What Is Heaven Like? More Than You Can Imagine
Pastor Keith Roberson opened with a question for the Wizard of Oz fans in the room: why on earth would you want to go from Oz back to Kansas?
It’s hard to imagine how that works — until you remember that we all know exactly how it works. There really is no place like home. You can go on the coolest, most amazing vacation of your life, and yet when you get back home, a whole other kind of rest happens. Your place. Your bed. Your bathrooms. It’s home, and the heart craves a home that way.
And yet — here’s where Pastor Keith turned it — even with the home you love, it’s entirely possible, probably even likely, that there are parts of it where you wish things were a little different. If we could just improve this area, fix the lawn, add that thing next year. Even with the beauty of our own homes, we still feel like it’s not quite enough.
In a message from the BEYOND series called We Can’t Begin to Imagine, Pastor Keith submitted a reason for that ache: while our homes, by the grace of God, are nice, there is no place like our final home. The reason we never feel all the way there yet is that Jesus has something for us far beyond what we could possibly imagine — and he actually invites us to start wondering about it now.
What this sermon is about
This message asks a question most Christians never let themselves sit with: have you actually imagined what’s next? Not the cartoon version with harps and clouds — the real thing Scripture describes. Pastor Keith’s case is that it’s hard to crave something you know nothing about, and that letting your heart wonder about heaven isn’t escapism. It’s the very thing that frees you from being owned by this temporary life.
If you’re walking through something incredibly hard right now, or if you’ve quietly made this life the end-all-be-all, this one is for you.
Jesus is making a home for us
The anchor text is John 14. Jesus has been teaching his disciples and being honest with them about the challenges of this messy, not-perfect, sometimes painful world. And in the middle of all that honesty, here’s what he wants to say:
John 14:1-3 — “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”
In other words: Jesus is making a home for us.
“We were meant to have desires and longings for so much more than this. No matter where you are at, there is something greater that I have for you. I’m preparing something for you.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
Some of us grew up in homes that weren’t great. Some of us love the life we have now, by God’s grace. Either way, the warning is the same: it is so easy to find ourselves tied up in everything that happens in the here and now. And Jesus is inviting us — come up here. Think with me. Long with me. We’re not home yet.
Peter says the same thing to the scattered churches. 1 Peter 2:11 — “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.” You and I are here, but we are passing through — here for an hour, here for a moment, like a guest in someone’s house. So don’t give your heart fully to a place that isn’t your final home.
Eye has not seen, ear has not heard
Last week’s message in the series established that every person is an eternal being — image-bearers of God, made to go on forever, either unto eternal life or eternal separation. (We’re eternal, Pastor Keith clarified, not divine. There’s one divine One; the rest of us are made in his image.) So the first and most important question is: will you believe? Will you put your trust in the One who is preparing a place?
And then comes the invitation to wonder. Paul, writing to Corinth, quotes the prophet Isaiah:
1 Corinthians 2:9 — “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.”
“You haven’t scratched the surface of what is to come. I’m studying it this week, and I still can’t get my head around what is to come.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
Here Pastor Keith told on himself a little. For his 40th birthday, his wife — knowing he is, in his words, a pastor and a nerd for history — planned a trip to Boston, the birthplace of the American Revolution. Paul Revere’s house. The Old North Church. (He paused to note the congregation was laughing at him, not with him. He was strong about it.) The trip was amazing. But half the gift was the three weeks beforehand, geeking out over where they could go, what they could see, where they’d eat. Half the gift was the anticipating.
That’s the move Jesus is making in John 14. I’ve got something coming for you. Imagine. Let your heart wonder — so you can be divorced from a life you were never meant to be tethered to, and hungry for something you were always meant to have.
It’s why Colossians 3:1-2 says, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” And it’s why Randy Alcorn writes, in his book Heaven, that God tells us about heaven in his Word not so we can shrug our shoulders and remain ignorant, but because he wants us to understand and anticipate what awaits us.
What heaven is not (no harps, no puff sleeves)
Before describing what’s coming, Pastor Keith cleared out the cultural clutter — because most of our pictures of heaven come from Hollywood, not the Bible.
We will not become angels with wings and puffy sleeves. (He loves a good puff sleeve. It’s still not the picture.) We do not spend seven billion years playing harps on fluffy clouds — if you’re into harps, it’s possible, but for the rest of us non-harpists, that’s not what it is. And we do not become weirdos who speak in monotone voices and stare off into space the way angels talk in the movies.
There is a temporal heaven — immediately, our spirit goes to be with Jesus, like the thief on the cross who heard “today you will be with me in Paradise.” But the Scripture talks even more about the new heaven and new earth unpacked in Revelation 21, where, after Jesus triumphantly returns, we receive glorified bodies — no longer broken, all perfect — and reign with Christ.
So what actually happens when we come into the presence of Jesus? Pastor Keith walked through three realities.
