The Heavenly Picture

Pastor John J. Grosboll

I want to study with you this evening from I Corinthians the fifteenth chapter.  I Corinthians 15 is one of the most electrifying chapters in all the Bible.  It is almost 60 verses long and the entire chapter deals directly with the resurrection.  And the resurrection is one of the most exciting topics of the Bible.  Do you not believe that?  I love to study about the resurrection.

It was the resurrection that electrified the Roman world in the first century.  You see, the pagans, the heathens, the idol-worshipping people, oh, they had all kinds of theories.  They had them for thousands of years, even the Egyptians had them.  Theories about when you died you had something in you that went off to heaven and lived forever.  But it surely did not look real when you looked at that body lying in the casket.

And the pagans, for the most part, really did not have much hope when somebody died.  It was just sort of a dim future.  They were told, Well, there is something inside that goes off to heaven and goes somewhere.  It was just the end.  You can see that clearly when you see what they wrote on the tombstones of the heathen.  They wrote things such as, “Gone forever.”  It was just the end.

But when the disciples of Jesus preached about the resurrection, it was not some theory.  It was not what they had heard from their pagan teachers—that you had something inside you, a soul or a spirit or something, that went off when you died.  The disciples said, When you die, you are dead, but in the resurrection your body is going to come to life.  You are going to be you again and we can prove this because our Leader went into the grave and came out and you can go and see the empty tomb today.  And there are over 500 people in Palestine who witnessed and talked with Him after He came forth from the dead.

That story of the resurrection electrified the world.  Somehow today, in Christian countries, we have become gospel hardened.  That which in former generations made people absolutely excited, we listen to it and we just say, Oh!   We are gospel hardened.  We are in a Laodicean condition in the world today and I want to talk about that very thing later, but first I want to get into this Scripture.

We are not going to study the whole chapter, of course, it is too long.  But I want to start studying with you in verse 45.  There are people who could not understand what kind of a body a person had in the resurrection.  Paul has been talking about the resurrection the whole chapter, and he says, “And so it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living soul.’  The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.  However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, [that which is of the dust] and afterward [then] the spiritual [or heavenly].  The first man was [out of dust] of the earth, made of dust: The second Man the Lord from heaven, [or out of heaven.]  As was the man [such as of] dust, so also are those who are made of dust: and as is [such as the] heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly.”

But then I want to concentrate on verse 49.  This is a verse on which I have never before  preached.  However, I have discovered some wonderful things in this verse that we need to study and understand.  I am going to read to you literally the words translated to the English from Greek.  I am going to read it and you listen to the words that Paul spoke.  I want you to notice in verse 49; Paul is not just making a statement of fact.  He is not doing that.  Paul is giving us an exhortation.

There is quite a bit of difference between an exhortation and a simple statement of fact.  He is not just saying that we will do this.  He does not actually say that.  He says we should become like this.  Notice how it reads.  I will read it to you very literally.  “And just as we have borne the image of earth, or the image of the dust, we should also bear the image of the heavenly, or let us also bear the image of the heavenly.”

Now when we read that in most Bible translations, people just think, Well, that means that we have been like this and we are going to be like that.  But that is not what it says.  Paul is giving us an exhortation that this is what we should become.  We have been like this, the image of the earth; but we are to become the image of the heavenly.  That is what we should become.

Now the tragedy, of course, is that even though that is what we should become, not everybody is going to become like that.  But that is what we should become and that is why we are here tonight.  That is why we are having this camp meeting.  Every one of you, and myself, have a page in God’s book in heaven.  In that page, every detail of our life history is recorded.  Every detail of our character is recorded.

Now we have cameras.  Today we have digital cameras, video cameras and we can take a camera and we can record the image of your face, either with film or digitize it.  And so then we have every detail.  You take this film and you can blow it up and you can see every detail.  If you are using high-resolution film, you can see every detail of the person’s face.

Now that is what we can do with human beings.  But you know what God has recorded in His picture book?  God has recorded in His picture book every detail of your character.  And in that book, when the angels look at that book, they come to your page and they look at your page, and they can see whether it has the image of the earthly or whether it has the image of the heavenly.

