Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is ...



2 Corinthians 5:1-10

This Is Not Our Permanent Address

June 18, 2006

Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. (NIV)

The year after my vicar year I took a one-year emergency call to teach at Arizona Lutheran Academy in Phoenix. After having me live with one of the other teachers for the first couple months of the school year, the school put me up in what had been described as a “condo” in downtown Phoenix. Whatever visions the word “condo” had created in my mind—perhaps a swimming pool with a hot tub, a roomy apartment with a balcony overlooking the aforementioned swimming pool—a pool which would no doubt be populated by young professionals—whatever visions the word “condo” had created were quickly dismissed when I arrived.

When I walked in to the condo—having seen no swimming pool on the way in, I might add—there were a number of rather large bugs in the shower. The kitchen looked as though it had been designed by someone who had first spent considerable time in the liquor cabinet—odd angles, awkward cupboards. To say that this place was furnished in a rather Spartan way would be an understatement. It had a bed, an old couch, and a table that was so low that I had to sit on the floor in order to use it.

The first night I was there my car was stolen. The second night I was there my neighbors got into a shouting match and the cops had to come and break it up. I heard sirens daily—and especially nightly. And every couple weeks or so one particular car alarm would go off at about 2 in the morning, and it would just keep going for the next 15 minutes or so, leaving me with my pillow over my head, groaning.

Life on earth is like that sometimes, isn’t it? Paul compares it to living in a tent. If your feelings about camping are similar to mine, you know what he’s talking about. The bitter wind of a stagnant—or even staggering—economy blow through, and you feel the chill of being laid off. You lie down at night on the hard ground of hard feelings and the rocky ground of hard hearts is there, and you have trouble sleeping. The steady rain of world turmoil falls, and it soaks through and begins drip, drip, dripping on you. The heat of a high-pressure front of heavy responsibility mixes with a low-opportunity front of a constricted schedule, and you groan, wishing that your tent had central air and another 8 hours in each day.

So what you do about it? Maybe you do what I did about my apartment in Phoenix. Short of buying the Club for my car, I didn’t do much. The walls stayed as bare as they were on the day that I moved in. Instead of buying a dresser, I just stacked my clothes in piles along the wall of my bedroom. I sat on the floor to eat my meals. Maybe that seems a bit strange to you, but it made sense to me—because I knew this wasn’t going to be my permanent address. Any posters, paintings, and pictures would have just had to be pulled down off the walls within a few months anyway. A dresser wouldn’t have fit in the Sunbird when it was time to head back to Illinois in May, so stacking clothes seemed to make more sense than basically buying a dresser for only 7 months use. To me it didn’t seem to make too much more sense that decorating and remodeling a hotel room. For all that stuff I would wait until I had a permanent address.

And as for the car alarms and sirens, I just lived with them. I accepted the fact that my sleep would be periodically interrupted by car alarms and sirens, and that there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

So we too do well to realize that this earth is not our permanent address. If the tent that is your life has some trials and tribulations in it that leave you feeling naked and exposed to the elements, keep in mind that it won’t last forever. And if you want to go about trying to make some improvements to your life, if you want to make some improvements to the tent in which you live, go ahead. Do what you can—but understand that there is only so much you can do to a tent. You can hang up all the pictures you want and you can paint the outside of it to look like brick, but in the end it’s still going to be a whole lot closer to being a tent than it will to being a mansion.

The simple and inescapable fact is this: Life on this earth inevitably brings some pretty harsh weather, and some of that weather will make its way into your tent.

And when it does, we groan, wishing to move out of this tent. I did that when the car alarms and sirens went off. I groaned and wished that I didn’t live at the corner of 19th Avenue and Thomas.

And yet let’s remember what it means to truly move out of this tent we call life on earth. It means that we will die. And when that happens, we will appear before the judgment seat of Christ, where we will receive what we are due for the things we did here in the body, whether good or bad.

And if you want to talk about feeling “naked”, try standing before the judgment seat of Christ while he sifts through the things that you have done in the body and sorts them into “good” and “bad.” What we will find is that a lot of the things that we had forgotten entirely have not been forgotten by Christ—and they will end up in the “bad” category. What we will find is that a lot of the things that we had counted on being placed in the “good” will end up in the other pile—because while they were done in outward obedience to God’s commands, they were done with a grudging, a proud, a manipulative, and/or a selfish heart. And finally, it will not matter if in the end the stack of deeds on the “good” pile tower above the stack on the “bad” pile. Because although 60% wins/good games and 40% losses/bad games means that the D-Backs had a “good” season, even 90% good deeds and 10% bad deeds (a ratio that I doubt any of us would be so bold as to claim for ourselves)—even that ratio means that we had a “bad” life while living in this tent called earth. And that means that we will have a truly bad time in eternity—because we will spend eternity in hell. The groaning that you did on earth will become tremendously more fervent, tremendously more agonized, and completely constant when you get to hell.

