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I think every person who has ever been married has a humorous story to tell about his or her honeymoon, and I have one, too. It wasn't funny to me at the time, because my wife and I had gone together for eight years and had waited patiently for the day of our wedding. But all those years of waiting had not prepared us for how long the day of our wedding would be.
The afternoon wedding finally occurred on June 11, 1960, in Pittsburgh.
After the wedding came an interminably long wedding reception, during which I shook hands with every person in the world, or so it seemed. Then came another reception at a relative's home, and then a long drive to the airport. We finally boarded a flight for New York City. We were planning to spend the night there at a hotel and fly out the next morning for the destination of our honeymoon, Bermuda.
We were excited about going to Bermuda. In preparation for our honeymoon, we had looked at all of the pictures and read all of the brochures, and had imagined the enchantment that awaited us once we arrived. I could think of no more enchanting place in all the world to go than Bermuda.
Our flight was supposed to take us to Kennedy International Airport in New York, but we had to land instead at the Newark airport. Our hotel, of course, was at Kennedy; we were to fly from there to Bermuda in the morning. I found a cab driver at the airport in Newark and asked, "How long will it take us to get over to Kennedy Airport?" He said, "In this traffic, it will take an hour to an hour and a half." I said, "No way am I going to do that." So I went back into the airport and hired a private plane, a little three-passenger thing to fly us from Newark to Kennedy. That was an adventure. The plane flew low over the skyline of New York, in between buildings and by the Empire State Building. In just a few moments, we were at Kennedy Airport.
The next step was to get from the airport terminal to the hotel. The pilot of the little plane told me, "When we land, go inside the terminal building.
They have courtesy phones on the wall, and you can call the hotel where you're staying and they'll send a limousine to pick you up." So that's what we did. When I called the hotel, the receptionist said: "Yes, we have your reservation, Mr Sproul. We'll be right over to pick you up." Vesta and I went to the front of the terminal and sat down on our suitcases to wait. We sat there for an hour and a half, waiting on our wedding night for a limousine that never came. It took me that long to realize that they had forgotten us. When I called back, I learned they had picked up some other people, thinking they were Vesta and me. We sat there on our suitcases on our wedding night for an hour and a half.
Now here's my question: What would you think of us if I had said to Vesta, "We're having so much fun sitting here on our suitcases that I think we'll forget about our trip to Bermuda and cancel it"? You would think I had lost my mind. Yet that is the way we behave with respect to heaven.
Jonathan Edwards once made the comment that no person who seeks to go on a pilgrimage to a glorious and exotic place will take up permanent residence at an inn along the way. It's nice to have a resting place, but we're always moving toward that which is better. Edwards said that Christians who cling tenaciously to this world and to this life are like sojourners who get stuck in a wayside inn, having lost sight of their glorious destination.
We're headed for a place far more glorious than Bermuda. We're headed for heaven, and we need to understand not only that there is a heaven but that it is vastly superior to anything we experience in this world.
When the apostle Paul wrote the Philippian church, he was in prison and nearing the end of his life. The letter indicates that he's struggling with the circumstances in which he finds himself. He makes this statement: "For I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death" (1:19-20). Do you hear what Paul is saying? "I don't know what they're going to do with me. They may cut my body to pieces. They may chop off my head. But whether I live or whether I die, Christ is going to be magnified and honored in my body, and I can say that with boldness."
How could he face this kind of circumstance with such confidence and such serenity of heart and spirit? The apostle writes, "For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (v. 21). Paul had one idea, one consuming
passion: Christ. He was so focused on Christ that he said, "For me, to live is Christ. That's what I'm caught up in." But what's the next part of the statement? "And to die is gain." Paul is saying: "I enjoy fellowship with Christ right now. If I am alive, I am in Christ. For me to live is to enjoy fellowship with Christ, and if I die, it's gain." Now gain is an antonym for the word loss. We have a tendency to look at death as not only a loss but the worst of all possible losses. It is a loss for us when we lose loved ones to death, but is it necessarily a loss for them? Not if they're destined for heaven.
Let's see what else Paul says: "But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet what I shall choose I cannot tell. For I am hardpressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless, to remain in the flesh is more needful for you. And being confident of this, I know that I shall remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy of faith, that your rejoicing for me may be more abundant in Jesus Christ by my coming to you again" (vv. 22- 26).