Let me tell you something, friends, nobody is going to heaven if they do not have the heavenly image first.  It is not going to happen.  It is not like many people have thought—that you can just have the image of the earthly and then when Jesus comes, Bang, He will change you into the image of the heavenly.  It is true that when Jesus comes, in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, He is going to give you a new body.  That is true enough.

But before you have a heavenly body, you have to have a heavenly character.  And Paul says here, We have been in the image of the earthly, but we should become in the image of the heavenly.  Friends of mine, when your guardian angel looks at your page in the heavenly record book, what does your guardian angel see tonight?  Does he see the image of the earthly, or does he see the image of the heavenly?  What does your guardian angel see when he looks at your page in God’s picture book?

Before I studied this subject, I said, We need to explain, in a practical way, what it means to have the image of the earthly and what it means to have the character image of the heavenly.  I want to read you a couple of statements, first of all the image of the earthly.  We are going to look at eight to ten points on the image of the earthly. 

If you will listen carefully, you will know exactly what these eight or ten points are when I am finished reading these two statements.  Here is the first statement.  “The Lord would not have any one of us be presumptuous, care not for health, and make no provision whatever for a sustenance; but when He sees the world taking all the thoughts and absorbing all the affections, He sees that eternal realities are lost sight of.  He would correct this evil, which is the work of Satan.  The mind, which should be trained to high, elevated contemplation of eternal realities, becomes common, bearing the image of the earthly.  Jesus comes to present the advantages and beautiful imagery of the heavenly, that the attractions of heaven shall become familiar to the thoughts and memory’s hall be hung with pictures of celestial and eternal loveliness.”  Our High Calling, 286.

Did you get the idea from that statement that whether you have the image of the earthly or the image of the heavenly depends quite a bit on what you think about and where your affections are?  Let me read one more and then we will summarize the things.

“But if the human agent places little value upon the precious things which God, through the gift of His only-begotten Son, has made possible for man to obtain, if he loses eternity out of his reckoning, and listens to Satan’s false representation, and is attracted to the things of earth instead of heaven, he sustains great loss, so cultivating the powers of his mind and soul so that he will not have a fitness for eternal life.  In this way he not only concentrates his mind and affection upon that which cannot possibly bring him happiness in this life, but through the idolizing of the most contemptible things, he degrades himself to a low moral level.  In his insane pursuit after earthly gain, he accepts Satan’s method, and practices dishonest ways, and is blind to the result. . . . The mind of him who follows the suggestion of Satan becomes like his leader; evil propensities gradually take him captive, and he becomes a slave of Satan.  He is led on into deeper idolatry, beholding not the celestial imagery but the deceiving representation of the enemy.  Satan pictures before him the advantage of worldly gain, and fills memory’s hall with false representations.  The mind looks upon these, and becomes debased according to the subjects presented.”  Signs Of The Times, June 26. 1893.

We will draw the following conclusions from those two statements that we just read, so we will understand what it means to have the image of the earthly.

1.  We saw this two times.  Having the image of the earthly means that your mind and your affections are concentrated on the things of this earth so that you lose eternity out of your reckoning.  Eternal realities are lost sight of.  Are there eternal realities?  There are eternal realities.  How much time every day do you spend thinking about eternal realities?  Oh, you say, I am so busy.  I have to earn a living.  I am working 60 hours a week.

God knows all about that.  It was God who said to Adam after he sinned, that in the sweat of your brow you are going to eat bread.  God knows all about that.  But that is one of the very reasons, when you read the Old Testament, you will find that the children of Israel had three feasts a year which every man was required to attend.  Why?  Well, they were just like us, maybe not quite as bad, but they were busy.

And if you spend every waking moment, every hour of every day concentrating on what you need to do to make a living and the things of this life, what will eventually happen?  What will eventually happen is that you will lose sight of eternal realities.  You will lose eternity out of your reckoning, because you are spending all your time and concentration thinking about the problems you have to solve down here.  That is one of the reasons that we have camp meetings.

