10 November 2013 - desiring heaven

10 November 2013 - desiring heaven

As Christians we are called to seek the kingdom of God first before all things (cf. Mat. 6:33).  But this can only happen by his grace.  Otherwise we will easily be overwhelmed by the temporary, the transient, and the immediate. We need Jesus to encourage our "hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word."

This is the secret the Maccabees brothers know.  They are aware of the "everlasting encouragement" God has in store for them.  God gives them courage (encouragement) by this hope that empowers them to let go of even the most fundamental things of this world for the kingdom.

"You accursed fiend, you are depriving us of this present life,
but the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever.
It is for his laws that we are dying."
It is like how Abraham is able to offer Isaac to God.  "He reasoned that God was able to raise even from the dead, and he received Isaac back as a symbol" (cf. Heb. 11:19).

The lesson of both offerings, Isaac and the lives of the brothers, is the same: "without faith it is impossible to please him, for anyone who approaches God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him" [emphasis mine].

Only for those with this kind of faith can we understand how they "were tortured and would not accept deliverance, in order to obtain a better resurrection" (cf. Heb 11:35).

The Sadducee lack this kind of faith.  They are focused still on worldly paradigms of fulfillment.  The seven brothers that die in their example do not understand the hope for which the Maccabees brothers die.  But there is greater fulfillment in store than anything we know thus far [emphasis mine]:

but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age
and to the resurrection of the dead
neither marry nor are given in marriage.
They can no longer die,
for they are like angels;
and they are the children of God
because they are the ones who will rise.
We have to look behind these earthly fulfillments that surround us.  They pass and ultimately do not satisfy.  We need heaven to be in our hearts or how will we pursue it?  We need to realize that we are still a little like the Sadducees, pursuing fulfillment here on earth.  Then we can open ourselves to faith in God's promise of "everlasting encouragement" which he himself fulfills:

Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.

He "is not God of the dead, but of the living" and so our hope too must be fixed on that which is eternally living and not on that which dies.