Title: Our Hometown (Hebrews 11:14-16)
Hometown is a good place. There are parents, relatives and friends, and neighbors who have lived together since childhood. So home is comfortable. The dream of home is always wide and warm.
If it is so, will there be people who commit suicide because they have no hometown to visit?
Separated families based in the northern part of the country spend another year sadly looking at the northern sky while waiting for now or later.
But we have another home. According to Hebrews 11:14-16, those who speak like this indicate that they are seeking a homeland. Had they remembered the homeland from which they came, they would have had a chance to return, but now they long for a better homeland, which is in heaven. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God; He has prepared a city for them.
We have a better home to long for. Philippians 3:20-21 only our citizenship is in heaven. There we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body by the power of the one who is able to subject all things.
What this verse says is, first, that our citizenship is in heaven.
The second is that we wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Third, God is the subject of all things, and He transforms us with His power to subject all things. Fourth, our transformation is the transformation of a glorious body, that is, it transforms our lowly body into the likeness of the glorious body of Christ. Fifth, we will enter the kingdom of heaven with that changed body and that glorious body, where we will have God as our Father and live as brothers and sisters with all the people of God in the past.
That is why the Bible exhorts us to seek the above and live.
According to Colossians 3:1ff, therefore, if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things above. There Christ sits at the right hand of God. Think of the things above, not the things of the earth.
For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
We must live a life that seeks the above, that is, Christ who is at the right hand of the throne of God. A life that follows Christ, a life that follows in the footsteps of Christ as a life.
Why do you say to think of things above and not things on earth? Then what is things on earth?
Why do we have to live that way because we are dead and our lives are hid in God with Jesus Christ.
What it means that we are dead When we believe in Jesus, our old self is already dead. We are raised to life by the life of Christ. However, since we still live in the body, the old man keeps trying to come back to life. The life of faith is training to kill this old person and live as a new person.
Just as all human beings have a heart for their hometown, they also have a longing for eternity. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God created all things, beautifying them in their seasons, and gave man a heart for eternity.
Our bodies come from the dust, but our souls come from heaven as God. Therefore, the true home of man, his eternal home, is heaven. It is God's country. it is God's bosom
Life like the prodigal son who left his father's house lost his hometown. They became poor and pitiful people who had no home to go to. The saints are those who have realized that their hometown is the kingdom of heaven, that is, the bosom of God.
Anyone visiting their hometown must fight a good fight Not only that, you have to do your best to run on the road that you are going to run with zeal. And you have to keep your faith until the end. These are the things that saints who visit their hometown should prepare and practice.
I have no comfort. I always look forward to returning to my hometown with a longing for my hometown. Until we return to our hometown and enjoy rest, we still have to drink the bread of suffering and the cup of tears.