You and I need some time to think about something else other than what we need to do to solve our financial problems, make a living, solve the problems on the job, with our house, and every other problem that we are trying to solve down in this world.  We need some time to spend thinking about eternal realities.  Because, if we do not spend time thinking about eternal realities, eventually we will lose sight of them.  We will be looking just at the things down here, and actually, when you think about it, of the two, which is the most important? 

So the first factor, and this is one of the reasons we need to go to camp meeting, so that we do not lose sight of eternal realities.  We need some time to think about heaven.

My friend, I am not giving you this as advice.  I am not trying to tell you what to do.  If you are here and you are staying in a cabin or a Recreational Vehicle, in a tent or a motel,  wherever you are staying, these next few days could be one of the golden opportunities of your life—to spend some time with the Lord thinking about eternal realities and talking to the Lord about it.

Ask, “Lord, Do I yet have the image of the heavenly?  Or do I just have the image of the earthly?”  We all need it.  Preachers need it.  Elders need it. Deacons need it.  We all need to take time thinking about eternal realities and not only about things down here, otherwise we will lose sight of what is up there.  That is just Number One.  Here is another factor.

2.       You heard this in the statements that we read.  Another factor in the image of the earthly is a person who has been thinking about this so much that the world has been taking all of their thoughts and the world has been absorbing their affections.  And so their hearts are attracted to the things of earth.  Our hearts can become so attracted to the things of earth. 

Different people are attracted to different things.  There are some men, for instance, who can hardly come to a place like this for a week without bringing some car magazines because that is what attracts them.  There are people like that.  I do not know what attracts you.  There is nothing wrong with having a car.  I drove here in a car.  Probably almost all of you drove here in a car.  Nothing wrong with a car.  But what has our affections? 

That is point number two.  Where are our affections?  Are our affections on the things of earth?  Do the things of this earth, the different problems that we have to solve down here, our financial problems, our health problems, our family problems, our job problems, all these different problems that we have, does that absorb our total time and attention so that we do not have time to keep the first commandment.  You know what the first commandment is?  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.  Yes.  So the second factor is the image of the earthly.  This is all recorded on your page in God’s picture book.  Where are your affections?  Where are your thoughts?  How many minutes today have you spent thinking about heavenly things?

If we do not take time to think about heavenly things, to meditate upon them, to study them; eventually our affections and our thoughts will all be down here.  That is all recorded in God’s book.  If that is my situation, I still have the image of the earthly.  As a Christian I am supposed to develop the image of the heavenly.  But if my affections are down here, I have broken the first commandment.

3.  The third is the result of the first two.  The first one is eternal realities are lost sight of.  The second is, the world absorbs all the thoughts and the affections.  And the third one is the consequence of the first two.  The human agent places little value upon the precious things which God has made it possible for man to attain. 

How much value do you place on the things of eternity versus the temporal things of this life?  How much value do you place on it?  Let me tell you a couple of ways we do this.  You can just think this through for yourself.  If you really place a lot of value on something, you will invest time and money in that thing.  That is just the way human beings operate.  Look around.

If you really value something, you will invest time and money in it.  But a third factor, in the person who has the image of the earthly, is that he places little value upon the precious things that God has made it possible for man to obtain.

4.  Paul says, We have borne the image of the earthly.  That has been our past.  But that does not need to be our future.  We are to bear the image of the heavenly.  Now when Jesus comes, we will get a new body, but we are to bear the image of the heavenly now.  That is what the Christian religion is about.

So number four is: The person who has lost eternity from view; the person whose affections and thoughts are absorbed and taken up by the world; the human agent who places little value upon the things of God that He has made it possible for man to obtain, that person then begins to listen to Satan’s false representations.

What are Satan’s false representations?  Oh, Satan’s false representations are about all the wonderful things that you can get in this world.  He knows which appeal will have the greatest affect on you.  The devil has been studying your character since before you were born.  The devil studied your mother and your father before you were born.  He has been studying you and he knows which temptations have the greatest appeal to you.

And so he begins a system of false representations and then

5.  The result of listening to the devil is that the person gets in an insane pursuit after some gain of this world.  It could be education; it could be money; it could be power; it could be pleasure.  There are a lot of different things.  As a result of listening to the devils false representation (that is No. 4) a person gets involved in an insane pursuit after some type of earthly gain.

