Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group Leader podcast. This weekly conversation is designed to equip and resource youth to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. Welcome to the Life Group Leader podcast. My name is Jared and joined with me is Jeremy as we are traveling along in our weekend teaching series called Start with the Ending.
This is week three, and we are gonna make a really critical turn where last week we spent some time looking at the reality of hell. And it was, for those of us who were there or were able to listen to the message online, you will know, you will acknowledge that it was a very compassionate message without losing the severity and the reality of what the doctrine of hell really does state. And so I am grateful for how Eric led us last week, and I'm also really grateful for him making this turn now as we get to look at heaven. And Jeremy, as you've prepared our leader guide for this week, what makes you excited about this conversation about heaven and really what are we trying to get out this week?
After starting with, there's just kind of that reality check of there is, in into life, there are, we do face judgment. Hell is something the Bible talks about, but the believer has hoped beyond that. And this week we get to see what John, one of Jesus' closest disciples, has to say both in his gospel and in the book of Revelation, looking forward with these visions of the future that are kind of hard to wrap our minds around. Some of the language, it's just hard to imagine this world that he's describing and it's perfection, but that ultimately it's a very real, very physically embodied world where we live in perfect community with one another, with all of creation and most importantly, with God himself in Christ our King.
Which is already gonna start a really fascinating conversation in our group because we're talking about having what feels like earthly bodies in a perfect world. Right now we have earthly bodies in an imperfect world. We're surrounded by grief, pain, sorrow, death, all of it, right? The presence of evil is still here, even though Jesus accomplished for us heaven on the cross, we still live in a fallen and broken world.
How do you even help our leaders prepare for a conversation about something that really most of us can't comprehend? I think most of us, if we're honest, when we think of heaven, and again, this is sort of the icebreaker question this week, what do you think of when you think of heaven? We think of kind of the cartoony images or floating around on clouds and this and that, but when we see over and over and over, when scripture speaks of the end, when it speaks of the kingdom of heaven, it's always this idea of God restoring, resurrecting. It's always a physical embodiment of God's intent for creation all along.
And so it doesn't just take us back to the garden where things started, but it's that made infinitely better. It's that perfected, grown with all of human culture and flourishing kind of baked in. And so we get to kind of set aside those preconceived ideas of kind of the cartoony heaven to say, what does scripture really say? And it's everything we could hope but infinitely more as well.
I think this could be such a great conversation to be able to calibrate people's understanding, but also to enter into the, not just the realm of imagination, but to allow our imagination to be informed by scripture. And to see that, yeah, we are moving from a garden to a city. We are moving from just a single people group to every tribe tongue in nation that the combination of what heaven will be is all of creation reflected in what God has created so that we might be able to worship him and be in community in the way that we were always designed to do. If you could think of potential pitfalls or tripping points for our conversation, I think you've already hit one for us to just talk about harps and streets of gold and clouds, right?
That could be a bit of a pitfall, a bit of a place we fall off the rabbit trail here, but are there others that maybe we should be aware of? Like you said there, a lot of the language used in the descriptions, maybe literal, maybe symbolic, things like even in our first passage in Revelation 21, it talks about a new heaven and a new earth and how there's no more sea. The sea just as a side note in ancient culture, ancient Near Eastern cultures like the Hebrew culture, the sea was a picture for chaos and kind of things that were beyond the control, even of the gods. And so most likely that's an example of something that's just kind of this picture of there's nothing beyond God's control, there is no chaos.
And so my encouragement with the way we've kind of put this guide together is not to get hung up on some of the physical descriptions as far as like what heaven might look like, but to really focus more on the relationships, what it says about the human condition and our relationship with God and with the things around us, not so much how pretty it's going to be and things like that. So why don't you point out for us then out of Revelation 5 and then the John 14 passage, what are some of those things that as leaders we could ensure that our group picks up on based off of these two scriptures? Yeah, so Revelation 21 is one that most of us are familiar with, where it talks about the new heaven and earth coming together. That's how we see like we don't fly off the heaven when we die, but heaven and earth come together and we live in this new perfected reality and death and grief and all those things will be no more.
And ultimately there's no need for a temple because God is in our midst. In Revelation 5, we see again kind of this picture of judgment, sort of looking back to where we did similar type imagery that we saw last week, but this week we see the hope where there could be despair of, again, we touched on last week, what do I need to do to ensure that my name is in the book of life? This week we see the scroll that they're longing to open and they see that the land, that the crucified Christ is the one who is able to open the scroll and we see that people from every tribe, tongue and nation are listed as among God's people and will worship him and enjoy him forever. And so there again, the emphasis being on Christ is the one who's made it's possible.
