Masculine Faith: The End

In this episode of the Manhood Tribes Show, we dive deep into the concepts of heaven and the next life. 

Host Don explores the hope, longing, and key elements of a masculine faith—epic, purposeful, and resilient. We wrap up the series, discussing the significant aspects of the Christian faith, misconceptions about heaven, and the future resurrection and new bodies. 

Don also touches on the idea of eternal life on earth, Jesus' return, and the ultimate union with God. 

This thought-provoking episode encourages us to envision our role and dreams in the next age and challenges us to cultivate a hopeful heart about what lies ahead.

00:00 Introduction: Contemplating Heaven
00:43 Manhood Quiz: How Manly Are You?
01:18 Series Recap: The Way of the King
01:48 Defining Masculine Faith
06:18 Misconceptions About Heaven
08:59 Biblical Perspective on the Next Age
14:19 Resurrection and New Bodies
17:11 Defeating Enemies and Spiritual Powers
19:12 Union with Christ: The Wedding Feast
21:42 Imagining the New Age
24:38 Personal Hopes for the New Age
28:10 Conclusion: Embracing a Masculine Faith

Want to know how you measure up as a man? Take our free quiz, called How Manly Are You? and learn how you can get better at being a man. Download for free at manhoodtribes.com/manly.

Transcript

Don Ross: 0:00

What do you think about when you think about heaven? What images come to mind? What ideas. Fill your heart. Is there hope there is there longing. These questions are so important. And yet as men, we rarely often give them any time at all. On today's episode. I want to try to give them a lot of time. So let's dive into that today here on the manhood trap show. Guys want to know how you measure up as a man? I've got a great resource for you. It's called how manly are you? And it's a free quiz that you can take to figure out how you stack up against what it means to be a man. And when you take the quiz, you'll also get some free resources to help you figure out how you can get better as a man in the areas where you would like to grow. So go to manhoodtribes.com/manly to download your free. How manly are you quiz today? That's manhoodtribes.com/manly. All right, man. Welcome to the manhood tribe show. My name is Don. I'm your host. And today we are going to wrap up our series that we have been doing called the way of the king. Now this has really been a series that's been all about trying to help us as men figure out how we can develop a masculine faith. That actually feels like something that we want to be a part of that as men, it feels manly, but it also feels like it is relevant to the daily things of our lives. Now as part of this series, I've said that to have a masculine faith, it needs to be at least three things. It needs to be epic, meaning that the story that it tells needs to be big and grand and large and scale, it needs to be about more than just my life. I'm not the centerpiece of the story. It needs to be big enough that I can have a part to play, but it covers the whole scope of human history and beyond. It also needs to be purposeful, meaning that even though it's not about me, I Dean I do need to have a purpose in the story. I need to have a role to play. I need to have some kind of action to be able to take that helps move the story forward. I need to be essential and incremental to what's happening in this big epic adventure. That I'm a part of. If it's going to feel like as a man, I actually matter to the story and the story should matter to me. But then lastly, it should also feel like it is resilient. And by that, I mean, it should stand up to the really hard tests of life. When we, as men encounter all the dangers and difficulties that come with living this life. Our faith should be able to stand up in front of those things and not get knocked down so easily. We shouldn't be able to push it over just because life gets hard and it no longer feels like it has anything to say to that. Instead at our hardest moments, our faith should feel like the thing that we're able to turn to and say, this helps me be able to navigate all of these really difficult places in my story. Okay. So a masculine faith needs to feel like it has those three components that it's epic, it's purposeful, it's resilient. And if it can be those things, then it becomes something that we as men actually want to practice. It's something that we actually want to be a part of, not feel like we're obligated to be a part of it, or we're just kind of going along because our wife wants us to, or, you know, whatever other reason that there is that we might choose to participate in faith. We need to get to a place where we actually want to, because as men. We feel invited into something that is big and manly. Now I have been saying all throughout this series, that there have been six big areas that we needed to talk about the Christian faith to help understand why it is maybe not the faith that you think you've been presented with. If you're somebody who has grown up around church, or if not, maybe it's not at all the idea of what you think Christianity is. If you've kind of grown up on the edges of. Christian culture. For any of us who have grown up in America or just in the west at large, we've had some exposure to Christianity and most of us probably have some wrong headed ideas about what Christianity is. So in this series, I've tried to cover a lot of those things and help correct some ideas that I think we've gotten wrong, but also help paint a picture of the Christian faith of how it really does meet those criteria for being