You do not have time to come to camp meeting.  Sometimes you do not have time to keep the Sabbath strictly.  You do not have time to study the Bible very much.  You do not have time to pray very much, because you are so absorbed in earthly gain.  Are there Christians who claim and make a profession that they are preparing for the Lord to come who are in this situation?  Yes, there are, friends.

I am not trying to get after anybody, I just want you to understand how dangerous it is.  It is not a situation where we can just bear the image of the earthly and then, when Jesus comes, Bang, everything is going to change.  No, that is not what Paul wrote.  It is not even in the future tense like most English versions show it.  It is in the present tense.  We should do it now.

Well, after these first five things happen, then comes No. 6.  You see, the devil’s program makes you more earthly and more earthly and more earthly.

6.  A person becomes like his leader.  Incidentally, we are all like that.  We tend to become like our leader.  A small child develops habit of speaking and all manner of mannerisms by watching his father and mother.  We become like our leader.  When the devil is your leader, you will become more earthly and more earthly and

7.  The result of listening to the devil’s false representation and getting in an insane pursuit after earthly gain and becoming like your leader, you have these evil propensities that bring you into slavery.  You become a slave to Satan.  We read that, too.  These evil propensities make you a captive and bring you into bondage.  And you are a slave.  People say, Pastor John, I want to overcome, but I cannot.

I do not argue with people when they tell me that, I know that they are telling me the truth.  They are in bondage and they cannot get loose!  Now the Lord can set you free, but the Lord cannot—I say this respectfully—God will respect your power of choice and God will not set you free if you keep listening to the devil and you do not take any time to think about heavenly things and to turn your life around, as to what you are spending time doing.

It has always appeared irrational to me that people will spend all their time thinking about the things of this world; allowing the world to absorb their affection; placing little value on divine things, because they spend neither time nor money in it; listening to Satan’s false representations about all the wonderful things they are going to be able to get in this world; going in insane pursuit after some type of earthly gain, and then coming to the preacher and saying, I cannot overcome!

Well, it is true.  You cannot overcome.  And nobody can overcome without God’s power.  But if we do not have any power, friends, there is a reason.  Then the person whose evil propensities have taken him captive, becomes a slave to Satan and the devil just leads him deeper and deeper and deeper into idolatry.  That is what this all is.  That is what the earthly person is.  The earthly person is an idolater.

The devil has gotten their affections off of their heavenly Father onto something or somebody in this world.  By the way, you can even commit idolatry over your spouse.  You are supposed to love your spouse.  That is a Bible command.  But even your spouse is not to be in the place of God.  A person is led deeper and deeper into idolatry.  Satan keeps telling them all the advantages they are going to gain.

And their memory, their minds, are filled with all these pictures that the devil has put in there from the television, from magazines, from music, from newspapers, from everything that they have seen in this world.  All the wonderful things that they are supposed to gain and they are of the earth.

Paul says in verse 49, “And [just] as we have borne the image of the man of dust [or the earth], we shall [should] also bear the image of the heavenly Man.”  How are we going to bear the image of the heavenly?  Well, we should have a fairly good idea if we understand, from what we have just studied, how we have the image of the earthly.  But we will look at a few specific points.

1.  If we are going to bear the image of the heavenly, we must take time to think and meditate about spiritual and heavenly things.  My dear friends, you do not need to tell me but think it through in your own mind.  How much time are you spending thinking and meditating about heavenly things?  Here is a statement on that from The Review and Herald, July 1, 1890.  “At the Saviour’s advent [that is the first advent], men had become thoroughly absorbed in earthly things.  They did not with spiritual vision penetrate to the glories of the world to come.  [You see, they were earthly.]  A view of heavenly things would have balanced the mind and engross the affections, so that they would have borne the image of the heavenly instead of the image of the earthly.”

Now that is an amazing statement.  If they had spent time meditating and thinking about heavenly things, she says that it would have balanced the mind and the heavenly things would have attracted their affection and they would have had the image of the heavenly, instead of the image of the earthly.