It's not about what we do, like do my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds, but the sacrifice of Christ and his death and resurrection is what makes life eternally in his kingdom possible. And that is for all people throughout the generations of every tribe, tongue and nation. And so that's just a beautiful picture we have to look forward to. And then finally, going back into John's gospel, another passage that probably many of us are familiar with is where Jesus starting to kind of tell his disciples that he's going to be going away.
This is kind of the beginning of all his speeches leading up to the cross in John's gospel. And you get the conversation where he says, I'm going away to prepare a place for you and Thomas and one of the few times he speaks up. Thomas is like, where are you going? Like how are we going to follow you?
Like we want to go with you. And Jesus, his response, the key verse here, kind of referencing back to what we just mentioned in the Revelation passage, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and the life. And no one comes to the Father except through me. So again, knowing Jesus and being in the right relationship with him guarantees life with him forever in this perfected reality.
And those are really, that's what we really want people to be able to take away from these three passages. And then when we get to the look in section, I think you have a really important bridge question here that it asks, does the reality of having to affect your daily life? And then right after it talks about, is that any different from hell? And I think those questions are really important questions for a couple of reasons.
The first being, I love when we can take God's word and we can see how it informs and impacts our everyday life. But then when you get to the lookout section, we talk about longing for and looking forward to a time where there will be certain things present today that will not be a part of our circumstance or our reality, things like death and grief and crying and pain and sorrow. Jeremy, just talk to us just for a minute about what you hope for our group discussion around that concept there. As we look forward, there's things that all of us can identify, that things that may seem kind of minor, like mentioned last week, that everyone has some kind of sickness going through the house.
One of my school age kids has COVID right now. One of my good friends just lost a parent to COVID yesterday, actually. So sickness and death, those things will be no more. Past weekend, we celebrated MLK weekend and just the strides made towards injustice and the fact that there's still work to be done that we long to see.
And so any number of things to know that ultimately, we have a hope where not only do I get to live forever, but more importantly than the fact that I get to live forever, just this kind of unquantifiable lifespan, but more importantly, I get to live and enjoy God forever and I'm doing so in a world that is perfect. We don't have to deal with pain and suffering and injustice and all these things that are the result of sin in the fall because those will ultimately be judged, like we talked about last week and set aside forever. And we get to live in this perfect reality with Christ and with one another and those who love him for all of eternity. I just think that there's such an opportunity in our groups to acknowledge the pain or circumstances we're living in today that will not be present in eternity for those of us who believe that should give us hope and peace and comfort should cause us to praise and to worship God.
But it also may open up an invitation for us to pray for each other right now. This weekend, in the weekend with this topic will be an extended prayer time where we have set aside plenty of time for people to come forward and pray because we know that any time you think about a present, I'm sorry, we think about a future where there is no pain and sorrow. What it does is just remind you about my present that has pain and sorrow and all those other things. And so, you know, for our life group leaders, I hope that you can take some time and just create an opportunity for people to pause and to share some of those things and with great discernment and understanding that you might pause and you might pray for those people.
You can even use some of the passages from Revelation 21 and Revelation 5 John 14. You can use those passages to remind them of the great hope that awaits for them from a God who is fully present with them today. Yes, yes. That's so important that I'm glad you said it that way because one thing I want to make sure we don't do with this talk about heaven is rush past very hard realities knowing that someday they'll be made right.
It's so easy for us to just kind of skip over and act like these things don't hurt and don't matter now. And they do and the Bible is so clear that it breaks God's heart as well. And so spend time there but knowing that we have a hope that's beyond even this moment. This is a real week where we can pastor, minister, shepherd, whatever you want to choose.
The kind of soul care that we can provide this week is really important in helping them see that God is within the midst of pain. And it's the same God who's going to be with them when there is no more pain. That's a really beautiful thing. We can get to know our eternal God this side of perfection, which is really just an unbelievable concept for us.
So with that in mind, Jeremy, any other final notes for us this week? I'm really excited at where we are in this journey and to get to this point where we get to look forward to heaven and excited for the next remaining little bit of this series and see where it leads us to church. Well, thank you again for all the work that you do to prepare for these and leaders. Please share your stories with us.
I would imagine that this is one of those weeks where we may be able to hear from you of just some great stories of redemption or hope reconciliation, comfort. We would just love to hear those. Would you shoot us an email or find us at church because we really do want to hear and celebrate with you and praise God for all that he's doing. So know as always that we're praying for you and we will see you next week.