This past Sunday we concluded our “Refined” sermon series through the book of Job. We have spent the last 5 weeks seeing how the book of Job helps us as Christians respond to suffering in light of who God is and what He has done through Jesus. On Sunday, Brad preached through the last section of Job where we saw how God restored Job’s life, family, and wealth. While we as Christians are not promised a restoration like this in this life, we are promised a far more beautiful and complete restoration of all things at the end of our lives.

One of the dominant motivations in the New Testament for Christians who were suffering was the future hope and promise of the being with Jesus in the new heavens and new earth with resurrected bodies. While the promise of heaven helped the early Christians endure some of the worst sufferings possible, most of us have such a misunderstanding of heaven that we don’t see it as a legitimate way to help us endure in our present sufferings. Brad taught through different texts in the New Testament to give us a clearer picture of what the restoration of all things will look like for all Christians. The picture of our future reality in heaven is not a bunch of people with wings singing songs on clouds, but a real, deep intimacy with Jesus as we celebrate and enjoy Him with glorified bodies on the physical new earth without pain, suffering, sin, Satan, death, or sadness. This is our hope and it is the only way Paul can honestly say in Romans 8:18, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

If you missed our Sunday gathering, listen to the sermon here: Restoration at the End of Suffering