Here is what Jesus did.  “Christ presented the momentous claims of eternity to inspire the efforts of man to reach heavenly things.  He presented before them the grandeur of the future in contrast with the insignificance of the present.”  Ibid.  Oh, we need to think those things through that Jesus taught.  Do you remember what Jesus said to the people one time?  He said it to His disciples, What is it going to gain for a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul.  What is he going to profit? 

Why it is a dead loss and yet, friends, there are people who are losing eternal life.  They do not even own the state of Kansas or the city of Wichita, yet they are forfeiting eternal life to get these things that they are trying to get that are not worth as much as one city.  But Jesus said, if you gain the whole world and lose your soul, what are you going to really gain?

“He [that is, Jesus] assigned to worldly enterprises a place subordinate to the interests of spiritual things.”  Ibid.  Now, notice.  Jesus did not say, Do not work.  Jesus did not say Just go and beg alms if you are going to be spiritual.  He never said that.  Paul was a tentmaker, Jesus was a carpenter, and Peter was a fisherman.  Jesus did not say not to work, but He said those things involving this world should be subordinate to spiritual things.

How is it in your life and my life?  Do we have our priorities straight?  Or is what should be number two, actually number one?  “He opened before the minds of men the fact that every moment of life is weighty with eternal consequences.  He showed them that the vanities of the world that bind men in a tyrannical bondage are superfluous and worthless.”  Ibid.  Those things for which people are working, from early morning to late at night, Jesus said that someday they would find out that it is not worth anything.

This is one of the reasons, as I mentioned before, that we have camp meetings, because we need it.  This is an opportunity.  Would it not be wonderful if this week we all took the maximum advantage of this opportunity and said, Lord, by Your grace and power, I am going to spend a lot of time this week thinking about eternal realities and about heaven.  As you think and meditate upon those things—if it is hard for you to imagine, just read some of the passages in the Bible about it as well as thinking about it.

What is involved?  You see, you and I must come to the place where our affections are up there and not down here.  Let us read that in the Bible.  Open your Bible to Colossians 3:1, 2.  “If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.  Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.”

Has the spell of infatuation with the things of this world been broken in your life?  Do you see the claims of heaven, the claims of eternity?  Have you had a view of the grandeur of the future so that you realize that the present is really insignificant?  You see, the only thing that makes the present significant is if you are using the present to be ready for the future.  Does that make sense?

There is another statement on this.  “Jesus desires to efface the image of the earthly from the minds of His followers [Has He succeeded yet with you?  That is what He wants to do], and to impress upon them the image of the heavenly, that they may become one with Himself, reflecting His character, and showing forth the praises of Him who hath called them out of darkness into His marvelous light.”  Reflecting Christ, 303.

The result of spending time thinking about heavenly things, about divine things, is—we will become one with Christ.  We will reflect His character and that is the condition we have to be in to be ready for His coming.  The unfortunate truth is that with most professed Christians today, we just read what Jesus desires us to do, but with most it has not happened yet.

I am always a believer in facing reality.  And I want to read you a statement that Ellen White wrote about this problem.  The problem then is the problem now.  The problem that has to be solved in your life and my life if we are going to be ready for Jesus to come.  She is talking here about a camp meeting that they had, too.  She wrote,  “I have waited anxiously and hoped that God would put His spirit upon some and use them as instruments of righteousness to awaken and set in order His church.  But I have looked in vain.  ‘Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.’  Notwithstanding all the labor bestowed in years past up to the last June Conference, the church as been steadily and perceptively retrograding.  They have not advanced.  They have been uniting more and more with the world in spirit and influence, until the line of demarcation between them and the world is scarcely discernable.  They do not bear the image of the heavenly, the impress of the divine.  I have about despaired as I have seen, year after year, a greater departure from that simplicity which God has shown me should characterize the lives of His followers.  There has been less and less interest in, and devotion to, the cause of God.  I ask, Wherein have they regarded the warnings given?  Wherein have they heeded the instructions they have received?  They profess confidence in the testimonies.  Wherein have they sought to live according to the light given in them?”  Pamphlets in the Concordance, vol. 1, 184, 185.

