Gooding, David: A Glimpse of Heaven

I thought this morning, in responding to your invitation, we should go to heaven. There is a rumor going around, a very strong rumor going around, that heaven is going to last for a very long time. It seems, therefore, to me that it is prudent of us to look ahead and get used to what heaven will be like. So let's read, shall we, to begin with, the book of the Revelation and chapter twenty one, verse nineteen: The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth sardius, the seven chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jasinth, the twelve amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls. Each one of the several gates was of one pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. And I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb are the temple thereof. And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God did light in it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb. And the nations shall walk in the midst of the light thereof, and the kings of the earth to bring their glory into it. And the gates thereof shall in no wise be shut by day, for there shall be no night there, and they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it. And there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he that maketh an abomination and a lie, but only they which are written in the Lamb's book of life. And he showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the midst of the street thereof. And on this side of the river and on that was the tree of life, bearing twelve manner of fruits, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nation. And there shall be no curse anymore, and the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be therein, and his servants shall do him service. And they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads. And there shall be night no more, and they need no light of lamp, neither light of sun, for the Lord God shall give them light, and they shall reign forever and ever. I suppose that one of the most frequent questions that I get asked, I don't know about you, but one of the most frequent questions that I get asked about heaven and what it will be like is the question, shall we know one another in heaven? My reply to that question, being half an Irishman for having lived thirty years in Ireland, is: shall we know ourselves when we get home to heaven? Let's start with ourselves. Will you know who you are when you get home to heaven? Of course, that means, doesn't it, will you have a memory? For knowing who we are depends on memory, doesn't it? And the question, therefore, shall we know ourselves when we get home to heaven, means shall we remember who we were when we were here on earth, and what we did, and what our experiences were like? Or will it be that when we get home to heaven, we shall start afresh and not remember a thing at all about what happened to us when we were here on earth? And the answer to that question is quite clear, isn't it? We shall, of course, remember. The blessed Lord Jesus himself remembers what it was like to be here on earth, does he not? That is why he is such a faithful and merciful and compassionate high priest. He remembers what it was to be tempted. He remembers the groanings and the tears of Gethsemane. Not for all eternity will he forget them. He remembers what it was like being entertained by Martha and by Mary in their home. He knows life's experience. Indeed, Holy Scripture tells us that it was by his experiences here on earth and by his sufferings that he was qualified, has become qualified to be our high priest. He knows what it is like to live here on earth. And we too shall remember ourselves, aren't we? We shall remember how we came to know the Lord, what conversion meant. We shall remember that we were born again, and we shall remember all the wonderful times of fellowship we had with the Lord on our journey home. Otherwise, if we didn't, well, then God might as well have started with completely new creatures, mightn't he, in heaven, who, who never did exist on earth. Earth's experience is the necessary preparation for heaven. And what a time we shall have, shan't we? In Israel, you know, once a year they had a feast, a festival called the Feast of Tabernacles, and on that festival they would make themselves booths in their gardens out of the leafy trees and bushes, and leaving home they would go and camp out in these booths in their gardens or in the country to remember the time when their forefathers were traveling from Egypt to Canaan, and how their forefathers had lived in tents for those many years while they were on their pilgrimage. And the scripture says that when they of later generations went for a week to live in their leafy booths and tents, they were to remember the pathway by which God had led their nation. And what it will be like, my brothers, my sisters, when we get home to glory, to remember all the way that the Lord led us. Then shall be times of joy, then times of understanding, and things that we cannot know now, nor understand, nor are we called upon to understand them. Then shall we understand, and we shall have nothing but unqualified praise for the way that God has led us. We shall remember them. Ah, but says somebody, I don't know whether I want to remember. There are so many things, says somebody, I should be, I should prefer to forget. Should we remember everything? What about our sins, you say? Hasn't God himself, uh, uh, said and promised that our sins and iniquities he will remember no more? Isn't it so that God will completely forget our sins, forget even that we were sinners? Isn't that his promise? Well, no, I mustn't shock you, but that isn't his