Longing for Our Homeland

PHILIPPIANS 3:20 – 4:1

INTRODUCTION

Do you ever feel like you just don’t fit in?

Do you ever feel like the things that most people are passionate about are just not very important to you?

A dying woman said to her pastor: “You hear in sermons about this world being a tricky, shallow place, but you never believe it until you stand at the door and look around just before you go out.”

Let’s not wait until we are ready to exit this world before we see it as it is.

You’ve heard the old hymn that goes—

“This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through,

My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.

The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door,

And I can’t feel at home in this world any more.”

An American tourist visited the 19th century Polish rabbi, Hofetz Chaim. Astonished to see that the rabbi’s home was only a simple room, filled with books, plus a table and a bench, the tourist asked, “Rabbi, where is your furniture?”

“Where is yours?” replied the rabbi.

“Mine?” asked the puzzled American. “But I’m a visitor here. I’m only passing through.”

“So am I,” said Hofetz Chaim.

In St. Paul’s letter to his friends in the Greek town of Philippi, Paul warns his friends against the enemies of the Cross of Christ—that is, people who live lives in opposition to the gospel.

He writes of them, “Many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.”

“Their minds are set on earthly things.” Some of us know what it is to have our minds set on earthly things—money, possessions, career, houses and cars, television, books, whatever…

Not that earthly things are necessarily bad; earthly things have their place. We need money and homes and food and clothes. And it’s good to have the things that make life pleasurable—for me, some of those things have been books and music and gardens and travel and friends.

We can—and should—use all we have of material possessions and interests and abilities to honor God and to be useful to other people whom God loves.

I used to use my interest in gardens to make a flower garden for my church.

My son-in-law loves cars. He uses his interest in cars to help people in his church who have trouble with their cars. He helps them with repairs, and sometimes helps them find good used cars.

I have a friend who loves to take pictures. He and some friends once had a ministry of taking free pictures for people who couldn’t afford real studio pictures. They advertised their services to single moms. The women would come with their children, and they had volunteer hairdressers and make-up artists. They would make the women and their children beautiful and take their pictures. Then they would print the pictures right on the spot and hand the pictures to the happy families.

But when we set our minds on the things of earth, they become little gods for us, and they cause us to forget our destiny—which is not in this world but in the world to come.

Remember the parable about the sower and his seeds: Jesus told about how some of the seed was choked out by the cares and riches and pleasures of life and couldn’t bear fruit.

And since we will soon depart from this world and enter the eternal one, our greatest care should be fore the things that will count in the world we will live in forever.

This leads us to the text for today:

In Philippians 3:20 Paul writes, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

“Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.”

I. When Paul writes: “Our citizenship is in heaven,” he is contrasting himself and the believers to those whose minds are set on the things of earth. The emphasis would be on the “our.” He’s saying, “These people’s minds are set on the things of earth, but our citizenship is in heaven.”

A. Philippi was an unusual city because although it was in Greece—hundreds of miles away from Rome—it was not a Greek city. It was a colony of Rome.

The city had been re-founded by Rome after a great battle as a place where her soldiers could retire to.

So the city had Roman laws, and many of the people spoke Latin rather than Greek.

They had special privileges, such as not paying the taxes that the people in the Empire paid.

Phlippi wasn’t a big city—only about 10,000 people, less than a third the size of Marion.

But they were proud to be citizens of the greatest city in the world.

B. I want us to think about what it means that our citizenship is in heaven.

A citizen has certain responsibilities and privileges.

As citizens of our country, some  of our responsibilities are to obey the laws, vote, and pay our taxes.

And as citizens we have privileges: fire departments, hospitals, police protection, schools, water departments, and sewers.

As citizens of our heavenly homeland we also have responsibilities:

We are responsible to love and obey our Lord Jesus.

That means that we are to forgive our enemies and pray for them.

We are to be generous and holy in our lives.

We are responsible to love our neighbors and put their interests before our own.

We are to live in such a way as to bring honor to the Lord who redeemed us on the cross.

And we have privileges:

Our sins are forgiven; we are made friends with God. Jesus is our constant companion.

We have an assured future: a home in glory.

We know that whatever happens, God will always hold us tight and never let us go.

We have the privilege of prayer: we can bring to God all our concerns and be sure that he hears us and cares about us.

