppose that that is the attractive way out? So that you could be farsighted and say, yes, well, you'd be better off, you'd enjoy that life better without the burden and the weight of having to look after somebody else and always to consider somebody else. Why not go for your own freedom and enjoy yourself? That was what the disciples were saying. You see that inherent, self-centered concept of what pleasure and joy are. It would turn hell, it would turn heaven itself, wouldn't it? Into a self-centered home for individualists, he seeking his own pleasure regardless of others. That's not heaven. They to whom God gives the unusual, exceptional gift of remaining single, he gives them that for the sake of the kingdom of God. Not so that they may retire to enjoy their own selfish pleasures irresponsibly, but that they might serve others the more fully and effectively in the service and the life to which God has called them. Oh, when shall we learn that the secrets of the joys of heaven are to be found as we forget ourselves and learn to live for others? There came then, so we are told, a rich young man to the Lord. He too had a question. Lord, he said, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life? As we read his story, we become aware, perhaps, how the man was thinking. He was a rich young man, and like all rich young men, I suppose, had used his money in various ways, and particularly to enjoy life to the full. He wanted a new chariot, he could afford a new chariot, why not have a new chariot then? The latest bungalow with a beautiful swimming pool, why not? He could afford it, he had it. Oh, why? And now he'd heard about the kingdom of God. He brought the same ambition to the Kingdom of God as he had brought to everything else. Lord, he said, I'm interested in this, uh, Kingdom of God. I gather the light of there is going to be eternal, Lord. Uh, marvelous, marvelous, Lord. And, uh, what would be the entrance fee? Uh, how do you get into this kingdom affairs? I, I really said, no, Lord, I'm prepared to pay anything. I mean, what, what, what, what, what is the entrance fee to this club? What do I have to do to have eternal life? When our Lord Jesus replied, you will notice that according to Matthew, he somewhat varied the term. Said he, if thou wouldest enter in. It didn't say here, if thou wouldst have eternal life, but rather if thou wouldest enter into life, keep the commandments. For our Lord was surely not telling him that eternal salvation depends upon the keeping of the law. We get eternal life simply through faith. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Let us be abundantly clear upon it again this evening. Gift of God, the free, unconditional gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Have you got it, my friend? Forgive my asking, but just let's make sure. You have, you've got eternal life. Marvelous. Where'd you keep it? What do you mean where you keep it? Well, I mean, at the bank or somewhere? What is this eternal life that you've got? You say, well, means, no, I didn't give the bank, this is silly. I got a life, uh, like my physical life, only my physical life is only temporary, and my eternal life is going to last forever. Oh yes, very good. So will. Anything else? Is your eternal life just a... a carrying on of your ordinary mortal life, only stretching it to eternity? Or is there a different quality to it? Oh, you say, no, wait a minute, no, oh, one should hope it's just, it's not just a continuation of my life out here. It's gonna, it is a different life, it is a different quality of life. It is no less than the life of God himself. You are to be congratulated if you have that kind of life. Just you think a moment, all the potential of the very life of God. How are you getting on with the enjoying of it? Had the time to explore much of it yet? Had the time to enter into life. You'll see it's one thing to have life, isn't it? It's another thing to enter into life. And sometimes see a young man or a young lady, and you sense in your bones that they've got all sorts of gifts and abilities they could use, but for some curious reason, they're not making the best of themselves. They're not exploring the possibilities. This girlie here has a gift, and if she applied herself, she could play the piano because in her genes, in her life, there is the ability to play like a concert pianist. But no, she's content just to go on, and she's not developed the life she has. Can be like that with eternal life, can't it? Or writing to Timothy says, you know, fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life. You've got it, Timothy, of course, but go in for it, man. Lay hold on it, develop it, enter into it. What's life going to be like in heaven? It's going to be a life, isn't it? Oh, we'll give a personal reminiscence, won't you? I do remember the days when I was a child, and at last holidays came. And in those far off days, you'll see, if you got down to the seaside, uh, uh, each day from your home, you were doing very well, you'll see. One would at last get down to the seaside with loving parents and aunts and uncles and grandmothers. I had no end of grandmothers. And when you got there, full