promise. No, no. Let me show it to you. When you see the Lord Jesus and the wound marks in his hand and in his side and in his feet, will you find yourself saying, look at, look at him. What are those funny wounds in his hands and his feet and side? What are they there for? Can't begin to think why he was wounded. And if some angel can- comes along and tells you, but that's the wounds that he received on Calvary when he died for sins. Shall we respond? Sins? Whose sins? Shall we ever forget, my dear brothers and my sisters, that it was our sin that wounded him? Surely we shall never forget it. Nor will God, of course, as he surveys his beloved son, the lamb, as it had been slain. God himself won't find himself saying, can't make out now what those wounds are that my son carries. What are they for? When did he receive them, and why did he receive them? God shall vividly remember why he received them and whose sins they were that caused them. And indeed, the joy and the wellspring of the music of heaven, so we're told it's going to be this, isn't it? Unto him that loved us and loosed us from our sins in his blood. Thou art worthy to take the book and to loose the seals thereof, for thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood. We shall sing then. It will not be a time of destructive remorse, will it? It will be a source of praise that the blessed Lord loved us while we were sinners. It will comfort us then as it comforts us now to remember that if he loved us while we were sinners, that there'll never come a time, not through all eternity, when he will not love us anymore. You say, what does the scripture mean then when it says our sins and iniquities he will remember no more? To understand that, we must understand the term remember in the Bible. In the ancient world, the kings in their palaces had a number of officials. There was, of course, the chief of army, the commander in chief of the army. Then was the man who was in charge of the palace, the majordomo. Then there were the scribes. And, says the Old Testament, there was one official, and he was called the remembrancer or the recorder. His job was to keep the records that of everything that went on in the realm, so that if the king at any time wanted to know, he could summon the remembrancer and find out what had happened. So if a king had a sleepless night, you know, uh, like old Ahasuerus did or somebody in the Old Testament, and he couldn't sleep, he would get up and call for the remembrancer and tell him to bring the books and to start reading. And the remembrancer would read the records, and he'd come to a name, Job Bloggs or something, and uh, of the terrible things Job Bloggs did, and the king would say, tell me, my man, um, has Joe Bloggs been brought up to court yet and sentenced and punished for what he did? If the remembrancer said, no, your majesty, he hasn't been dealt with then yet, then his majesty would say, right, well, now you've brought it to my mind, please carry out my sentence on Joe Bloggs and have him executed. That is what the Bible means by remembering somebody's sin. It means to haul them up in court for the judge to sit, to pronounce the sentence of guilty and prescri- proscribe, prescribe the penalty. That is what God has said he will never do with us. He will never drag us up into his judicial court, never rake up the guilt of our sins, never again pronounce the sentence or have the penalty executed. And why won't he? Because he's already done it, and done it once and for all, when our blessed Lord Jesus died at Calvary. Now the, uh, great seer calls our attention to the city, doesn't he? Some people ask me, is heaven going to be a place or an experience? This New Jerusalem, is it literally a place? Like, uh, the Gold Coast? Or is it just a lot of metaphors ex- eh, describing an experience? Well, certainly heaven goes beyond our, our best imaginations, doesn't it? God has to talk to us in figurative language so that we can begin to get some idea. Heaven, I assure you, will be far more wonderful than even we have conceived of it, and that even though we have been helped by scripture. But yes, heaven will be a place. How do we know? Well, because the blessed Lord Jesus, when he ascended to heaven, had a human body, didn't he? After his resurrection, he ate with his disciples, and he are invited them to feel him and said, a spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see me have. He had a real substantial human body, and still has, of course, for he is still human. And Paul in his letters talks about what it will be to be at home with the Lord, when we shall have not just a flimsy tent like we now have to live in, we shall have a building of God eternal in the heavens. Our present bodies, says Paul, are like tents, aren't they? Tents are only temporary things, you know, easily collapsible, aren't they? And after they've been through the storms, they begin to get thin on the top, and the canvas flaps a little bit, you'll see, and the old guy ropes get a little bit loose and tottery, and some of the pegs come out, you'll see. Well, you can't help that with tents, you know, not even the best and most expensive of tents are like that, you'll see. Keep them in repair as long as you can, but do remember they're only tents, and they were only meant to be temporary, and one day they'll be taken down. But even tents, you have noticed, take up a certain amount of room, don't they? They demand a place to be in. And if our tents imply a place to be in, so our glorified bodies, bodies like the body of the Lord Jesus, imply space, as the scientists would say, imply extension. There will be a place. Our blessed Lord called at his Father's house and told us that in it there are many abiding