a masculine faith. We've talked about the big story that we're meant to be a part of all the way back from the beginning and the creation of the world and the creation of humanity. Through things like the coming of Jesus and how he becomes king over the whole universe and how we are meant to respond to him and give him our allegiance. And in doing so that really shapes everything about our lives. And when it shapes our lives, we begin to see what the point of our lives really is. The point is to be in union with God. We were meant to become one with God. And in doing that, it shapes our relationships, both with people who choose to follow Jesus and those who don't and what our purpose is, and being able to live all of those kinds of things out. So we start to see how significant the story really is, how it does impact everything about us in big and amazing ways and how it calls us up into something that is really, really good. And then the centerpiece of all of it, all of it. Is this idea that Jesus is our king and we are choosing to give him our allegiance and to follow him. So how far are we following him? If we get all the way to the end of our story. To the point of death. What does it look like to follow Jesus even into that place? This is a question that I've kind of been teasing all throughout this series to say that, Hey, there's more coming. And the reason is, is that this is probably one of the places that I think American Christians in particular, but Western Christians, especially over the past several centuries. Have really kind of missed the mark on. If you ask most people about the Christian understanding of life after death, it usually just involves the idea of going to heaven when you die. And those who aren't Christians are those who have offended God in some pretty big ways, or those who have done wrong for most of their life are not going to go to heaven, but they're going to go to a place called hell, which is a place of punishment and torment and some kind of, you know, repayment for all the wrongs that they have done. But that's really it. Those are the two big ideas, heaven, and hell, and the Christian ideas that you go to one place or the other. And we want to try to all end up in heaven. That's where Jesus is and that's where we want to be. And, you know, we don't exactly know what life in heaven kind of looks like, but we have these sort of vague ideas of it's going to be good. And maybe you conjure up images of things like pearly gates and streets of gold, or maybe you think of like, Baby angels floating on clouds, playing harps or something like that. Or maybe you've been told that heaven is just like one never ending worship service in the sky. And you're thinking, am I going to sing all those like boring hymns that my grandma loved for eternity? Like. What is the benefit of that? And no, thank you. So, this is really kind of the problem. When most of us think about heaven, we have these really kind of like weak. Limp wristed milk toast ideas of what heaven is kind of all about. And it just is uninspiring. It's not something that any of us really want. Maybe there are some ideas of things like, well, we'll get to see our loved ones who died or there won't be any more sickness and disease and no one dies anymore. And those are all really good things that we get to say like, yeah, the bad things in this life are eliminated. And so we can at least look forward to that. But what does life there actually look like and what is there to anticipate and to be joyful about why would we actually want to go to heaven? So that's the question that I want to try to address today. And I do need to address it because like I said, we've got some really wrong ideas about it, all those things that I just mentioned, those vague ideas of what heaven is like those cultural images that we kind of continuously conjure up. None of those are correct. None of them. And so what we get when we look at the picture of the next life to come in the scriptures, It's a very different idea than those cultural things of heaven. So as we examine it, I want us to really ask the question, why would we want to go, what are we anticipating about the next life? So that's where I want to start actually is with the idea of the next life. The biblical scriptures. Want us to think about heaven in the sense of a new age? So the biblical writers often talk about this present age and the age to come. So when we tend to think about it today, we think about life. And then we think about life after death. And it kind of creates these like weird categories where death is the divider, but really in the biblical tradition death, isn't the divider between this age and the next age to come. That divider is actually what happens when Jesus returns. He has promised that he is coming back. He came once to the earth and human form and he is promising that he will do that again. And when he does his kingdom will be fully realized and he will usher in this new age to come. And in this new age, all kinds of amazing things begin to happen. And that's what we are meant to begin to look forward to. What happens between now and then is really important and that some of where we get our ideas about heaven. So let's talk about heaven in particular. Here's the thing, and here's kind of like big mind blowing idea that I want to start you out with. The next age is not actually about going to heaven when you die. Our eternal destination is not heaven. We are not meant to live as kind of these like disembodied spirits who exist in a heavenly plane where Jesus lives. That's