of anticipation of all the wonderful things you could do, lo and behold, the adults all sat down on deck chairs, and all they thought about was talking. You, I can feel now the dismay and the frustration of those days with the sea, with the sand, and you could have used your bucket and your pail and made sandcastles and have done glorious things. All they wanted to do is to sit down and talk. Of course, I, I, I, I didn't realize how hard my dear mother had worked, and my father too, and for them it was paradise to sit down and ease their aching bones and head. For us youngsters, we weren't tired, we were full of life, we wanted to explore it and exploit it, and have to sit down there and be good while they talked. Well, that wasn't heaven, that was torture. When you get home to heaven, what are you going to do? You say, I'm looking to get home to heaven, all burdens laid down in a beautifully padded heavenly chair, under heavenly footrest, and I'm going to put my feet up for eternity and never do another stroke of work. You are. That will get boring, and won't it, after the first ten million years. You won't be tired. You'll have the very dew of your youth. You'll have eternal life oozing out of every heavenly pore in your heavenly and glorified body. You want to live. Now man said, our Lord, if you would enter into life. Keep the command. Not to get it, but to enter into it. He said, I've done all that. Well, would you like to go stage further, said our Lord, and be mature? Sell all you have and give to the poor. You come and follow me, and you shall have treasure in heaven. That didn't sound a good idea to the young man, for he had rather a lot of wealth. And that didn't appear to him to be life. That didn't he- appear to him to be a recipe for enjoying life. And he went away. I fear he will never be in heaven. Perhaps the instructions that our blessed Lord gave him were special instructions, and that we cannot draw straight lines to ourselves. Obviously, we cannot all sell everything we've got, can we, and give to the poor and become itinerant preachers following the Lord Jesus round Palestine. We have to provide things honest in the sight of men. Of course we do. But then you see the general principle remain. Learn to live like a son of the kingdom and use your wealth and your assets for the blessing of others. You will find you have treasure in heaven. That is still true, isn't it? We have assets of one kind and another. What we must be careful not to do is to treat them as if they were our private property. We must come, mustn't we, with all we have, like the early Christians came to the apostles and laid what they had at the apostles' feet, owning the rights of the risen Messiah over everything they had. When they'd done it, it still remained in their power, that is to say, they were allowed, if they wanted to, to act as stewardship and decide what should be done with it. Only the principle at stake was this, that they had first given it to Messiah for him. They, his stewards, would administer it for him. If we act faithfully as stewards in that which is least, when the day dawns, he will put into our hands the true riches. Here I say, when you get home to heaven, will you have anything to give away? What do you mean? Well, our Lord talks about people out there being given the true riches. And the more true riches you have, the more you will be able to pass them on to other people, won't you? I wonder what it will be like. Daily to receive from the blessed Lord according to our capacity. Spiritual blessings that we can scarce imagine. Great responsibilities and powers and administrative responsibilities put into our hands to administer as we reign with Christ. Not for our own profiteering, surely, but so that receiving them from the Lord, we may be allowed that supreme blessedness, such as the Lord Jesus taught us, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Oh, what a lovely thing. You've sensed it from time to time, haven't you, on earth, as you've taken something valuable, perhaps to you, and you've given it for Christ's sake. And in the giving, there has come up in your heart a sense of eternity, a sense of the joy of God, the sense of being infinitely wealthy. You have been able to give. Oh, it's a little foretaste here on earth of what heaven shall be like when at last we get home and God puts into our hands the true riches, that we might have the joy of receiving them from him and passing them on to others. It's an art, my brothers, my sisters, it is an art to be learned here. It is as we are prepared to use our goods, time, gifts, assets, as the Lord's stewards now, and according to the proportion in which we do it. There shall be put into our hands then much or little of the true riches in the coming day. The Lord uses water in these quiet moments of meditation to make heaven real, give us eyes of faith to see the very streets and gates of the eternal city. Give us a foretaste of what the joys of heaven will be and the delights of the behavior of God and his redeemed, so that even now, as we're on our journey there, we might be given grace to begin to behave on earth as one day we hope to behave in heaven.