places. Then the great new Jerusalem, it's not merely a place, is it? It surely will be an experience, won't it? I mean, if s- if the the Gold Coast were simply a place, it would be no different from any other place, would it? Come to Gold Coast, they say, and you'll have a marvelous experience, yes? So the heavenly Jerusalem is not just a place, but it's going to be a most wonderful and eternal experience, isn't it? And come to think about it, it's will be an experience, not merely because it's a place, but supremely because the city stands for and is the home of the people, yes? What, in other words, makes a city? If you came to Belfast today, right across the city hall in Belfast, you'd see a big banner, and the big banner reads, Belfast says no. I won't stop to tell you what it is Belfast is saying no to, you'll see, that would blow us off course. But anyway, the notice says that Belfast says no. It doesn't mean the city of streets and buildings says no. When it says Belfast says no, of course it means the people of Belfast say no. And so the New Jerusalem, the most important thing about it of all, of course, are the people. Because it is going to be the tabernacle of the transcendent Lord God himself, and of the Lamb of God and of the Holy Spirit, and of the redeemed of all ages and climes. What will it be to dwell above and with the Lord of glory reign? It'll be the people that make heaven heaven wanted. The divine persons themselves, they are heaven, and it will be the behavior of the people that are there that will be our constant joy and delight. Oh, I'm looking forward to it. Our Lord painted some vivid pictures of it, didn't he? He said, on one occasion, make sure you get in by the narrow gate, for there will be some who shall stand outside when the door is closed, and they shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob come, and they will take their seats at the banquet table. The word our Lord used was based on oriental custom, not sitting on seats so much as reclining, uh, at the banquet table. When Orientals had a great feast, they didn't sit on seats. They lay down on their sides, supporting themselves with one elbow, with the other to reach for the dainties on the table. And that is why, when John was at the Last Supper with the Lord Jesus, and he was there by the Lord, and the Lord was there, and John was here, and they were lying on their left side, still say reclining and using their right to pass the dishes and eat the food. All John had to do was to lean back and look up into the face of Christ because he was reclining next to the Lord Jesus. And you shall see Abraham and Isaac. Oh, I'm, I'm itching to see them, aren't you? I've got questions to ask Abraham, and in particular Sarah, when I get home to. Uh, of course I want to see the Lord first of all, of course I do. But eternity is going to last a long time, isn't it? I hope I'm somewhere near Abram. I don't know where you're hoping to be in glory with all those multi-millions and how many years it'll take you to get round to where Abram is, if ever you get round to it. But I hope I'm allowed to say I've got questions to ask the dear man, you'll see, and in particular Sarah. And as for Jacob's wives, I do want to know what it was like for them living in a tent with Jacob. I think they'll have some stories to tell, won't they? Yes. Lovely men and women of God, to look back upon their experiences and share with them what they learned of the Lord here in this life. Well, says John, the twelve gates, you know, the each one of the several gates was of one pearl. One pearl making up one gate. Do you know, when it comes to jewels, size isn't everything, is it? Size is not a very reliable guide to value. A stack of hay is very large, isn't it? A diamond very small. But then we've no hesitation in saying that the diamond is far more valuable than the haystack, surely. Size is not necessarily a guide to value. But here, surely, the size of the gates is going to be exceedingly interesting, isn't it? For did you see what it said? That each gate is not a collection of pearls, thousands and thousands and thousands of pearls, all studded into the gate, eventually to make a big city gate. But each city gate, can you think of the size of a city gate and measure the depth of the wall and ask yourself, what is the colossal size of a gate? And each gate is simply one pearl. Some pearl. To be the size of a city gate, some pearl. And if they are right to tell us that pearls are produced as a grain of sand or something gets in the shell and irritates the oyster, and the oyster meets the irista- irritation by secreting the fluid that turns itself into the pearl. That a pearl, therefore, is the result of the oyster's suffering, its reaction to suffering. Then what a marvelous metaphor we have here. The way into the gate, a pearl produced by such suffering, some pearl the size of a gate, some suffering. Oh yes, this is the way into that eternal city, and it talks at once, doesn't it, to us about the sufferings of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Who shall measure his reaction to life's pain. We think of Calvary, don't we, in the sense of his atoning sufferings. They are immeasurable. They, we could almost say, the most important. But what a marvelous thing it is to contemplate, contemplate our Lord's reaction to pain. It never met- made him bitter, did it? We'll think of the night when he had to expose Judas the traitor, and did it by offering him the sop of his friendship. When Judas refused his friendship and went out into the night, the Lord Jesus spoke to him, and the apostles couldn't, couldn't hear what the Lord said. They thought he said, give something to the poor, Judas. You imagine the