First: our capacity for joy becomes limitless. 1 Corinthians 15:42-44 — “So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.” Our bodies in this life are sown into the misery of a broken world. What’s coming is limitless. Jonathan Edwards said you’ll be enraptured with joys that are forever increasing and yet forever full. Think of the most awe-inspiring place you’ve ever stood — ocean, mountains, Grand Canyon, the Austrian Alps. It’s a shadow. A dim glimpse. Even your capacity to take it in has a limit right now. You’re going to a place that’s limitless.
Second: unending waves of discovering God. Because God is infinite, he can be infinitely enjoyed. Jesus is not worried about us running out of ways to keep up with our ever-increasing capacity to enjoy him — his character is endlessly deep, unsearchable, inexhaustible. Pastor Keith went “super science” for a moment: the largest known sun in the observable universe is more than 2,000 times larger than ours. Put it where our sun sits and it would reach all the way to Saturn. At 600 miles an hour, it would take you 1,200 years to fly around it. And it’s still finite. We are going to be with the One who has no beginning and no end.
“It’s not a long church service. It is the unveiling of the glories and the majesties of the unsearchable God. It’s what we’ve always longed for.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
That’s what “Amazing Grace” is reaching for — when we’ve been there ten thousand years… we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun. Not an endless service. An endless unveiling.
Third: a front-row view of God’s divine plan. Ever binge-watched a show you couldn’t put down? Next episode, next episode? Heaven, Pastor Keith said, is watching the story of God unfold in front of your eyes — God’s redemptive works across the earth, with your grandma and the loved ones who’ve gone before you, saying oh my gosh, God, what are you doing? It’s unbelievable. As Randy Alcorn puts it, because God is continuously at work on the earth, the saints watching from heaven have a great deal to praise him for.
The call: build for another day
So what do we do with all this on a Sunday — on March 1st, in Franklin? Jesus’ own words carry the application:
Matthew 6:19-20 — “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.”
It doesn’t mean our hearts can’t be glad for the beautiful things we have here. It means we live oriented around what is to come — and fight the temptation to find our deepest joy and hope in what is temporal.
“Vacations are fun and good, and homes are fun and good. I’m so grateful we get to live. It’s ant hills for what is to come. Let our hearts be enraptured with that. Let’s live for that.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
And here’s the paradox: when our source of joy is rooted in everything that is to come, we actually get to stand in more fullness in the here and now. As Alcorn writes, we need a generation of heavenly-minded people who see human beings and the earth itself not simply as they are, but as God intends them to be — loving this broken world not from guilt and shame, but from fullness.
What this means for your week in Franklin
If you take this sermon seriously, four things change about this week.
- Spend five minutes actually wondering. Pastor Keith admitted there were probably 85 or 90 different conceptions of paradise in the room — and God will blow past all of them. Take Colossians 3 literally this week: set your mind on things above, on purpose, with real time on the clock.
- Audit what owns your heart. Sojourners and exiles travel light. Name one temporal thing — the house project, the portfolio, the next trip — that has quietly become your end-all-be-all, and hold it loosely.
- Let the hard thing point home. If you’re walking through heartache, sickness, or disappointment, that ache that says “this isn’t it” is telling the truth. You were made for something more. Let it turn into hunger instead of despair.
- Build for another day. Pick one investment this week — generosity, serving, a relationship — that moths and rust can’t touch. Lay up treasure where it lasts.
Watch the full message
The full sermon — “We Can’t Begin to Imagine” from the BEYOND series — is in the video above. We post a new message every Sunday from New River Church in Franklin, TN. Browse our message library for more from the BEYOND series and other recent teaching.
Coming Sunday at New River Church in Franklin, TN
If this message resonated and you’d like to experience worship and community in person, we’d love to have you with us. New River Church meets Sundays at 9:00 AM and 10:45 AM at 1153 Lewisburg Pike in Franklin, TN 37064 — just minutes from downtown Franklin and easy to reach from across Williamson County, Brentwood, and Spring Hill.
You don’t need to dress up. You don’t need a good voice. You don’t need to know much about church or the Bible to come. We’re a community of ordinary people walking through ordinary life, trying to do it together with Jesus at the center. Whether you’ve been a Christian for forty years or you’ve never set foot in a church, you are welcome here.
If you’re new to the area or new to faith, our First Time Guest page walks through everything you need to know before your first visit: parking, what to expect on Sunday morning, what your kids will experience in River Kids, and how to find us when you arrive.
If you’re looking for deeper community beyond Sunday morning, our Community Groups meet across Franklin and the surrounding area throughout the week. Groups are where Sunday morning faith becomes Tuesday afternoon real life.
Whatever you’re carrying right now, you don’t have to carry it alone. There’s a place for you at New River Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Come as you are.
Watch more sermons: newriverfranklin.com/messages Plan your visit: newriverfranklin.com/firsttimeguest Find a group: newriverfranklin.com/groups
📍 New River Church | 1153 Lewisburg Pike, Franklin, TN 37064 | Sundays 9:00 AM & 10:45 AM