not at all. What the Bible teaches. In fact what the Bible teaches is that heaven is coming to earth. Our eternal destination is to live on the earth. We will be with Jesus because Jesus is coming here. The picture of what happens in the next age is that heaven comes to be on the earth. That God unites the two realms, the spiritual realm and the physical realm and heaven is here on earth. But our place, as it was always meant to be is here on the earth. We will actually be able to be the kinds of humans that we were meant to be and do the kinds of things that humans were meant to do. Which if you remember from the story. Is that we are meant to represent God here on this world. And to rule it as he would rule it in his stead, we are the Kings and Queens, the governors of this world. And it will be our place to actually continue ruling. So we are not escaping. We are not trying to get off the earth. We are trying to actually be who we were always meant to be and to rule earth the way that God meant for us to be able to do that. That is what happens in the next age. But when, when those of us who die are waiting for the next age to begin, when Jesus returns, there is some place that we go. We don't get to hang on to our bodies, but that's only temporary. Instead our spirits go to be with Jesus. The Bible talks about this as the idea of being with him in paradise. And that's where we begin to see that being in the heavenly realm in the spiritual realm with Jesus is the place that those who are followers of Jesus, our spirits go there when we die, but we don't, we're not meant to stay there. But we're not meant to stay there. Heaven is not our eternal destination. It is a temporary destination where our spirits go to be with Jesus until he returns. And when he returns, we return with him. And he resurrects us into new glorious bodies and we will be on the earth. For eternity with him. Okay. So I know that was a lot, right? If you have grown up in the American church, that is probably an idea that you have not really heard very much, or maybe you've heard it vaguely talked about, but still your conception has more to do with being the spirit who lives in heaven for eternity, with Jesus. When we go to a funeral or when we talk about someone dying, we talk about them going to heaven, but we rarely, if ever talk about them coming back, we rarely talk about the fact that they will have a new body. We rarely talk about the fact that they will. We'll be ruling someplace here on earth that they will be given a role in Jesus's eternal kingdom. We don't talk about those things maybe because they're confusing or we're afraid of them, or because we're not really sure what all of that means. And so, because it's vague, we don't like to talk about it. And the idea of being in some peaceful, happy place with Jesus as much more comforting and consoling. And the times of grief and loss that surround death. And that makes sense. But it's still not accurate. It's not really what scriptures teach us about this next age to come. Okay. So that's the first big thing that I wanted to let you know about because it really sets the sets the course for everything else that we have to look about. And in the next age, heaven will come to earth and we will be here. The earth is our eternal destination. The next thing that I want to talk about, which I've already hinted at. Is the idea that we will be given new bodies in the next age. The scriptures. Talk about that. Jesus is the first born from the dead, meaning that he is setting a pattern for what is meant to happen for everyone who has given their allegiance to him. That while we will physically experience death here on the earth, that is not the end of our story. And in fact, As just as resurrection came for him. Resurrection will come for us as well. This has always been part of the Christian story. And in fact, for many centuries, people were buried in cemeteries in a direction where they anticipated that Jesus would return so that their bodies could rise up out of the ground and go to meet him. Now that may or may not be exactly how resurrection is going to work, but the point was clear and it's one that we really have kind of lost in century since then. Jesus will return. And when he does, he will raise the dead from the dead and give us new glorious bodies with which we will be able to carry out his commands and rule. As he intended us to rule now, what will those bodies be like? We don't know exactly, but we get some clues by looking at Jesus's resurrected body. As we see it in the Bible. Jesus has resurrected body looked for the most part. Like any other body people were able to recognize him as Jesus. They, you know, were still able to see him. He had many of the same features clearly that he had had before because people recognized him. But at the same time, his body was able to do very different things while he would eat and drink and sleep just like he did before. He also seemed to be able to do things like walk through walls or. I be in one place and then appear in another, or just disappear altogether. Or he seemed to have the ability to make his appearance change so that he wasn't recognizable. So there's some really strange things that go on there. And the picture of Jesus's resurrected body, that we don't know exactly what all of that means and how, and if we will be able to do those things, but what's clear is that we will have a physical body and it will be beautiful and glorious and be able to do some things that we were. Probably meant to do all along. But will now only be available