tone of voice in which our Lord would have said, give something to the poor. And he was speaking, in fact, to Judas, telling him to get on with his dastardly work. Pain never made him selfish, did it? In the midst of his agonies on Calvary, he had time to think about his mother and her need for comfort and solace and solace and sustenance. Had time to convert the dying thief and prepare him for paradise. Our Lord's reaction to pain. Never did it make him sinful. It only enhanced his glory. We shall enter that glorious city through the sufferings of the Lord Jesus. There's another side to it, though, isn't there? Paul, when he revisited the converts that he had earlier made in Asia Minor, warned them from the start of their career that through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom. Yes, salvation is a gift, isn't it? But it can be for some people that receiving the gift of salvation involves them in the loss of everything else. A Muslim coming to faith in Christ will have to face the possibility that he will be poisoned by his relatives for his profession of faith in the Lord Jesus. Salvation for him is a gift. It may cost everything he has. And all of us are warned that in the world we shall have tribulation. And then there's another side to it, isn't there? The gate of an eastern city was not merely the way into the city. The gate of the city was the place where the elders sat to administer the city. When Jacob saw his vision of the ladder, with God at the side of the ladder, and the great civil service of heaven, the angels of God ascending and descending upon the ladder, Jacob said, Jacob's comment was, this is the gate of heaven. Jacob wasn't thinking of the way into heaven at that time. Jacob is still a career to go, you know. It's like some of us in our youth, we didn't want to go to heaven too quickly. Isn't that funny? You'll hear people talk like that still. They'll say, you know, I had a near one the other day, you know, I nearly had an accident, and and that if I have, well, I came within an inch of a fatal accident, and I would have gone home to heaven, but there the Lord had mercy on me. It's so funny, isn't it, the way we talk of heaven? Well, Jacob felt like that. He wasn't thinking of going to heaven at once. He got to get married first and have a career. But anyway, uh, he said, this is the gate of heaven, meaning I discovered the very center of heaven's government, the gates of the city will be the focus, the fo key of its administration. And you know, we're told that not to the angels has he put in subjection the age to come of which we speak, but man. The church, we're told, should judge angels. The church will judge the world. It is written that we shall reign with him. When at last we get home to glory, we shall reign with him, if so be we suffer with him. The gate was made of one pearl. And when you get in the inside the gate, there's the street. Well, that is so in any ancient town, isn't it? You come through the gate, and there's the main street leading on to the center of the city. And the street, we're told, was pure gold, as it were, transparent glass. So what shall that tell us? Why, it shall tell us that the way, uh, the way into the city, into its deeper experiences, in- into its center. A street of gold. You say, will it be literal gold? Be nice, you think, wouldn't it, to drive your heavenly Mercedes-Benz, or whatever it is we shall have then, on gold instead of tarmac. Oh, but you'll soon get used to that, wouldn't you? Yeah. Surely it is a metaphor. And the place in the New Testament that helps us to understand the metaphor is what our dear brother Peter talks to us about in one Peter chapter one, isn't it? The approved part of your faith, he says, much more precious than gold, that nevertheless is tried by fire, to be found to praise honor and glory at the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. Gold purified, so pure that it's like transparent glass, absolutely pure, no dross in it whatsoever. When we get home at last to heaven, that's how our faith shall be, you know, the approved part of our faith. Wait a minute, says somebody, you got that bit wrong. Uh, but when we get home to heaven, we shan't need faith anymore, shall we? Say, surely the Bible says that we walk now by faith and not by sight. That's now. Ha. When we get home to heaven, we shan't need the faith. We shall have it all by sight. We shall see the Lord. Well, yes, that's perfectly true. Him whom not having seen, we love. Still we don't see him, and yet we believe him. One day we shall see him. Yes, that is perfectly true. And as people say, faith will give place to sight. Amen. Oh, but wait a minute. When you get home to heaven, will you then be free at last to disbelieve the Lord? When the Lord tells you something, will you still have to believe it? I have an idea you will, won't you? When you get home to heaven, will you understand everything equally as God does? Are you going to be omniscient when you get home to heaven? No, I think not. So there'll always be things, new things that God is telling us. And of course we shall have to believe him, shall we? So faith will still be necessary when we can get home to glory, surely it will. And tell me, will you have to depend on the Lord when you get home to glory? Or will you be so secure you'll be absolutely independent and not have to trust the Lord anymore? Of course not. You can't please the Lord without believing him. Without faith, says the Bible, it's impossible to please him. And that's why we shall still need faith in many areas, still trust the Lord. And incidentally, that's why God spends such a large part of our time here on earth, doesn't he? Purifying our faith. Not a waste of