2 Corinthians 5:1-5 “ For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.”
This last Sunday, Pastor Kyle continued preaching through the Epistle titled 2 Corinthians. He stated that even though the vast majority of people enjoy the camping outdoors vacation experience, but know that it is very rare to find an individual that would want to live permanently in a tent. For the most of us, we know that tent living is temporary at best. We long for a permutant home. There is a parallel in that there is a temporary nature to this life as opposed to the permanence of our heavenly hope that awaits us. Heaven is going to be awesome beyond description. We spend so much time thinking about today and not enough thinking about our eternal destination in the presence of the Lord, our God.
But, since we live in the “here and now” of our earthly existence, we need to discuss what heavenly living means for today. If you are a repentant born-again Believer in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the Cross and accepted Him as the Lord of your life, then your heavenly eternal life has already started. You are not waiting to get to Heaven; you are a citizen of Heaven on earth with a heavenly calling; that is the eternal perspective. Our job as Christians is to stand on the promises of God in everything, the blessed assurance of salvation in Christ, and the sure hope of eternal life in Heaven, while bringing the permanent Word, Will and Way of God into the here and now, because everything here is only temporary.
The Apostle Paul compares our earthly lives to living in a tent. Our body is just a tent which your spirit, mind will and emotion dwells within until we go to be with the Lord. Greek word for “tent” in this verse is “skēnos” meaning a tabernacle or a tent, as a metaphor of the human body, in which the soul dwells as in a tent, and which is taken down at death.
Pastor Kyle presented three thing that we need to know about this tent living. (1) It is only temporary. The Apostle says, “ For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed.” The Geek word for “destroyed” here is “katalyō” meaning to dissolve, disunite what has been joined together, to destroy, or demolish; to take down the tent. The body dies, decays, returns to the dust, but the soul lives on in a permanent location because to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Death is a sad fact as every good aspect of this life is over and relationships naturally severed. We miss our loved ones who have pasted away.
It is especially sad for those without God, without belief in Jesus Christ and do not have saving faith. Revelation 21:8 declares, “He who overcomes the world by adhering faithfully to Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, drug abusers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” The Greek word for “unbelieving” in this verse is “apistos” meaning faithless, unbelieving and without trust in God. We all eventually die and God strikes down the tent, then moves us to our permanent home in eternity. Everything on planet Earth is temporary.
Let's continue Pastor Kyle's message on life being temporary in the next post. In Christ, Brian
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