This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to 2nd Corinthians chapter 5.
This is day one in our look through that chapter. We're going to look at verses
1 to 5 today and I'd like to begin by reading those five verses.

Now, we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a
building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.
Meanwhile, we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling. Because
when we are clothed, we will not be found naked.

For while we are in this tent, we groan in our burden because we do not wish to
be unclothed, but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is
mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very
purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
We're walking through the book of 2nd Corinthians looking together at how do you
survive as one of God's servants in this world.

And this chapter, 2nd Corinthians 5, is all about surviving the wait. How do you
survive it when you're having to wait through difficult times and you're having
to wait for heaven, when you're having to wait and it just seems like the wait
is so long? Paul's writing here accurately sums up the way we often feel about
our stay on this earth, the circumstances we have to face.

Did you notice the phrase? He says, "Meanwhile, we groan. " Someday we know
we're going to be in heaven.

Someday we know we're going to be in perfection for all eternity, but he says,
"Meanwhile, we groan. " That's an expression of the truth that our hopes are
never fully realized in this physical body while we're on this earth. Our
greatest desires can never be fully accomplished on this earth.

Not until we get to heaven are those accomplished. And that makes us groan at
times because we're looking forward to something more. Every time we really want
to serve, our energy seems so sparse.

And every time our energy is overflowing, we can't seem to get our heart into
it. We can't seem to get the motivation. That's a part of groaning.

Our want to and our can do, they don't always seem to be on the same wavelength.
There's so many areas like that in life. In one sense, we are all handicapped,
and I'm not minimizing the physical handicaps that many have.

I'm just saying we're all handicapped. We all in these physical bodies do not
have all that God's going to give us for all of eternity. We are limited.

Even Jesus was limited when he took on human flesh to one place and one time.
And so Paul says, inwardly, we groan. And I'm not just talking, he wasn't just
talking about that feeling that you have as you get up in the morning and you
ache and you sort of groan waking up in the morning.

It's something much, much more than that. It's a longing in your heart that
there just doesn't seem to be any hope of fulfilling with the circumstances of
this world. The question is, are Christians supposed to feel like that?

And how do you handle those feelings? Well, I would say the first part of that,
Paul felt like that. Meanwhile, we groaned because he was looking forward to
something more.

How do you handle those feelings? How do you deal with the groaning? How do you
survive the weight?

How do you survive the weight for spiritual fulfillment? How do you survive the
weight for heavenly reward? How do you survive the weight for something more?

Well, in one sense, you and I have to learn to wait in the Hebrew language
rather than the English language. For us in the English language, the word
waiting often means sitting and steaming. We rest on our backsides and we churn
on our insides.

That's what it means to wait. But to wait in the Old Testament language, Hebrew,
the word wait in the Old Testament means to actively hope. Remember, Isaiah
talked about those who wait on the Lord will rise up with wings like eagles.

That's active hoping in God. Waiting, godly waiting, isn't a lack of activity.
It's an attitude of life.

And Paul talks about that attitude of life very honestly here. The ability to
successfully survive the weight has everything to do with how you live. And you
have to ask yourself this simple question about your attitude toward life.

Am I longing for the future or am I complaining about the now? Am I longing or
am I complaining? You see, the weight can cause a longing in our hearts for
something more.

And we wait with anticipation for that. Or it can cause a complaint on our lips
and we wait with an ungrateful, grumbling heart. It's the difference between
groaning and grumbling.

Between groaning and griping. Groaning means I realize there is something more
and God, I am waiting for it. I'm longing for it someday.

But grumbling and griping is just talking about the current circumstances.
Acting as if somehow, if those were only better, then my life would be all okay.
It wouldn't be.

There is something in all of us that longs for the eternity of heaven. There's
something in all of us that desires what God has promised in that eternity and
that's okay. To desire what's promised is okay.

To complain about what's missing, that's devastating. As you walk through these
verses, there are some truths that Paul talks about here that turn our
complaints into a longing. When you get ahold of these truths, they can turn a
grumbling person into a groaning person.

What are those truths? Four of them. Number one, Paul says, here's the truth.

We live in a tent. He's talking about your physical body, my physical body, and
he compares it to a tent. Now Paul, remember, was a tent maker.

That was his business. That's how he made money. So a tent maker should know a
tent.

He's talking about the philosophy of how we look at this body. In his day, the
Greek and Roman thinkers said that the body was a tomb. The physical body was
something that was only going to die in the end.

It was a tomb for your spirit. Paul would not accept that. He saw it instead as
a tent.

