Sermon Archive

“The Longing”

2 Corinthians 5:1-9
Bob DeGray
January 22, 2006

Key Sentence

The central answer to our longing is his presence.

Outline

I. The Longing (2 Cor 5:1-4)
II. The Presence (2 Cor 5:5-9)

Message

        Our recent Christmas series focused on the word Immanuel, ‘God with us’. We talked about the fact that God is with us in the storms of life, with us in a godless culture, with us in the person of Jesus. But the series was actually incomplete, because it only looked at the past and the present. We should also have looked at the fact that God has promised to be with us in the future. Calendar considerations and the trip to Gulfport prevented it. But I’ve got this one more week before we start our series in 1^st Corinthians, and it gives me an opportunity to jump in and finish this series.

        Now there are a lot of Scriptures that could be used to show ‘Immanuel in the Future’ We could turn to Revelation and read about no more death or mourning or crying or pain as God makes his dwelling with men. We could look at the numerous Old Testament promises like Leviticus 26:12 “I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people” or Ezekiel 37:27 “My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people.” We could turn to 1 Thessalonians and encourage each other with the truth that “the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.”

        But there is a perfectly good ‘Immanuel in our Future’ text that starts where we ended last week. In fact 2 Corinthians 5:1-9 is a great ‘Immanuel’ text. We’re going look at it today, and we’re going to see a great longing in Paul that will lead us to a deceptively simple truth: the central answer to our longing is his presence.

        Before we get to the text itself, there is a personal word I want to drop in here. The idea of ‘longing’ is particularly meaningful to me, but in a way I think is shared by many Christians. We resonate with the Biblical image of being pilgrims, on the way, aliens and strangers here, looking for a different country. We resonate with Hebrews 11 “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. ⁹By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. ¹⁰For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” He lived as a stranger, looking forward to a future.

        Hebrews goes on to say “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.

        ¹⁴People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. ¹⁵If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. ¹⁶Instead, they were longing for a better country--a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” God approves of this feeling of longing, that this world is not enough, not our final destination; this is a far country, not my home. Songwriter Andrew Peterson captured that in that song called ‘The Far Country’ that Jonathan and Hannah sang. Listen again to a couple of short clips from that song:

        Father Abraham, do you remember when
        You were called to a land, and you didn’t know the way
        ‘Cause we are wandering, in a foreign land
        We are children of the promise of the faith
        And I long to find it; Can you feel it, too?
        That the sun that's shining is a shadow of the truth

        This is a far country, a far country; not my home

        I can see in the strip malls and the phone calls, the flaming swords of Eden
        In the fast cash and the news flash, and the horn blast of war
        In the sin-fraught cities of the dying and the dead
        Like steel-wrought graveyards where the wicked never rest
        To the high and lonely mountain in the groaning wilderness
        We ache for what is lost as we wait for the holy God of Father Abraham

        I was made to go there; Out of this far country, to my home, to my home

        Now I’ve got a great life: a wonderful wife, great kids, fulfilling work, exciting times, and plenty of hope for each day. But I’m not preaching out of those things today - I’m preaching out of a longing ache for a home I’ve never seen, a country I’ve never lived in, a presence I’ve only tasted. And today’s text, like those texts in Hebrews, reinforces my longing: there is something more, there is some greater fulfillment of which all the fulfillments of this life are only a shadow. C. S. Lewis said this world is only the shadowlands of a greater fufillment to come. He said in Mere Christianity “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

I. The Longing (2 Cor 5:1-4)

        I’m convinced that Paul felt the same way. Listen to what he says in 2 Corinthians 5:1-4 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. ²Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, ³because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. ⁴For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

        The first word is ‘for’. What Paul is saying relates back to what we studied last week, where Paul talked about the eternal glory that far outweighs our present temporary afflictions, so that we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. Now he wants to describe a fragment of that unseen reality, and his first image compares our present and future bodies to a tent and a house. On the one hand we have "our earthly tent dwelling", the temporary structure we occupy during our sojourn on earth. Paul says this dwelling will be destroyed, literally ‘taken down’; the process of physical decay and death is like striking a tent. And since a tent can be easily swept away by storm, wind or other accident of nature, the comparison of the body to a tent is particularly apt. Paul the tentmaker would have had intimate knowledge of this kind of dwelling.

        All human beings experience the dismantling of their earthly tent-dwelling. Christians, however, look forward to a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. In contrast to a tent, the word for building denotes a stable and permanent structure. And since the first phrase refers to the believer’s body and his death, it seems clear these words refer to a believers body after death. Paul may be looking forward to the transformed body he will receive at Christ’s return, or he may be describing a heavenly intermediate body received at death. Later in the text it seems clear he’s describing that intermediate state. But what’s important is the certainty of the body. God's intention for the believer is existence in a body, not as a disembodied soul, as some would expect. This body is distinguished in three ways: it is of heavenly versus earthly origin; it is a permanent as opposed to a temporary structure; and it is assembled by God rather than by human hands.