to us because of this new age that comes with Jesus's kingdom coming fully on earth. We also know that we will no longer experience sickness and death. The scriptures talk about that. All tears will be wiped away. And so grief and loss will no longer be a thing that we have to endure in our bodies. All of that will be defeated by Jesus in his return. And that brings me to the next thing. When Jesus returns and ushers in the new age, he is going to defeat. All of our enemies. So one of those enemies is death and sickness and illness that comes with it. He will defeat death and it will no longer be a thing that we have to fear or experience, but he is also going to defeat finally, all the rogue spiritual powers that we have been up against when we started the story we heard. That because of a rogue, spiritual being who rebelled against God, we were tempted into rebelling as well. And that eventually God actually handed all of humanity over to these rogue spiritual powers. Who have ruled over parts of the earth ever since then? We have been in slavery at one point in time to the kingdom of darkness. Now, hopefully you have come out of the kingdom of darkness and have given your allegiance to Jesus and are part of his kingdom of light, but there will be many who will still be part of those kingdoms of darkness. But Jesus is coming and will defeat all of those rogue spiritual powers. They will be cast into something that the scriptures cogs, the lake of fire. Now, whether that's a metaphor or a real thing, you know, your guests is probably as good as mine, but the point is there will be real justice served to these rogue spiritual powers who have led us astray who have put us through suffering and have kept us in slavery for millennia. Finally justice will be dealt in the spiritual realm as it always was meant to be. And we will no longer have to fear the spiritual powers. In fact, we will actually be able to take their place. So many of those spiritual powers were a part of God's divine council and they will be stripped of their places within the authority of God's divine council. And we will be able to take up their places because we will be afforded a very special privilege. And that's the next point that I want to be able to talk about. In the new age to come, we will be married to Christ now. Again, that's some kind of a metaphor. It may be an exact metaphor, or it may have some kind of broader spiritual implications. I don't really know, but I do know that our destiny, as we have talked about is to be in full and complete union with God. And that is going to take place through something called the wedding feast of the lamb. Where the church is wed to Jesus. How exactly that works. Nobody really knows, but the point is that in the same way that oneness is accomplished through marriage. It will be accomplished in us to Jesus as well. And that will be something that is true of no other being and all of creation. We will be afforded the special place to become one with God. So we will be afforded a place among the divine council, but we will have a high place as part of the family of God who is now in full union with him. This is a special, special privilege, and it is something to look forward to, to being able to enjoy that kind of closeness and intimacy in our relationships with God. I don't even know what that intimacy will actually look like. I think the scriptures kind of hint at the idea that all the things that we know about marriage, the companionship, the joy, and yes, even the sex. Is somehow meant to be foreshadowing. What our marriage to Christ will be. I don't know how that works. What, you know, what does sex in the context of a spiritual union with Jesus even look like I have no idea at all. But the oneness and the union that is accomplished through that, but also the joy and the pleasure is something that I think will be true of our union with Jesus, probably in some ways that we cannot possibly imagine right now, but will absolutely blow our minds. When we finally get to experience it. So I think all of that is something that we have to look forward to and even to anticipate, and to kind of let our imaginations run wild on like a bride and groom looking forward to their wedding night and maybe not knowing what they're exactly getting into, but knowing that it's going to be really good. We ought to have that same kind of anticipation for our union with Jesus. We don't really know what's coming, but we know it's going to be amazing. So with all that being said, With Jesus's kingdom fully realized here on earth heaven, coming to earth, us being resurrected and having new glorious bodies, being able to take up our place as Kings and Queens on the earth being fully United to Jesus and having all of our enemies defeated and all the injustices in our lives made. Right. Finally. Then what happens? Honestly. No one knows. But what we do know is that all of those really amazing things are just the beginning. I've titled this episode, the end, because most of us, when we think about heaven, think of that. Being something that comes at the end of our lives. But what scripture seems to make really clear if we can pay attention to the story is that all of those things I've just described when Jesus returns are just the beginning of a new age, an age that doesn't end. In his book, the last battle, which is a part of the Chronicles of Narnia CS Lewis is telling the story of those who lived in Narnia and got to witness its end, got to witness the culmination of the entire story of Narnia. And began to see what was going