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Freedom, Part II: Citizens of Heaven 8th Sunday after Pentecost, July 6, 2008
But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ – Philippians 3:20
What do you think of the video you just saw? You just saw Jo Average on the street talking about what will happen after they die, and of all the people we just heard from, only one got it right: he said that after he dies he will go to heaven because he has accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Everyone else in this little video got it wrong. They got it wrong because they were either depending on themselves and how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ they are, or because they have no idea what will happen after they die. One said, essentially, she will be a ghost along with all the other ghosts all around her that she sees and talks to; another said he didn’t care because he doesn’t believe in God anyway since he’s an atheist; still another tried a tactic that many, many people do: she simply refuses to think about her ever dying! It’s not so much a matter of dying, but rather where we will be after we die. Today we are talking about freedom in Christ in the second half of our series on freedom. We’re going today to Philippians chapter 3, verse 20, so I invite you to pull out your Bibles and open them to this book. Philippians is the 11th book in the New Testament, so the order goes: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – the Gospels that tell us about the birth, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus; Acts – a book about the early church and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; then come the Epistles, literally the ‘letters’ where the Holy Spirit explains how we are to live in light of Gospel. The order goes Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, and then Philippians. To put this in context, Philippi was a colony of Rome that was nowhere near Rome proper. The city of Philippi was about 600 miles or so away from Rome. It was the home of many retired Roman soldiers who were given tracts of land in Philippi for their ‘retirement package’ in turn for being a continued Roman military presence on the outskirts of the empire. The locals were proud of being part of the Roman empire. So proud, in fact, they were one of the first groups of people to stop speaking Greek and instead started using Latin – the official language of the Roman Empire – and to start dressing in the typical Roman clothing of the time. For them, their citizenship was all about being a part of Rome. Enter then God’s letter to the believers and one very key verse for us today in chapter 3, verse 20: But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now what does this have to do with the second half of our look at freedom? We are all citizens of the United States of America. Because of our citizenship we have freedoms others do not have in their countries. But I submit to you that as Christians, we have an even greater freedom because of our Christian citizenship. The United States of America, as great a country as it is, is not the final destination for those who call on Jesus as their Lord and Savior. The final destination, the place where we have our true citizenship is in Heaven. And while we are here in the U.S., we wait for our Savior to come back from our true home, our true country, and take us back. The old hymn goes I am but a stranger here, Heaven is my home; Earth is a desert drear, Heaven is my home. Danger and sorrow stand ‘round me on every hand; Heaven is my father-land, Heaven is my home. What though the tempest rage, Heaven is my home; Short is my pilgrimage, Heaven is my home. And time’s wild wintery blast soon shall be overpast; I shall reach home at last, Heaven is my home. Heaven is our home because those in Christ have been set free from the things of this world. Heaven is the permanent place of our citizenship because of the Spiritual freedom Jesus fought for, died for, rose for and won for you and me. Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what all these people in the video we just watched didn’t get. They count their citizenship in earthly terms with no eye towards our ultimate home. Somewhere along the lines we’ve lost our joy of being in Heaven. There was a time when the thought of Heaven produced pure, unadulterated joy among people. They laughed, they cried for joy, they were willing to leave everything and everyone behind if it met they could be with Jesus. In the early church funerals were occasions for rejoicing, not mourning. The Apostle Paul put it this way: For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. [1] Paul understood what it met to be set free. Remember, he was once a persecutor of the Christians. He made his living by hunting down Christians and delivering them over to be put in prison, beaten, perhaps even put to death. He was present at the first execution of a Christian person – Stephen.[2] Once set free, though, he knew, perhaps better than anyone else, what it met to be set free by the Son. And he realized that regardless of what happens to him here in this life, he is a citizen of heaven, and one day because of the freedom purchased for him by Jesus, he will go there. Do you have that confidence today? Do you believe that when Jesus sets you free, you are free indeed? “Behold! The old has died, and the new has been born!”[3] Do you believe that when you come forward to this altar rail and receive the Lord’s Supper, those sins you repent of are forgiven and forgotten? God throws them to the bottom of the sea; He separates them from you as far as east is from west. Those who have been set free by the Son are free from consequences of their sins – that is, hell. And because of this freedom we have the confidence of a new citizenship in heaven. Most people, though, are like the people in this video. Some get it; they understand what it means to be truly free in the Son and have a new citizenship, but most don’t. Remember what we talked about last week when we said what freedom in Jesus is: it’s freedom to be who we were created to be – God’s children living lives in the light of His love for us; people who have been set free from the bondage of our sin and reliance on ourselves and traditions. People who have been set free to be firmly anchored in God’s word. Freedom not to sin, but freedom from continuance in sin. Freedom not to reject God’s word in our lives, but freedom to find our very life in God’s word. Freedom not to make excuses for sin, but freedom to call sin, ‘sin’ and help others who have not yet experienced the freedom the Son brings. For these people we saw in this video today, and so many more like them we meet in our daily lives, their eternal citizenship is an unknown, marked by their own ‘worth’ as they determine it. If even that, actually. For many it’s exactly what we saw with the man who said he doesn’t care what happens to him when he dies because he doesn’t believe in God anyway. For others, it’s what we saw in the girl who has tried the approach of “if I ignore it, it will go away.” By their own admission they’ve not been set free by the Son, and their citizenship is still of this world. C.S. Lewis said, “Aim at heaven and you’ll get in; aim at earth and you’ll get neither.” For people who claim citizenship to this world, they have all the reward they are ever going to have right now. This is as good as it’s going to get. For people who have their citizenship in heaven, this is a place of waiting, a place of preparing, a place of letting others know about the citizenship they could have that is literally out of this world. For most people today marks the end of the 4th of July Summer vacations. Today means a return home, and a getting ready to return to the regular routines of the week tomorrow morning. It’s all about getting ready for the return to the day-to-day existence in this world. This is not so for us. Today is a day when we re-celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the freedom that brings us, and the citizenship it gives us. Today we remember the captivity we were once under, and the freedom we’ve been given to live anchored to the truth of God’s word. Today we prepare to go out into the world tomorrow, that’s true, but we prepare as citizens of heaven with a message the rest of the world is literally dying from the lack of hearing. If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed to be citizens of heaven. Celebrate that today, tomorrow and everyday as you live the life of a person set free from the repercussions of sins confessed and turned away from. It’s the freedom given to you by the One who gave everything to get it for you. Amen |