        So Paul is clearly longing for something better than he now has. He says “Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, ³because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked.” While here in our dwelling tent we groan out of longing for something we don’t have. Paul uses a new metaphor; he longs to be clothed with this heavenly dwelling and done with this present struggle. The climax of this renewal is likened to putting on an overcoat; the verb implies putting on over something that is already in place. In describing the resurrection of believers, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that ‘the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.’ That’s what he longs for.

        And in verse 3 he contrasts this clothing and overclothing to being found naked. If the clothing is our present body and the overclothing is our future body, then being found naked would be having a soul without a body. In fact the Greek word he uses was frequently used to describe the soul apart from the body, and for many of the Greek philosophers that was the desired state. But in Paul’s Jewish mind set, nakedness would have been considered shameful. His desire, and ours as well, is life in a body for eternity; I believe this is what God has made us for.

        So Paul appears to be saying that even in the moment after death, if we die before the return of Christ, we will have a body in which to appear before God in heaven, suitable for the intermediate state. Paul doesn’t give details of that state, either here or in what follows, so it’s speculation to say ‘that body will be different’ or ‘that body will be the same’. But as one commentator carefully put it “Scripture suggests that in the interval between death and the resurrection, God makes some special provision, that the soul without the body may have the glory He has promised.”

        This intermediate state is not one of disappoint but fulfillment. Paul says in verse 4 “For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” We have this longing now, this homesickness now, but in the moment after death the heart of that longing will be fulfilled. Even then we may still desire the return of Christ and the culmination of history; in Revelation we see the martyrs of the tribulation, gathered at the altar in heaven, asking ‘How long, Sovereign Lord?’; they are waiting for his victory. Yet even in that text those souls are not disembodied or naked - John says they are given white robes to wear while they wait. There is an intermediate body, a heavenly dwelling suitable for the beginning of eternity, a dwelling in which our mortality will be swallowed up by life. This is Paul’s third metaphor; the Christian hope of transformation, pictured first as a change in dwellings, and then as putting on an overcoat, is now depicted as an animal swallowing its prey whole. The verb means “to gulp down” and "to consume entirely" As Jonah was swallowed up by a huge fish, so life, swallows up the entirety of our earthly, fragile, expendable, clay-pot existence.

        Andrew Peterson captures this in a second song called ‘Lay Me Down’.

        I suppose you could lay me down to die in Illinois
        Bury me beneath the rows of corn
        Or in-between the maple trees I climbed on as a boy
        Where in the Land of Lincoln I was born

        Oh, and I recall we rode the combines in the fall
        And there comes a time for gathering the harvest after all

        When you lay me down to die; I’ll miss my boys, I’ll miss my girls
        Lay me down and let me say goodbye to this world
        You can lay me anywhere, but just remember this
        When you lay me down to die, you lay me down to live.

        Well I asked a girl to marry me on a dock out on the lake
        Our babies came to life in Tennessee
        And the music of the mountains is still keeping me awake
        Yeah, but everything that rises falls asleep

        We are not alone; we are more than flesh and bone
        What is seen will pass away; what is not is going home

        When you lay me down to die; I’ll miss my boys, I’ll miss my girls
        Lay me down and let me say goodbye to this world
        You can lay me anywhere, but just remember this
        When you lay me down to die
        I’ll open up my eyes on the skies I’ve never known, in the place where I belong
        And I’ll realize His love is just another word for Home

II. The Presence (2 Cor 5:5-9)

        But receiving a new body fitted for heaven, and even being there is not really what Paul is longing for. The remainder of this section shows that that will not be our focus, that the longing we now experience isn’t fulfilled by a place or by a transformation, but by a presence, by a person. In fact the word longing Paul used in verse 2 is almost always used in the New Testament about a longing for a person. In Romans 1 Paul says ‘I long to see you’. In this letter he says ‘I yearn for you.’ It is the presence of a person that fills the longing of our hearts. 2 Corinthians 4:5-9 Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. ⁶Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. ⁷We live by faith, not by sight. ⁸We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. ⁹So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.

        Verse 5 affirms that the longing we have for something more, a heavenly dwelling, a far country, a fulfillment of the homesickness, this longing comes from God who has made us for this very purpose - that we would be fulfilled, complete, clothed and overclothed with eternal life. This world isn’t our home, there is completion and resting of soul. God made us not to ache, but be fulfilled; and verse 5 affirms that we begin to experience that now because God has given us the Spirit as a deposit.

        The Holy Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit lives within us. Therefore the Holy Spirit is, right now, Immanuel, God with us. We know he lives within us because Jesus said, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever-- ¹⁷the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” The Spirit is God’s presence in us, and he is also the presence of Jesus for us. Jesus goes on to say in the next phrase: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” We experience the presence of Jesus through the Holy Spirit

        But in this life, the Holy Spirit gives only a glimpse of God’s presence, a foretaste of what we long for. Paul says that God has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. We are being prepared to have our mortal existence swallowed up by immortality, and the Spirit is the down-payment guaranteeing this promise.