time, you know. All the pain and the anguish that the blessed Lord has allowed you to go through, my sister, my brother, for the purifying of your faith, is not a waste of time, it's not a waste of pain. God will not waste one drop of your pain. Pain is the most expensive thing in the world, isn't it? The costliest thing in the world. Lessons we have learned through pain. We can't afford to lose them, can we? God won't waste it. But you see, our faith in the Lord, our trust in the Lord, our very enjoyment of heaven will depend on our faith being absolutely spotless and free of all adross and false. And that's why God doesn't spare us, you know, not here. Can't afford to. He's an eternity to prepare for. And therefore, our faith, that valuable thing, more valuable than gold, it is the key to the enjoyment of heaven. God spends his time and ours now concentrating on it, purifying the faith, so it ceases to be just cupboard love, simply excitement, like Job, whom God had blessed with prosperity, but in the end God had to allow his faith to be tested, to show that it was real faith and not cupboard love. So does God treat us. By the time we get home to glory, our faith will be clear as crystal, leading us into the deeper things of that wonderful city. If you went to any big city, like m- like Brisbane or Melbourne or somewhere, it's the city center that has all the important buildings generally, isn't it? Come, they say, let's show you the center of our city. That's the pride and joy. That's where all the big buildings are. Huh. That's where the cathedrals generally are, and the House of Parliament and things. Well, when you get home to the city and you enter in the gates and you go down the golden street saying to yourself, now let's have a look at the temple in this great city. Surely that will be a magnificent temple. You know, in Jerusalem, in Solomon's time, the most marvelous building of all was the temple in the city of Jerusalem. So if his building was marvelous, let's go down the street and have a look at the heavenly temple and see the marvelous temple of God that's in this city. And says John, I didn't see any. Didn't see any building that could be called a temple. I wonder if he felt a twinge of disappointment. But it wasn't for long, was it? Suddenly he realized that the Lord God and the Lamb are the temple. The moment he got inside the gate, he was in the temple. The temple is not made of bricks and mortar. The temple is formed of the divine persons themselves. All to wake up to the wonderful, uh, uh, experience and realization that you are with the Lord and in the Lord. Wow. At home. What Paul talked about, didn't he? He said to be present in the body is to be absent, and he didn't say absent from heaven, did he? He said absent from the Lord. Though the Lord be with us. Yet in another sense, as long as we are in this body, we are, so to speak, away in a foreign country. We're not at home. We are but pilgrims and strangers. We're absent from the Lord. But to be absent from the body, says Paul, is to be not simply in heaven, but to be at home with the Lord. Ah, what a magnificent thing that will be. That will be heaven. And to be in his presence, the old distinction between sacred and secular, gone forever. There'll be nothing but unmitigated sacredness, the presence of the Lord forever. They shall go no more out, no wandering, no occasional lapses from the Lord's presence, but ever and ever and ever to be with the Lord. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine upon it. The glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the land. City had no need of neither the moon to shine upon it. Do you know what? From time to time, of course, like you do in Australia, I get visitors come to stay with me in Northern Ireland, and of course it's my pride and joy to show them the wonders of our scenery. But so very often, when I got the visitors out in the car and have taken them to a beautiful scenic place, then I have to say, but well, you'll have to take my word for it today because it's raining like cats and dogs, and the sky is as dark and black as it could be, do you see? And I say, well, over there, there is, well, there's a beautiful view, if only it weren't raining, you say. So look over there and imagine you can see a lovely view, but of course it looks horrible. Do you see? Because, uh, the beauty of Ireland, and it has a lot of beauty, you'll only see it when the sun shines, do you see? Needs the light of the sun to bring out the beauty of the country, the green of the leaves and the yellow of the gorse and the browny of the peat and the lovely colors of the moorlands, you'll see, and the purples and indigos of the sea. But you don't see it unless the sun shines on it. Yes. Put people in a dark room, completely pitch black, and you wouldn't tell the difference between the pretty and the ugly, would you? They wouldn't tell the difference between a palace and a cottage. In fact, if we were in the dark completely, we should become completely disorientated, and life would become insignificant. We should be lost. But this city, this all-glorious city, how will God bring out its beauty that all may see it? And it said that the glory of God lightened it. The very presence of God in all his glory shining upon that city brought- brings out the glory of it. And you say, well, what is the city then? Is it simply the golden streets and walls, literal streets and walls? No, not just that literally, is it? The New Jerusalem is made up of the redeemed people of God. I'm going to tell you, you're going to look beautiful then, my dear sister. Well, you do now, of course, but you're going to look, uh, beautiful then anyway when you get home to glory. Ah, yes, and