II. After he says that our citizenship is in heaven, Paul writes, “…and from there we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.”

A. Did you know that the Roman emperor called himself “Savior”? He was worshiped as a god, especially in Philippi because it was a Roman colony.

When Paul says, “We are expecting a Savior…” he is contrasting the Lord Jesus with the Roman emperor.

Before Jesus was born, the angel told Joseph what was to be the name of the Holy Child that was to be born to Mary. The angel said, “He shall be called Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.” The name “Jesus” or in Hebrew “Joshua” was a very common boys’ name in New Testament times. And the name Jesus means “Savior,” or “the Lord is salvation.”

B. “He will transform the body of my humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory.”

I didn’t always think of my body as a body of humiliation, but as I grow older and experience more and more weakness and pain and the limitations my poor body, the more that expression, “The body of my humiliation,” resonates with me.

I am ready for this “body of humiliation” to be “transformed,” as the verse says, “to the body of his glory.”

Jesus also had a body of his humiliation. That is how he became our Savior. He was born as a helpless baby. He lived in a human body, with all of its weaknesses and limitations.

And he died in that body and bore the sin of the world in that human body.

But when he rose from the dead, he had “a body of glory.”

And the verse I read tells us that we will be transformed and be conformed to Christ’s body of glory.

I don’t know exactly what that means. I don’t know whether it means that we can spirit ourselves from place to place, or whether we can walk through closed doors. But I am sure that in our new bodies of glory we will sing and dance, and we will be through with pain and sorrow, and we will be beautiful.

In Matthew 13:43 we read what Jesus says about our destiny: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”

I don’t know whether that means that we will actually shine like stars, or whether he is saying in a picturesque way that we will be glorious and splendid and honored.

CONCLUSION

Years ago Charlotte and I were visiting her Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Betty.

Uncle Lloyd was very ill and not expected to live much longer. They had set up a hospital bed in the living room of their apartment.

The visiting nurse arrived, and Uncle Lloyd greeted her in a loud voice: “I want to go home!”

I thought, Oh-oh, Uncle Lloyd is out of his mind.

But the nurse knew better. She said, “No Lloyd, you can’t go home until the Lord calls you!”

I read of an African tribe that had converted to Christianity. When one of their believers died, they didn’t say, “He has departed” or “She has passed on,” they said, “He has arrived” or “She has arrived.”

A refugee from Hitler’s Europe tells of his boyhood when so many tales were told about America that he felt that all the family knew this country well. So settled was this knowledge and love of the land he had not yet seen that his mother said to him when he was leaving for America “You are going home; I am staying in a foreign land.”

A young man told his pastor: “You talk too much about heaven. We need to talk about how to make this world a better place. Talking about heaven makes people give up on this life and just wait for heaven.”

His pastor replied, “I partly agree with you. We need to live now, fully committed to loving others here on earth. But we don’t have to make a choice, because what we do now prepares us for the coming world.”

I would add to that that what makes this life so important is that the way we live this life will determine our happiness and the happiness of our neighbors for all eternity.

Every good deed anyone does in this world enriches life in the world to come.

That is what Jesus meant when he spoke of “laying up treasure in heaven.”

If we truly understand that this world is not our home but that our homeland is the world to come, we won’t just sit around; we will be useful, we will fulfill our task, we will live by heaven’s values; we will make ourselves ready by love and good works because that’s what Jesus expects of us…to be faithful until he comes.

That is why the next lines in Paul’s letter are these: “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this say, my beloved.”

Don’t give up. Don’t just sit around and wait for glory. That’s not the way to be ready for that next great event in our lives.

“Stand firm in the Lord.”

Keep on to the end of the road. Only in that way can we prepare ourselves for our new home in glory.

I read about a famous Christian man who refused to have his biography written in the days of his fame and when he was still alive. He said, “I have seen too many people fall out on the last lap of the race.”

A great saint said, “The road goes ever upward, even to the very end.”

In my hometown of Lawrence, one of the industries is the box factory.

On every truck that leaves that plant there is written across the back of it: “Jayhawk boxes—carry the load to the end of the road.”

I want that to be true of me, that I keep on to the end, still living for God, still keeping the faith when I depart this world and arrive in my True Home—The Holy City, The New Jerusalem, Paradise, The Better Land, The Father’s House.