to happen on the other side of it. And he writes this. Now at the last they were beginning chapter. One of the great story, which no one on earth has read. Which goes on forever and ever. In which every chapter is better than the one before. That is the picture of what anticipates us. What we are waiting for and hoping for. Every chapter gets better as we get to experience everything that we've wanted to experience and to have our hopes and dreams fulfilled, to be who we were always meant to be to love and be in relationship as we were always meant to be able to do so to adventure, as we've always wanted to do. All of those things become a reality and in probably ways that are grander and more glorious than we possibly could imagine right now. But just because they are grander and more glorious than we could imagine doesn't mean that we shouldn't imagine. In fact, we should. We should try to imagine what is this new age going to be like? We should allow the hope to rise up in our hearts to help us anticipate what is coming so that we actually do long for the return of Jesus, the beginning of the new age. And not only because it means. All the hard things about this life will be wiped away. That's good. We should long for that, but we should also long for being with him. And exploring. All that this new age has to offer. With him. So that's what I want to challenge you to today. I want to challenge you to take a few minutes, to think about and to write down maybe one or two things that you would really anticipate about the new age. When you give your heart room to imagine and to hope. What is it that you would really like to see or like to do, or like to be part of, or a person that you would like to get to know or an experience that you would like to have? What are you hoping for? I'll share with you a couple of mine. One is that I would love to learn to play the cello. And I know that that might seem rather simple. And you might look at me and say like, you probably got lots of time left in your life. Why don't you just do it now? Well, I could, but I also got a whole lot going on in my life. My life is very full. Finding the time to be able to take lessons and practice, to learn an instrument in a way that I would actually enjoy it probably takes time and investment that I don't really have, or at least that I want to be given to other things that are bigger priorities for me than learning to play the cello. But I would love to learn to do it. I love the sound of the cello. I love how soothing and deep and rich it can be. But also how it just captures sort of, uh, a deep human element to the way that it plays music. I want to be able to not only know that, but to share it so that others can experience it as well. I probably won't ever get that opportunity in this age, but I'm hoping for it. And the next stage. Another one that I'm really hoping for is I love waterfalls. There is something just so beautiful and majestic and powerful to waterfalls that I love seeing them being in around them. And if I can playing in them, they're so much fun. I would love to go to all the places in the world where I could see some of the biggest and grandis waterfalls that our earth has to offer. I would love to see Niagara falls in Victoria falls in falls, and so many others. But I know that the reality of me being able to jet set all over the world, just to be able to see waterfalls is probably never going to happen in this life. But maybe in the age to come, I could get that opportunity. I would have all the time I could ever want for it to be able to explore and to see all these waterfalls. And maybe even as God brings about new creation or renewed creation, there might be new waterfalls to get to explore. I might even be able to be the first person to encounter one of God's new waterfalls. Oh, what a privilege that would be so cool to get to experience a waterfall for the first time to be the first person to come upon something so beautiful and breathtaking. Wouldn't that be amazing? That would be amazing for me anyway. What would be amazing for you? I want you to take a few minutes and to actually think about it. To let that hope come alive and to Kindle and you a desire for the next age to come. Because the next age to come means Jesus will return. And that's where we need to direct our hopes to be able to say, I want to learn the cello. And so I want Jesus to come back so that I can experience doing that with him. I want to see all of these waterfalls. So I want him to come back so that he and I can begin exploring those things together. That is the hope of what is coming for us in the new age. All right, man. I hope that this episode has done something for your heart. I hope it has awoken something in you and inspired you to dream and to long for, and to hope for everything that Jesus has to offer, because what he is offering us. It's absolutely grand and mind blowing. I hope that this series has done you. Good. I hope it has helped you to see that a masculine faith is a real thing and it's possible. And for those of you who may not yet call yourself Jesus followers. I hope it has given you a picture of a faith that would actually be something you would be interested in. Go back and listen to the entire series and let it stir some things in you that you've maybe never had stirred before. And if. Uh, by any means possible, you can give your allegiance to Jesus now would be a good time to do so. Thanks, man. I look forward to talking to you next time on the manhood tribe show. When we will begin a brand new series, I'll see you then.