perhaps things in your character and personality that have not always been appreciated because somehow they didn't come out like you'd have liked them to come out. Ah, in that day, every glistening part of your pers- redeemed personality will be on view, brought out for all to see by the very glory of the presence of God. Oh, what a princess you will look. Conformed to the Lord Jesus. Your personality not lost in the other multi-myriads of personalities, unique in its own right and redeemed by the Lord and the glory of God shining on you, bringing out your heavenly loveliness, and you sir as well. And there's going to be no night there. For the Lamb is the lamp thereof. In the tabernacle behind the veil was the glory of God. Outside the veil there was a lamp. And during the nighttime on earth there was a lamp burning perpetually in the tabernacle, for the tabernacle was a copy of things in the heavens, and there was never any night, not in the tabernacle. There was no night there. There'll be no night in heaven. But now we're not talking about the daily round, are we, of light and dark. There shall be no night in the other sense. Nothing to becloud. There is sometimes on earth, isn't there? We're all of us redeemed men and women. But sometimes it's difficult for you to see even my good things because of the clouds and the darknesses and the storms that brew up and the shadows of night and misunderstanding and misexpression. It should be gone then, and what shall banish it? It is not only God in his uncreated glory that will shine upon us, but the Lamb, the great Redeemer, will shed his eternal light upon us, and we shall appear not merely as glorified creatures of Almighty God, but the redeemed of the Lord. And then it says the nations shall walk in the light of it, you'll see, because we shall reflect the glory of God. Uh, without distortion, we shall reflect his glory. And the nations do bring their honor and glory unto it, you'll see, and they shall bring their wealth to it. Oh, what excitement that's going to be. What kind of wealth, you say? Well, I suppose, I don't know, it could be little bars of gold coming up from Australia somewhere, from the Nullarbar, or the, uh, the diamonds that they tell me you've just e- explored, but I don't know, I think heaven will have enough of diamonds anyway by the time you get there, don't they? What wealth shall they bring? Bring, surely, shall they not, the wealth, uh, of experience. What a treasure it's going to be. They'll say, when Solomon was king in the age of peace and plenty in the Old Testament, the Queen of Sheba came, the wise men from the east came, and as they came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, they each one brought some beautiful, expensive present. And the Queen of Sheba came, and she brought apes and peacocks and things. That would be unusual in heaven, wouldn't they? But she brought apes and peacocks, and she brought almug trees, you see. And the court officials, seeing the almug trees, uh, that hadn't grown in Palestine, when they saw these almug trees, they scratched their expert heads. They said, what could we do with almug trees? And I know, said someone, that would make, now look at the grain of the wood, that would make marvelous musical instruments, you see. So they made musical instruments out of the elmug trees. Cool, there was music, uh, in Solomon's court, you know, out of these exotic instruments that came from the ends of the earth, you'll see, making their contribution to the music of Solomon's court. Oh, what treasures there will be in glory as they come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and they sit down in the kingdom of God, and they bring their treasures. Ah, there shall be music up in heaven, such as you have never heard, as they bring this piece of exotic wood, excuse the metaphor, from the outback of us, and is brought to glory, and there they make music out of it. They make music out of your experience, however exotic and far off once you were, from this planet Earth, so far distant from glory. But as we're taken in, what music there shall be, what enrichment of heaven. From your experience and from mine and from the experience of the redeemed of all the ages. And I end by putting a question to you. When God is infinite and has everything there is, how could you possibly increase his glory? And the wonderful thing is this, that that's going to be done. The redeemed come, and they bring their honor and glory to it, to the praise of Almighty God. God's great venture in creating planet Earth and putting creatures like us on it, and running the risk of our using our free will to disobey him and defy him and cause moral chaos. Yet in the end, God is going to have the victory, isn't he, through Jesus Christ, his son, and out of the sorrows of earth, out of the sorrows of Calvary itself, God is going to bring a great harvest of glory to his name. And among that glory shall be the glory of your experience that you bring from your homeland, home to the magnifying of the name of God for all. There's a lot more to be said about heaven, but this isn't heaven, this is the Gold Coast on earth. And were I to try to say the rest, I should most certainly keep you too long, but it's been a joy talking to you. And the wonderful thing about it all is that the reality of heaven is going to be multi-million times more real than anything we have thought about this morning. For these are the true sayings of God. May God by his spirit work in us what he worked in Paul, having given us the earnest of our great inheritance. May he increase within us the longing and the desire that as soon as God can release us from our duties here, he may take us home to his wonderful home on high.