8 August 2021

LONGING FOR HOME

Speaker: Fred Sigle

SUNDAY LESSON, 8/8/21
 
LONGING FOR HOME
2 Corinthians 5:1-8
 
This passage has been such a comfort to me since the day our son Steven went home to be with the Father.  It speaks of our groaning and longing to leave our “earthly tents” (physical bodies) that become tattered and worn out with use and to be “clothed with our heavenly dwelling”
This life is temporary.  It can never fulfill or satisfy our deepest longings that can only be found in our heavenly home.  Steven’s “earthly tent” had been wearing out for a long time, but now he has been given an “eternal house in heaven” that has been prepared just for him.  Whatever limitations and burdens his “earthly tent” imposed upon him, have been lifted when Steven was clothed with his heavenly dwelling.
2 Corinthians 5:1-10

For 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 instead 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 instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who 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. For 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. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.