        In Greek culture arrabon was the earnest money that a buyer would give the seller prior to the actual sale and delivery of an item. The idea is of a first installment; the payment of the full amount is yet to come. Paul expands on this in Ephesians, where he says “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, ¹⁴who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession--to the praise of his glory.” The good news about Jesus is that when we believe in him we’re saved - rescued from sin that deserves hell, rescued from death, rescued from separation from God. When we trust in Christ for the payment of our sins we’re made, and we’re given the Holy Spirit, whose presence guarantees that what God promised believers he will fulfill: he will take possession of the redeemed and dwell with us into eternity.

        So the Holy Spirit, like most down-payments, is the same kind of thing the final payment will be. He is the presence of God and a guarantee of God’s presence into eternity. Listen to verses 6 to 8 again: “Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. ⁷We live by faith, not by sight. ⁸We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” Because we have the Holy Spirit at work in us, we are confident that the longed for fulfillment will take place; we have begun to taste it in worship, and in prayer, and in applying God’s word; in the comfort he gives, and in the fruit of his power in us. But in many ways this just whets our appetite, and we recognize that to be in this mortal body is in a very real sense to be ‘away from the Lord’. The promise of eternity is the promise of his presence. So Paul says that right now we live by faith and not by seeing him, but the day will come when the faith will be fulfilled and the sight will be seen. Remember how Hebrews 11 defines faith: ‘the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ While we are in these bodies we are away from the Lord; we don’t see him; we live by faith - but someday, the Apostle John teaches, we will see him as he is.

        So we are confident in walking by faith, but we would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. This is Paul’s longing, to be ‘at home with the Lord’ - earlier he talked about tents and houses; now he’s talking about home, the place of safety, peace, contentment and relationship - found in the presence of the Lord. This is the one absolutely sure thing about what happens when we die. We can’t tell for sure that we’ll be in a transformed body immediately, and we don’t know if the spiritual or heavenly bodies we’ll have in the intermediate state are a lot like those transformed bodies or a lot different. But this one thing we know - we will be with the Lord. And deep in your heart you know that’s all that really matters. If you think about heaven as sitting on clouds strumming a harp and humming a tune, you might think it boring, lacking. But if you think about heaven as Paul does, as the awesome presence of God and being with your Savior who has made himself your friend, you’ll immediately sense that that’s all you need.
        This isn’t the only place Paul expresses this truth. In Philippians, written while he was in prison, he has much the same thought. Listen to Philippians 1:20-24 “I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. ²¹For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. ²²If 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! ²³I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; ²⁴but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.”

        ‘To me, to live is Christ’ - I’m living here for Christ and Christ is with me through the Holy Spirit; but ‘to die is gain’ - to be actually present with Christ will be the fulfillment of every longing. Paul is torn between his desire on the one hand to serve Christ here - fruitful labor; better for you - and on the other hand, the longing we’ve looked at this morning: “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far.” Life in his presence is the true answer to every longing. We may think we want peace or beauty or opportunity or human relationships or the good old days. But all of these are just echoes of what we really want - the eternal fulfilment of life in the presence of God. ‘Whom have I in heaven but you’, the Psalmist says, ‘and earth has nothing I desire besides you.’ The central answer to our longing is his presence. The only answer to our deepest longings is his presence. We were made to go there. We will not rest - we should not rest - until we get there.

        Andrew Peterson has one more song about this on his album. It’s called ‘Haven’s Grey’. The imagery is taken from Tolkien and Lewis, but the sense of the song is what we’ve been talking about, the longing for his presence that will fulfill all the shadows of longing we now experience, and free us from the hurts we now know:

There is no road to bear me from my sorrow; No healing that is deeper than this hurt
My heart is gone away across the water; To the bright, undying shores beyond the world

When I sail from havens grey; Caught up on the wind and blown away
I will close my eyes on the Shadowlands; And bid goodbye to all my friends
The parting is the price, it is the price that I must pay
To sail beyond the arms of the havens grey

Even though you know your heart is breaking; For a little longer still you must be whole
To love the life that’s given for the taking; And to give the love the living’s given for

And let it lead you to those shores
When you sail from havens grey; Caught up on the wind and blown away
Close your eyes on the Shadowlands; And bid goodbye to all your friends
And sail from havens grey; Caught up on the wind and blown away
You’ll bid goodbye to all your friends; And close your eyes on the Shadowlands

I know you will open them again in the endless day
Of a love that dawns beyond the havens grey.

        To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. The ache we feel here prepares us for the joy we’ll experience there. And that’s a wonderful truth to grasp. But Paul wouldn’t be Paul if he didn’t silently say ‘so what?’ and add verse 9:“So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.” The words ‘make it our goal’ mean "to strive eagerly to do something," "to aspire earnestly". The something Paul strives eagerly to do is to please Christ. Paul wants to live his life here in a way that pleases Christ by loving and serving and sharing the good news with those who desperately need to hear, and he wants to live his life in eternity to please him as well.

        Let’s close with this thought: if the central answer to all your longings is his presence, then shouldn’t He be as much as possible the central focus of your life now? Shouldn’t you be striving to please Him?