From the record of history, it seems that Paul did survive this period of incarceration—this was not his final imprisonment—and that there was an extension of his earthly ministry so that he could fulfill the idea that he announced to the Philippians. But do you see the dilemma he expresses? "I'm in a strait between two things. I'm betwixt and between." He is experiencing a profound sense of ambivalence, a struggle within his heart in terms of his desires. On the one hand, he sees that it is pressingly urgent that he continue to live for the sake of his children in the faith. He wants to be of service to them. He knows that they need him, and he says, "I'm in a strait between these two things: whether to stay and be with you, which is far more needful, or to depart and be with Christ." It's as if Paul is saying: "I love being with you folks. You're my children in the faith. You're my friends. You're my beloved, but when it comes to being with you or being with Christ, there's no contest. So I'm torn between staying with you and leaving to depart and to be with Christ."
Then he gives a little parenthesis: "Which is far better." To live is Christ; to die is gain. Paul doesn't just say that the difference is between the good and the better, nor does he say that the difference is between the good and the best; the difference is between what is good and what is far better. The best is still beyond heaven, with the final consummation, with the
resurrection of the body and so on, but the evaluation of the apostle is that the state we enter at death is not only a better situation than anything we enjoy in this world, it is far better. What would it do to our lives and to our confidence and to the health of our souls if we really believed that?
A few years ago, I was preparing to make a trip to speak at a conference.
Everything was scheduled. People had registered for the conference. There was no way I could arbitrarily cancel my presence there. However, the night before I was to leave, I received a phone call that informed me that my beloved mentor, Dr. John Gerstner, had collapsed in Pittsburgh while delivering a series of messages. I was told that he had had three strokes and that he was comatose and was not expected to live. I was shaken to my boots. Dr. Gerstner was elderly, and he had had close encounters with death before, so I had anticipated that at some point he would go home. I had wondered how I would feel when word came to me that my mentor had died. I knew I would feel like a spiritual orphan. I would feel vulnerable. I would feel alone. I would feel threatened to not have his stabilizing influence in my life anymore, just as a son feels when his father is taken from him.
So I was very concerned in my soul, and I thought, first of all, of mundane things. I wondered how in the world I could rearrange my schedule to go to this conference and get to the funeral in time if he should die in the next forty-eight hours. Then I began to think about how costly this would be for my life and my soul to be without my mentor, and then finally, through the grace of God, I began to think of what it would mean for him, and I thought: "If Dr. Gerstner goes home now, this afternoon, my guess is tonight he'll be sitting at a table, talking theology with Martin Luther, John Calvin, Augustine, and Jonathan Edwards, and for the first time in his entire life he will be having a theological conversation with peers, because he's never had that privilege in this world." And I thought, "What a glorious thing it will be for him when he crosses the threshold and enters into the heavenly sanctuary." This was a man whose indefatigable energy shamed all of us. If I had to speak four times in a single day, I would be spent and exhausted. After I was finished, I wouldn't be able to do anything productive for the rest of the day, and yet I had seen Dr. Gerstner, when he was seventy-five years old, stand in front of a camera and deliver twelve consecutive lectures and then say, "Would you like more?" He was tireless and relentless day in and day out. It occurred to me how weary he
must be, and for him to enter into his rest, into the presence of Christ, would be far better for him. In that episode I was experiencing the struggle not for myself, about my own life, but about his life, the same struggle Paul was experiencing.
We know the answer to his struggle. Christ said to Paul: "Not yet, Paul.
You still have more work to do. The hour will come when you can come home. I've prepared a place for you, but right now your place is in the ministry, working on behalf of the people."
So for a period of time, Paul had to experience what the Old Testament saints experienced. In Hebrews 11, the great faith chapter of the Bible, we read: "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them" (vv. 13-16). The saints of the Old Testament looked beyond the grave, even as Job, in the midst of his torment and suffering said, "I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God" (19:25-26). The Old Testament patriarchs did not have the benefit of the historic record of the resurrection of Christ or of the words of Jesus, as we are able to study them today. They had vague, shadowy hopes and the promises of God, but on the basis of that, they withstood unimaginable torture, persecution, hatred, pain and suffering, because they sought a better country, a heavenly country, and they sought a city prepared by God. They did this because they understood that to depart and enter into heaven is far better.
I mentioned above the episode of Dr. Gerstner's collapse in Pittsburgh.
The bulletin the next day was radically different. He woke up, and two days later he went home. A few weeks later he resumed his ministry, and he had to endure the same kind of delay that the apostle Paul experienced; he had to wait longer to enter into his rest.
I can remember talking with my grandmother when she was eighty-eight years old. A little tear formed in the corner of her eye, and she looked at me wistfully, and said: "I just don't understand why God won't take me home. I
want to go." She was experiencing what Søren Kirkegaard said is one of the worst pains that we are ever called to endure: to want to die and not be allowed. To want to die in order to be free from pain is one thing, but to want to pass across the veil to see the face of Christ is something else. Have you come to the place in your thinking where you understand that death is not tragic for the Christian, but that it is a triumph—that it means crossing the threshold into glory?