Dr. Ed Young - Heaven is Fun
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Google "heaven" and you know what you'll see? Miles and miles of white clouds. You may see an angel or a cherub with a little halo around. You may see a harp of some kind but on and on and on and on you get the world's picture of heaven and it is a million, million miles from being a picture of the reality of paradise. If you've been around here, you've already discovered that. But I can tell you something, there are thousands of books written on heaven and I don't believe you'll find a single one with the title that best describes heaven. It is heaven is fun.
Have you ever heard of that before? Does that sound bizarre, way out of the question, ridiculous, trivial, hard to believe? Read the Bible and you'll discover if you read ever so carefully that heaven is absolutely fun, unlimited pleasure, unlimited joy, unlimited celebration, unlimited creativity, unlimited spontaneity. Heaven is unlimited fun. Look at Mr. Webster how he defines fun. The etymology is from on old French word but it's got great things in there, pleasure, you know, applause, laughter, all of those wonderful things that some of us are involved in, some of us have forgotten how to be involved in. But what I want you to get today is the simple basic fact that heaven is fun.
Our God likes to make things. Have you noticed that? He really likes to make things. He is a creator and the thrilling thing about it, he allows all of us to participate in his creation. Did you know that? We need never to forget the magnificent thing that all of us were created in the image of God, every person here. How did we get in this world? How did we have life breathed into us? It came when a father and a mother came together with God and we as parents become co-creators with the almighty. Do you think God needed a male and a female to bring life into being? Absolutely not, but he used us as a part of his building, as a part of his creative process and that's what we're gonna have in heaven.
Everything is not complete. Everything is incomplete and our Father in heaven, God of this universe, God who presides over heaven, our heavenly Father, our Abba Father, he loves to build things. And he uses sometimes millions of years to bring things into existence. Sometimes he speaks and he uses human beings. Do you think in the afterlife of our life you think in all of eternity God's gonna stop his wonderful desire to build things, to create things? Absolutely not. You think he's going, to when we leave this world, say, "All right, I'll let you create life there. You had that capacity but look, you no longer will be a part of the creative process". I don't think so. And remember our operative verse that we've looked at.
1 Corinthians 3:9, repeat it after me, follow me. "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love him". He has prepared heaven for us and heaven is gonna be more fun than you can imagine. You say, "Well, I know about this earth". You know what this earth, living on this earth is like? Have you ever been to an amusement park in fact wintertime when everything's shut down? You know, there's a slide, the water slide, no water. There's the merry-go-round. There's all of these machines, these apparatus. Nothing is there, nobody's there, it's shut down and it's just a dismal place.
When you were there, boy, in the summer when it was alive and moving, people were shouting, and eating, and crying, and so many things going on but, boy, in the winter we're gonna look back on this life, this little bitty life, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, I'll give you a hundred years. That's nothing. That's like a twinkle of your eye compared to where those who are in Christ will spend heaven and heaven is not gonna be floating and on some little cloud. Remember we discovered that heaven, according the Bible, is going to be where we will fulfill our dreams or we'll have time if you want to become an astronomer. Wouldn't it be great to know all about... if you have time, you want to develop so many talents that we have.
So, we go to heaven and we realize that in heaven, everything we have, all the senses that we have, we know at least five of them will be expanded and exploded in ways we can't even comprehend. See, we can't imagine. In heaven, what will we hear? What kind of ears will we have in heaven? You know, what will we hear? Well, we hear now a lot of things. We love to hear the little cooing of a baby. I dedicated a baby in early service, little cooing, boy, that's great music, isn't it? And to hear birds out singing in the morning, man, I love that hear that. And to be at the beach and to walk the beach early and, boy, those waves are crashing down. Boy, I love that. Or be in the mountains and hear the wind blowing through the trees or go in the backyard and just look up in a summer night when everything is clear.