Oh, my friend, it is not enough to make a profession.  That is not enough.  The reference for that, is in Pamphlets No. 11, 70.  It is not enough to make a profession.  She said at that time what was happening to those who were professing to be ready, getting ready for the Lord to come?  She said they are retrograding year after year.  Now, that cannot keep going on and those people be ready for the Lord to come, can it?

Something has to change, or when Jesus comes, they will not be ready.  My dear friend, do not look at what other people are doing.  I remember many years ago now, I was living in Texas.  A very conscientious and godly widow woman, who had been the wife of an Adventist minister who had been killed, was talking about this problem that we were having with the young people just doing what everybody is doing.

She said, They all do it, but then when Jesus comes, what if they all burn up?  I thought that was a good question to ask.  The image of the heavenly.  Paul says, We have borne the image of the earthly, we all have, but we should bear the image of the heavenly.  How are we going to do it?

Here is a tip.  This is from Manuscript Releases No. 12, 214.  “Service for God demands the whole being—heart, mind, soul, and strength.  Without reservation, we are to give ourselves to God, that we may bear the image of the heavenly instead of the image of the earthly.”  Without reservation, we are to give ourselves to God, so that we can bear the image of the heavenly.

You see, friends, I say this very humbly, but the Lord has taught me that if I am to go to heaven, I have to have a complete renovation in my character.  And I am praying for that day by day.  I am saying, Lord, I want to be changed completely.  I do not want to be the image of the earthly any more, I want to be the image of the heavenly.  You have told me in Your Word that I am to bear the image of the heavenly.  Lord, I want you to fulfill I Corinthians 15:49 in my life.

I know that I have been earthly.  I am not questioning that.  But God has told me that I am to bear the image of the heavenly and I want this text fulfilled in my life.  Do you want that text fulfilled in your life?  Do you want to bear the image of the heavenly, so that one day soon you can go there?  Are you willing to give yourself to God without reservation?

That is the hard part for some people.  You see, if God is going to change you and me totally, we have to totally surrender ourselves to Him so He can totally change us.  The next few days, if we all take the maximum advantage of the spiritual opportunities God gives to us, would it not be wonderful if you went away from this camp meeting with a vision of heaven and eternal realities clearer than you have ever had before?

Would you like for the Holy Spirit to teach that to you?  Teach you to get your affections up there and not down here?  Get your thoughts up there and not down here, so that when your guardian angel looks at your page in God’s picture book, where your character is pictured, he sees there no more the image of the earthly, because your picture, the picture of your character has changed.  And the Lord can look at it and say, This has a heavenly image now, not the image of the earthly.

Do you want to have that experience?  Would you kneel down with me and pray that you will have that experience?  I will pray for you and you open your hearts to the Lord and you talk to Him while we are praying.

“Father in heaven, we come to you very humbly because we realize that we have all borne the image of the earthly.  We have loved the things of this earth and the things of this earth have absorbed our thoughts and our affections so that we have not sufficiently valued the things of eternity.  Our thoughts and our affections have been down here.  Lord, we know that Thou canst not take us up there in that condition.  Forgive us for looking at all the devil’s pleasant pictures and getting so engrossed in the things of this earth that we have not had a clear vision of heaven and eternal realities in the future.  Oh, Lord, anyone who is here who has been bound in slavery by the devil and is a slave to evil propensities, Lord, I intercede for that person.  I pray that you will set him or her free.  Give us a view of eternal realities and help us that we may set our affections on things above and not on things of this earth.  Help each one of us that we may give ourselves unreservedly to You so that we may change, so that we may no longer bear the image of the earthly, but the image of the heavenly.  Oh, Father in heaven, we realize that we must have a complete transformation of character or we are lost.  We look to You.  We are depending on Your almighty power.  We are depending upon the promises in Your Word.  We read tonight that even though we have borne the image of the earthly, that we are to bear the image of the heavenly.  Oh, Father in heaven, we pray that you will fulfill this Word in our lives that it may not just be something that we have heard or something that we have read, but it might be something that we experience so that in that great day, He may recognize us, each one of us, as being one of His own, one who has the image of the heavenly and can therefore be taken to heaven.  Make this our happy and exciting experience, we pray in Jesus’ name and for His sake.  Amen.”