Inheritance Now
6 min read
38 At the LORD’s command Aaron the priest went up Mount Hor, where he died on the first day of the fifth month of the fortieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt. 39 Aaron was a hundred and twenty-three years old when he died on Mount Hor.
— Numbers 33:38-39
At sixty-two, I have all kinds of aches and pains that I have to live with every day. And Aaron was almost twice my age. I can’t help wondering what kinds of aches and pains he had to deal with on a daily basis—especially after having lived forty years under the harsh conditions of the Sinai Peninsula.
I think that after one hundred and twenty-three years, Aaron may have been ready to move on to Sheol. For the Israelites, Sheol was simply the realm of the dead, the destiny of every human being. The same destiny awaits us, unless Jesus should return while we are still living (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17).
No one likes to think about death, especially when it concerns our own. And in fact, to think too much about death is an indication of mental and emotional instability.
At the same time, since it is the destiny of virtually every human being, it would be foolish to completely ignore the reality of our death. In a way, such foolishness is the very definition of living in denial.
For example, CJ and I prepared a trust many years ago. It is actually irresponsible to not prepare a trust, because wisdom and anecdotal evidence tells us that God could call us to Sheol on any given day.
We establish a trust for the sake of our survivors. But Christ has also established a trust so that through faith in Him we are beneficiaries of the inheritance of eternal life.
But our spiritual inheritance has much greater significance for our lives in the here and now, because the inheritance of eternal life begins here and now through faith.
If we have received our spiritual inheritance now through faith, we ought live in the realm of eternal life now through faith.
Maybe the problem for many of us is that we think of heaven as an eternal vacation in all of our bucket list destinations all put together into one glorious all-inclusive package. And I’m sure that life in heaven is going to be beautiful and amazing. But the word of God reveals that the beauty and majesty and breath-taking grandeur of heaven all comes in the context of the presence of God as we serve Him. As we serve Christ.
And so if we do not have a sense of the joy of serving Christ here in this old heaven and earth, should we assume that we will have joy in serving Christ in the new heaven and earth? In other words, serving Christ is this life is really training for finding our ultimate joy in serving Christ in the life to come. Because that is what we will be doing.
Father, You are the Author of our salvation, and You are the Giver of life. And every good and perfect gift comes from You. Forgive me for losing a sense of the joy of Your salvation. Forgive me whenever I lose joy in serving You. But help me by Your Spirit to know that joy—to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge—that I may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of Christ as I serve Him. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