Man, you hear, you hear the music of heaven. And what about music? We will there be music in heaven? Absolutely, all kinds of music and it'll make our music here seem sort of, trying to find the right word, puny. Oh yeah, earthly music is great, it's fabulous as we've already experienced that with our choir and orchestra. That'll just be sort of puny in heaven when the mass choirs of the universe get together and the mass orchestra of the universe get together. And we will hear music that is beyond our understanding. And now, for example, I don't know much about classical music. I know I'm the loser there, I would like to.
In heaven, I'll be able to learn and develop. I don't know anything about opera, very little about grand opera, light opera. I'd love to pursue all that. And see, all of this had been disturbed, and twisted, and polluted in this life, it will all be cleaned up. Rock 'n' roll music will be baptized in heaven. It may be okay. What about jazz? What about gospel? I love the singing of the spirituals and then we got the great, great music of the church. "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," Martin Luther. Isaac Watts, "Alas And Did My Savior Bleed". Handel's "Messiah". And you look at Charles Wesley, Fanny Crosby. I mean, look at that, such great hymns that we have. Some musicals we had of yesterday that our kids would sing for us.
Music comes from all form, high, and low, and in the middle and all of this will be enhanced and developed because that'll be a part of the celebration of heaven and all of us will be able to sing. Something, wouldn't it? So, the hearing of music, the hearing of sound, will be greatly enhanced and developed in heaven and that's part of the excitement, and the fun, and the anticipation of it. We'll participate in it, we'll listen to it, we'll grow. And I'm gonna tell you a secret. I've always wanted to play the violin and I may spend a while just learning how to play the violin. Wouldn't you like to do that? Goodness gracious.
See, that is the explosiveness and the expansiveness of heaven that we can pursue unto God's grace and God's giftedness to all of us and it's going to be fun. Some people forgot and have fun on this earth. Boy, you take death away, take pain away, clean up our personalities, get our minds and hearts thinking right, give us that new resurrected body and my goodness, heaven is gonna be just more fun than we can imagine. Just the hearing part of heaven. What about seeing? Man, the colors that we'll see. There are just full of primary colors. There's red, white, blue, yellow, isn't that the four? You take those four colors, Jo Beth would put it on a palette, she'd mix those together and get all the other colors.
I have been told that the human eye has a capacity to see 10 million different colors and shades but that's nothing compared to heaven. You think God's gonna be limited to four colors? The beauty of the magnificent, the creativity, my, my, the artists that will be there, the sculptors that will be there. I'd like to sculpt something. You know, maybe Michelangelo will have time to teach some of us a little bit about painting and about sculpture. Bach might sit down and say, "You want me to tell you about the piano, boys, this is a..." And we'd learn to create and do things not only in music that we hear, in artistic endeavors that we'll engage in.
Heaven is going to be a lot of fun. The doubts, the dead end streets, the things we didn't complete. There's no incompletes in heaven. That is the fun of it. And what about in heaven, what about the odors? What about the building, the smell? Say, "That's no big deal". It is to me. The building to smell has a memory. I can stand right here, ladies and gentlemen, and close my eyes and I can, I can smell my mother's fruitcake. Three weeks before Christmas every year walk in our little kitchen, there on that the linoleum and, boy, she'd bake fruitcake. I can smell it. But we'll smell in heaven. I can remember being in Jerusalem and walking the streets in the old city and they'd have fresh-baked bread out there selling. I can smell that bread right now, or in my little hometown across from my little church.
When Smith's Bakery was baking bread, we'd go down there and put our money together and buy a whole loaf of hot, fresh-made bread. I can smell that today. Oh yeah, and about taste? That's big. You know who the V.I.P.s are of Hawaii? You'd be surprised unless you know the islands. I mean all the famous of the world go to Hawaii. You name stars, writers, billionaires they'll all there. You know who the real bigshot in the islands of Hawaii is? It's the chefs. Oh yeah, I'm not kidding. A chef goes along like King Kong. I mean a chef in Hawaii that's known that the whole place bows down before them 'cause they can cook.
