Sermon notes:
Will we know each other in heaven?
The Bible says, � We will be like Jesus� (1John 3:2) � and Jesus came to earth and was born like us and lived his life in the limitations of flesh and blood, and is glorified in that body in heaven today. He died as a man for mankind because mankind had fallen short of the glory of God and had to be punished for that failure. Jesus, in his body, took the punishment for us on the cross. What he is today in heaven, we will become in more ways than just in terms of a glorified body, we will also be totally separated from sin.
Jesus rose again in that same body which had started to decay in death. It was healed and renewed and lived again for all to see. In that body Jesus rose up into heaven in the full view of his disciples. The bible says that in like manner he will come again from heaven for all to see, he will come again in that recognisable, but glorified body!
After Jesus rose from the dead, and in his human, but changed body, he appeared and disappeared, eat, drank, talked with, and was recognised by his disciples, and we will be like him. Therefore recognisable! (We will remember in Mark 9:4 that the disciples somehow recognised Moses and Elijah when they were with Jesus on a mountain.)
God�s plan is the renewal of body soul and spirit. We will have new bodies after our death, glorified bodies made from the old like Jesus, they are called heavenly bodies in 1 Corinthians 15:40.
It is interesting to note that after Jesus died on the cross many of the saints of God who had died before his crucifixion, rose in their bodies from their graves and were seen and recognised, presumably before they were taken up into heaven. They arose because their graves had been disturbed by what seems like an earthquake at the moment of Jesus� death.
Jesus said that we would be like the angels of heaven; what did they look like? Well, they appeared and disappeared like Jesus. They appeared in human form like us, they eat, drank and talked like mankind. (Genesis 18 & 19) Sometimes they appeared in radiant garment like Jesus appeared on the mount of transfiguration. In the book of Revelation angels some times appear as giants standing astride great masses of land.
The Bible only gives us glimpses of what is to come and what our heavenly bodies will be like, it remains one of the mysteries of our faith, but it seems to me from the little evidence we have in the Bible, we can rest assured we will know each other in heaven!
Don Attenborough
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