He wasn't looking for the freedom of some disembodied spirit some day, but he
was looking for the day of a new body, and he realized the body we have now,
it's a temporary dwelling looking forward to the eternal perfect dwelling. He
didn't see the body, the human body that you and I have as dead weight. He saw
it as a temporary dwelling, God's spirit dwelling in us, in this tent.

He's able to see that this tent can be useful to God, even though it's not
perfect, even though it's not our mansion in heaven, it can be useful to God.
You see, if I don't see that, I'm going to complain about this tent the rest of
my life. But once I see that, I can see I can be useful to God in this tent, and
then I'm going to be useful to God for all eternity in my heavenly dwelling, in
the mansion that Jesus talked about.

So first truth, to turn my complaints into a sense of longing for the future, we
live in a tent, being real about who you are. Second truth is, this is only
temporary. We only live in this tent for a while, for 70, 80, who knows, maybe
90, 100 years on this earth.

You look at this tent that God has put you in, and you think the tent is
beginning to sag, the cords are loosening, and the pegs are getting wobbly.
Well, if that's how you're feeling, no matter how old or young you are, if
that's how you're feeling, it's only temporary. God has an eternity that we're
looking forward to.

In fact, the third truth to get a hold of is, we live in a tent, this is only
temporary. Number three, we're promised a building. In fact, Paul uses in these
verses two words you might have noticed to actually describe our hope, what
we're looking forward to.

He talks about a permanent building and a new suit of clothes. In fact, he says,
"We long to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling. " No one can mix a metaphor
like Paul, and he talks about clothing and dwelling in the same picture here.

Both pictures paint the same truth. The truth that he's talking about here, in
fact, he says it in these verses, the truth is that the mortal will be swallowed
up by life. The mortal is this body that you live in that's not going to last.

It's mortal, it's not going to last, but it's going to be swallowed up by life,
by eternity. It's not going to be erased, it's going to be swallowed up. We
groan, Paul says, because we don't wish to be unclothed.

We don't wish to have this feeling that we have right now that it's just
temporary, it's just a tent, it's not what it's going to be some day. I don't
want to feel like that. When you feel like that, somebody's called it groaning
for glory, which is really a picture of the fact that I'm looking forward to
something more.

Complaints are turned into longing in my life as I consider the future that God
has for me. Rudyard Kipling put it in an artist's term when he said, "When
Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried, when the
oldest colors have faded and the youngest critic has died, we shall rest and
faith we shall need it. Lie down for an aeon or two, till the master of all good
workmen shall put us to work anew.

And those who are his shall be happy. They shall sit in a golden chair. They
shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair.

And they shall find real saints to draw from, Magdalene, Peter, and Paul. They
shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all. " That's one
poetic way to put it.

I've heard it said in a song, "Imagine what heaven's going to be like if you
took the best day you ever had on this earth and stretched it out about 500
million years, you still wouldn't be able to imagine it. " That's what Paul is
talking about here when he says there's a building that we're going to be
clothed with. There's something we're looking forward to that is better than we
can imagine.

So first, we live in a tent. Second, it's only temporary. Third, we're promised
a building.

And number four, Paul says, God's given us His Spirit as a deposit of this. As a
deposit of what's to come, He's put His Spirit into our lives. The Holy Spirit
has the power to turn a complaining spirit into a longing spirit.

A complaining spirit and the Holy Spirit, they can't live together. Once I
recognize the presence of God's Spirit in my life and I walk in His Spirit, my
complaints turn into longing. My complaints about the day turn into a longing
for the future.

God has made us for this purpose of looking forward to the future and has given
us His Spirit as a deposit. It's okay to long for the future because in that
you're recognizing God has made me for a higher purpose and I get to start
living out that purpose now in this tent that He has me to. It's natural to long
for the future.

In fact, God's put His Spirit into your life as a constant reminder of the hope
that you have. So let's spend just a few minutes talking to Him about that hope.
Jesus, it's so easy for me, for all of us, I think, to get caught up in the
circumstances that are around us and to feel like this tent that we're living in
is all that's ever going to be.

But Lord, we know by the very fact that it's a tent. We know by the very fact
that we're longing for the future. We know by the very fact that You put Your
Spirit into us, that there is something more.

And so Lord, instead of just getting caught up in today, when things don't go
right, when there's a groaning within us, help me, help us, Lord, to look
towards that future that You have for us, to wait with hope. We pray this in
Your name. Amen.

Tomorrow, we're going to look at what it means to live by faith and not by
sight.