Do you know what genre of books sells more than any other genre of book? Cookbooks, more cookbooks sell than many other categories of books put together. Look at TV, I mean some of you ladies, that's all you watch. I mean, look at all the cooking shows. They got little kids. I saw them, they were competing in cooking. It's amazing. They got teenagers. They got people from all over the world cooking, bringing all these things together and that's a wonderful thing because it appeals to our palate, our taste. And we have just a limited amount of taste here but our tastes change. When I was a boy, my mother would make me eat spinach, and turnip greens, and cornbread.
Man, I love that stuff today. It takes a while to adapt ourself to taste. And look at all the taste of heaven that will be expand, man, it will be something to sit down at the marriage feast of the lamb, that'll be a fun thing when we arrive at the wedding feast that will be there between the Lord Jesus Christ and all of us who in Christ are called in that symbol of reality the bride of our Lord. That is fun, a feast, a banquet, a party, a celebration. Man, what we'll hear, what we'll see, what we'll smell, what we'll taste, what about what we feel? Man, this to touch a baby's skin, how does that feel? How does that feel?
I went in the store recently a guy came out said, "Feel these sheets". "Oh, all right". He said, "Now feel regular kind of cotton sheets". "All right". "D you see any difference"? "Absolutely, I want a pair". It didn't take long. What about feeling? We were taught in school there are only four elements in nature. What were they? They were fire, and water, a air, and earth. Does that cover everything? Can you think of anything else? That covers it, doesn't it? And that's about all we can feel, but you think God's gonna be limited? Man, there's gonna be so many things to feel and our motions will explode and our sensitivities will explode. This is gonna be the fun of heaven.
Now understand something, God in the economy's life never loses anything. God loves to build things, creative, we'll be on that, and God never loses anything. You know, the only thing we'll lose when we go to heaven is death and with it sin because sin led us to death and that's the only thing that won't be there. That factor will be totally eliminated. We'll lose that but, my goodness, God will take everything that is sort of crippled, and incomplete, and broken, and not fully understood in this world and make the paths right and clean.
By the way, go to cemetery, you see on the tombstone, "Rest in peace". That is slanderous. Rest in peace, this does not explain anything about heaven for those who are in Christ Jesus. There's not gonna be rest. There'll be peace but it'll be a different kind of peace but now, now we'll be marshaled up and able really to fulfill the deepest longing and passions of our life and that is gonna be the fun of heaven. There's not going to be rest in peace there. If that's what you're looking for, you're going in the wrong direction. My, my, and we're not gonna lose things, we're gonna gain things.
Somebody said, "Is there gonna be dancing in heaven"? Absolutely. We take dancing today in so many areas and made it scandalous and sensual and like we've disturbed so many things that are good. Dancing is gonna be a part... it's a part of the Bible. Miriam danced, David danced, there's a time of celebration. There's something about rhythm there which I don't have any of, but that's what we're gonna... it's a part of the celebratory atmosphere of the Almighty. It's a part of the fun we'll have in heaven. If you're not with it now, you're in trouble.
You see where we're going with heaven? Heaven is fun. "Is there going to be laughter in heaven if we all want to be..." There's gonna be praise. There's gonna be transcendence. There's gonna be worship. There's gonna be all of these things that we love, and admire, and think of and to a degree in heaven with a mass choir but also there's gonna be a lot of joy, and laughter, and fun. Where did laughter come from, ladies and gentlemen? James says, Book of James first chapter, "Every good and perfect gift comes from above, it comes from God". There's no other source for it. And we think we've laughed now, wait till you get to heaven.
Let's just say that I died, I went to heaven, the angel was taking me in and says, "Here's your home throughout eternity," and he takes to one of those remodels in Waco or Laurel, Mississippi you know? And I like it, it's nice, this is great. Then the angel says, "This is gonna be your life companion," and he brings in this woman that's 7 feet tall that's good slime all over her body. She has a stench you get in 10 feet of her. Her hands and feet are claws and when she breathes, her breath would melt steel, ah. And I said, "What is this"? "That is your companion for eternity". I said, "I don't understand". He said, "You've gotta pay for your sin".