People who complain about how miserable it is in their tent during a storm are pretty foolish if, because of their desire to escape the miserable conditions in their tent, they step out into freezing temperatures and gale force winds, and people who yearn and groan to get out of, to escape the earthly tent called life are pretty foolish if they have no plan for eternity.

What’s your plan? When you lie in this tent and groan, looking forward to it being destroyed, looking forward to your time on earth coming to an end, are you merely viewing it as an escape, or do you also have a plan for the future? You’d better—because you will stand before the judgment seat of Christ to answer for the deeds you have done, to answer for your success or failure to do the work of God.

And here is what Christ himself says is the work of God—“to believe in the one whom he has sent.”(John 6:29) Now we know that the one sent by God was Jesus, and we also know that he was sent for a purpose—“to do the work of him who sent me.” (John 9:4) That work was performing the good deeds of the law. Jesus said that he had not come to abolish the law with all its deeds, but to fulfill it and to do them. For 33 years he did it perfectly, and then for 3 terrible hours on the cross he appeared before the judgment seat of God and received what was due for the things done in the body—not what was due him for the things done in his body—for all those things were “good” in the most perfect sense of that word but rather to receive what was due you for all the things done in your body. The Bible says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree…” (1 Peter 2:24)

What happened to all that righteousness, all those good deeds? They’re yours. He got your sin, and you got his good deeds. Later on in this chapter Paul writes, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21) Therefore heaven is yours. Heaven—a place not built—or perhaps we should say, ruined—by human hands, but a place built by God—a place where we will be fully clothed, protected from all the elements, protected from every danger, sorrow, or evil—a place where death itself will be completely swallowed up by life.

Now I know that you haven’t seen heaven yet—but you may be supremely confident of receiving it one day, for God has put his Holy Spirit in your heart as a down payment, as a deposit guaranteeing that he has a place in heaven with your name on it. What if you don’t feel the Holy Spirit? Don’t ask yourself whether or not you feel the Spirit. Instead trust the unchanging promise of God, which says that if you have been baptized, you have received the Holy Spirit. How do you know if the Holy Spirit is still present? Don’t ask yourself whether or not you feel the Spirit, but instead ask yourself whether there is evidence of his presence. After all, I don’t feel my lungs, but the fact that I’m breathing is evidence of their presence. God’s Word says that if the confession of your heart is “Jesus is Lord” you have received the Holy Spirit—for such confessions are the work of the Holy Spirit—and only the work of the Holy Spirit. Therefore your faith, your confession is proof that God has given you the Spirit—and therefore also proof, a guarantee, of what is to come.

And that knowledge gives us great comfort as we struggle with living in another tent—the tent of our bodies. Whether it’s the sore shins we have now after going for a run or the way we have to pause to catch our breath after climbing stairs, nearly all of us are seeing—and feeling—the signs of getting older, feeling the signs of our bodies slowly wearing down and out.

Yes, the picture Solomon painted in Ecclesiastes is an accurate one for all of us who live long enough in the tent that is called our body. Tents aren’t built to last for the long haul, and due to sin, neither are our bodies. Tents gradually wear down and so do our bodies.

While most of us have not quite reached the point that Solomon describes in Ecclesiastes, most of us are also beginning to see it approaching. He wrote, “The sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark …the keepers of the house tremble [you’ve seen people whose hands, once strong and quick, are now uncertain and tremble]…the strong men stoop [people whose legs formerly walked tall and proud now walked stooped over and shuffling]…the grinders cease because they are few [even our teeth begin to decay and wear out!]…those looking through the windows grow dim [Did your prescription change at your last eye exam? Your eyes are wearing out?]…when men rise up at the sound of birds [Are you having difficulty sleeping—especially getting back to sleep?], but all their songs grow faint [Do you find yourself saying “what” a lot more than you used to?]…when men are afraid of heights and dangers in the streets [you can’t defend yourself the way you used to, and there are so many more dangers—even one seemingly small fall can kill you!]…the grasshopper drags himself along [the spring in your step has been replaced by a shuffling in your gait].” (Ecclesiastes 12:3-5)

Yes, old age is coming to these mortal tents. But we’re going to be trading them in soon. Like the old song says, “Oh, I ain’t gonna’ need this house no longer, I ain’t gonna’ need this house no more.” What is mortal will be swallowed up by life.

When the car alarms went off in Phoenix, I groaned a bit, but I did so looking forward to the day when I would be back in Downers Grove, IL, and I wouldn’t have to listen to car alarms in the middle of the night. Since I knew that day wasn’t far away, and since I knew that home was pretty certain, my groans were more anticipatory than bitter.

When the alarms go off in my back and my knees and other places, I groan a bit, but I do so looking forward to the day when I trade this dilapidated old tent in for a house that’s built to last—a glorified body—a glorified body that can set up shop in its permanent, perfect home. Amen.

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