A Reading from Book 11
From God’s Word, the Bible
“In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”
For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens.
John 14:2; 2 Corinthians 5:1
It was finally gone, the victim of the cold steel of a bulldozer’s blade. I knew the end was rapidly approaching, but I still hated to see it go.
I’m talking about the little old house in which I spent the first twenty-one years of my life. Little? Yes. It consisted of a kitchen, a living room, two bedrooms, a pantry, and a porch. Oh, yes, there was also that little area on one side that my mother referred to as “the sun room.”
What about the bathroom? There was no bathroom. We used the privy, which was situated a little way down the hill. My folks, you see, were very poor. We just had enough money, as they put it, “to make ends meet.”
The old house was in bad condition all through my young years. Walking across the floor would cause it to sort of creak and groan as if it were offering a protest against the person who was adding more weight to its weary existence. The walls were adorned with various cracks and holes. And the foundation could only see its sturdy days in the rear-view mirror.
But I loved that old house. It wasn’t the physical structure that made it lovable. It was rather what went on there. The love and respect we had for each other, the happiness and the laughter, the gratitude we felt for the Lord’s blessings, and our shared faith in the precious gospel of Christ—all of these things and many more made the old house a palace of delight.
One of the most pleasant memories of my childhood is my mother filling that old house with singing before Parkinson’s disease made her body like the house itself—weak, weary, and worn.
I treasure the lessons that I learned in my years in the old house, one of which was that it isn’t necessary to have lots of money to be rich. Greater still was this lesson: believers in Christ have two new houses awaiting them. One is a new body. Paul says we have “a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1). My body is an “earthly house,” a “tent,” which will be “destroyed.” But when Jesus comes I will receive a new body (Phil. 3:20-21).
The second house believers will receive is the “Father’s house” (John 14:1). That term is Jesus’ shorthand for our eternal home that is so beautifully described for us in Revelation 21 and 22.
Here, then, is the final outcome for believers in Christ—we will live in new bodies on a new earth. Those bodies will be beyond the reach of disease and death. No Parkinson’s in heaven, and no death either! Thank God! And the new earth will be beyond the reach of sin and Satan. The Apostle Peter refers to it as “an inheritance” that is “incorruptible and undefiled.” He also says that it “does not fade away,” but it is “reserved in heaven” for us (1 Peter 1:4).
Christians have indescribable glory awaiting them, and it’s all because of the Lord Jesus Christ. He came from heaven’s glory to this earth to take us from this earth to heaven’s glory.
When will believers in Christ receive their new houses? When Jesus comes! One glorious day, He will break through the clouds “with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God” (1 Thess. 4:16). Dead believers will hear the voice of their Lord, and they will spring from their graves in marvelous resurrection life. Living believers will be “caught up” (1 Thess. 4:17). They will instantaneously receive their new bodies without having to pass through death. And then the Lord will escort all of His people to their new house in heaven. New bodies on a new earth—what a destiny!
As we wait for the glory of that day, we live in this world of change and decay. Nothing here lasts. How thankful we should be that we have the Lord to abide with us! Before her disease took her voice, my mother used to sing:
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see:
O Thou who changest not, abide with me!
(Henry F. Lyte)