So, I look out the window and I see there on a beautiful hill this unbelievable mansion going 65 miles an hour taking 10 minutes to drive by. I mean, it was unbelievable. And one view on the side was the ocean, the other view was a lake and around it was two or three Augusta National Golf courses and I mean, they had everything you can imagine. I looked up there and I said, "Who is that? Isn't that Linda Carter up there who was Miss USA and Wonder Woman"? And the angel said, "Yes". I said, "Oh well. And who is that with her"? I said, "Is that Keith Carmichael"? And the angel said, "Yes". And I said, "Well, I sure do not understand this. Here I am with this thing and here is Keith up there with Wonder Woman". And the angel said, "You do not understand, Wonder Woman has to pay for her sin too".
Do you not think we're gonna have fun in heaven, ladies and gentlemen, what do you think? I thank those who've already gone before us, my mother, my dad, my brother, so many friends. They're saying, "Hey, you guys don't get it. Man, this is fabulous. It's spectacular. It is just so beyond anything I understood when I breathed the air of the earth". Ah, you can sort of smell a little bit of the Garden of Eden around, the flowers, and the fruit, and heaven is gonna be fun. But here's the problem, how do you know you're gonna get there?
Marco Polo went and all the way to China and he went along what they call the silk road and he went all over China. Kublai Khan was the emperor of China, this was in the middle of the 13th century, and the emperor really liked Marco Polo and gave him a golden passport. It's about a foot long, each thick of gold and on this passport, some you've already read it in Mandarin, in Chinese. It says that this person gets anything they want as they travel through China, food, clothes, guides, housing, money, didn't make any difference.
And so, Kublai Khan gave this golden passport to Marco Polo. He had anything and everything as he walked all over China for 24 years. And Marco Polo took back to Italy things they'd never seen in Italy. They didn't know anything about postal service. Marco Polo told them they had it in China. They didn't know anything about coal. Marco Polo told them about what they did in China. They didn't know anything about a whole bunch of things and also Kublai Khan told Marco Polo, "Go and find a hundred wise, Godly, Christian men and bring them back to China to tell my nation about Jesus".
I don't think that was done but it was something. And the challenge that Marco Polo had when he went back to Italy was trying to explain to the Italians the lifestyle in China. Man, it was so different, the food, the culture, the atmosphere, education, everything was different. And the problem he had was explaining to the Chinese the lifestyle of the Italians, it was just hard. And the frame of reference weren't things they were familiar with. You see, our frame of reference, we're familiar with a lake, and with a sunrise, and with the stars, and we're familiar with things on this earth and this is just a souvenir of heaven. All the beautiful, wonderful, fun, joyous, exciting things are a souvenir.
You say, "Well, you know, the Super Bowl is something". I've been to a Super Bowl. It's exciting. It's just a souvenir of the reality of heaven. World Series, I've been there, souvenir. Final Four, I've been there, just a souvenir. Bowl games, I've been there. We've been fishing, we've traveled. We've been, a lot of us been, but all of this, the best, the brightest, the most exciting and thrilling is just little souvenirs. I had a friend who was in Berlin when the Berlin Wall came back. He brought me a part of the Berlin Wall. I've got a literal part of the Berlin Wall. It's a souvenir. I've got another friend who brought me back some a special type of olive oil from Italy and brought it in a little bottle.
I didn't go there, it's a souvenir. All we have on this earth, folks, is a souvenir. It's a sample of that which you're gonna have in glory. And the bottom line, is do you have your passport to get you into heaven? What is that passport? It's Jesus Christ. It is the Lord Jesus Christ. If you've got him in your life and you've received him, that is your ticket to paradise, to a fulfillment, to joy, to live a resurrected life and a resurrected world with everything in this world resurrected to newness and freshness, and that is your ticket to heaven is Jesus Christ. He is the one passport. Straight out question, do you have your passport?