Resurrection Relationships
Colossians 3:1-4
Isaiah 11:6-9, 1 Corinthians 13

3:1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.


A world of love

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death... When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15:25-28)

• What is a world where God is all in all? A world of love; “God is love.” (1 John 4:16).

•  Love lasts forever. “Love never fails,” is “most excellent,” the “greatest of these.” (1 Cor 13)


Resurrection Relationships

• Relationships with animals

• Relationships with people

• Relationships with angels

• Relationship with God


Relationships with animals

Creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Romans 8:21)

The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:6-9).

 

No more zoos

The new creation won't have any zoos.  It's not that there won't be animals.  We just won't need to confine them to keep them from attacking us or running away, and we won't need to protect them from each other.  Who needs a zoo, when all God's creatures live in harmony?


Animal love for each other

Animal love won't be the best thing about heaven on earth, but it will be a very good thing. If you've seen a cow nuzzling its calf, or bear cubs playing, you sense the affection animals can have for each other. Animals don't have the same mind or the same spirit as humans, and animal love is not the same as the love between humans, but it is still something beautiful. Someday animals will frolic and lie down with all types of creatures, not just their own kind. In the new creation there will be many animals but no animal bloodshed.


Love between animals and people

There will be affection and perfect harmony among different kinds of animals, and also perfect harmony between animals and humans. If you have a dog or a cat, or if you've worked with a strong, responsive horse, you know the bond that can exist between animal and master. Our resurrection relationships in the new creation will surpass any bond between humans and animals that we experience now.


Talking with animals?

Even in today's world, some animals have signals by which they communicate with their own kind. Bees communicate through complex dances, dolphins signal each other with piercing sounds, and beavers sound alarms by slapping their tails. In fact, some animals can grasp at something of human communication. Even now, even before the creation is renewed and set free, some horses and dogs can follow various human commands, a few gorillas can learn simple sign language from humans, dolphins can be trained to follow human commands, and parrots can even speak human words.


Will pets be resurrected?

•  We’ll have better things to do in glory than play with pets.

• The better doesn’t rule out the lesser.

• When we think of heaven, we should be more eager to see God than to see Rover--but why not both?

• Possible hint of resurrecting individual animals? “When you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your Spirit, they are created.” (Psalm 104:29-30)


Why start with animals?

• To move from lesser to greater!

• “You are worth more than many sparrows.” (Matthew 10:31).

• "How much more valuable is a man than a sheep!" (Matthew 12:11).

• If God cares about relationships among animals in the new creation, if it's great that lambs and lions will lie down together, it's far greater that people of all nations will be united in loving relationships with each other, with the holy angels, and with the living God. 


Resurrection Relationships

• Relationships with animals

• Relationships with people

• Relationships with angels

• Relationship with God


Relationships with people

• They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. (Isaiah 2:4)

• All will be perfectly loving and lovable.

Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life. (Rev 21:27). 


Reunion with loved ones

•  Will we know each other in glory? We won’t know each other… UNTIL glory.

• Our bodies are resurrected, not replaced. Our personalities are perfected, not wiped out.

• I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 8:11)

• We do not grieve as those who have no hope… The dead in Christ will rise… We will always be with the Lord… Comfort one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18)


Life beyond marriage

• “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” (Matt 22:30)

• If you tell small boys making mud pies that they won’t do that when they’re older, and that they will like girls, they might protest, “Never! We love playing with mud pies! We hate girls!” But they grow up.

• In the resurrection, we’ll grow up even more. We will love all with a love that even the best marriage on earth could only dimly point to.


Reunion with other saints

• Bible heroes: Noah, Deborah, David, Esther, Mary, Peter, Paul

• Faithful ones who passed the faith to us: godly ancestors, missionaries, martyrs

• Rejoice in recognizing how others helped us, and how we helped them

• No hurry or time limit; visit with someone for 100 years and not run short of time

• No envy if some get greater rewards. Instead we will be glad for them.

 

Resurrection Relationships

• Relationships with animals

• Relationships with people

• Relationships with angels

• Relationship with God

 

Relationships with angels

• You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly. (Hebrews 12:22)

• I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands. (Revelation 5:11)

• Few of us have met or know an actual angel, but we are fascinated with alien life.

• Angels already love God’s people more than we know.

• We can meet and thank the angels who were assigned to protect and help us.

• We will worship with angels and work with angels as we rule on Christ’s behalf.

• We may have rank and authority above angels: “Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? … Do you not know that we are to judge angels? (1 Corinthians 6:2-3)

•“It was not to angels that God subjected the world to come.” (Hebrews 2:5)

How could small, weak unimportant people turn out to have a position governing the universe and ranking even above mighty angels?

Suppose you walk into a room and see a baby. The baby is weak, small, drooling, and has a smelly diaper. Across the room is a military officer, well-dressed, smart, powerful. If someone tells you the little stinker will someday have authority over those important officials, it might sound ridiculous. But what if that baby's father is the king? Then it's true that the baby will someday have authority over those officials.

If you know Jesus as your Savior, God is your Father. You're a child of the King, and that makes you a prince or princess in his kingdom. Right now the angels are stronger and holier than you are, but a time is coming when your holiness will match that of the angels and your greatness will surpass theirs. Right now you may still be a spiritual baby, you may be small and weak, you may be smelly with sin, but you won't be a baby forever. As God's Holy Spirit keeps working in your life, you keep getting cleaned up, you keep growing up, and at the appointed time, your Father will give you great authority. When Jesus Christ returns to judge the world and rule over it, God's children will rule along with the Lord. "They will reign for ever and ever" (Revelation 22:5). Even holy angels will be under our authority.


Resurrection Relationships

• Relationships with animals

• Relationships with people

• Relationships with angels

• Relationship with God

 

Having our heart’s desire

My heart says of you, “Seek his  face!” Your face, LORD, I will seek. (Psalm 27:4,8)

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:12-13)

They will see his face. (Revelation 22:4)

In this life I get tiny droplets of God’s love, fleeting encounters with His reality—and nothing on earth can compare. But soon the sense of His presence fades, and the heat of my love cools. If only I could love God as He deserves to be loved! If only I could take in more of His glory and know him more fully! In the resurrection, I will at last have a love that corresponds to his. The blinders will be removed from my eyes. I will see God as he is and love him as he deserves.


Glory and love

“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory… I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” (John 17:24-26)

When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:4)


Fountain of Love

There, in heaven, this infinite fountain of love—this eternal Three in One—is set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it, as it flows for ever. There this glorious God is manifested, and shines forth, in full glory, in beams of love. And there this glorious fountain for ever flows forth in streams, yea, in rivers of love and delight, and these rivers swell, as it were, to an ocean of love, in which the souls of the ransomed may bathe with the sweetest enjoyment, and their hearts, as it were, be deluged with love! (Jonathan Edwards)


Resurrection Relationships

• Relationships with animals

• Relationships with people

• Relationships with angels

• Relationship with God

Last modified: Tuesday, November 23, 2021, 1:33 PM