Today we want to reflect upon that very interesting question that I am sure some of you have thought of at one time or another, and that question is: What happened to our Old Testament forefathers—the Old Testament saints, Old Testament believers in the Lord, who by faith trusted in Jesus Christ to come—when they died? Did they go to heaven? Did they experience heaven? Did they expect heaven? Or did they look for something else? Was heaven a reality only for those after the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ? Or is it and was it an experience and an expectation of all the children of God, regardless of ethnicity or regardless of geography or regardless of their chronology (their time and place in the history of God's saving plan)? What about Old Testament believers?

This is a very interesting question, but it is also an important one. Many of us who grew up in non-reformed churches were taught that when an Old Testament person who trusted in the Lord died, he or she went to what is called “Abraham's bosom.” And those who died apart from the Lord, who did not believe in him, went to another place—a place of provisional punishment. We call it heaven and hell, but we were taught before that there was in the centre of the earth this place called Sheol (or in Greek it was called Hades). And it had two compartments/places: Abraham's bosom for those who loved the Lord, and simply a place of condemnation and darkness for those who hated the Lord. And then when Jesus arose, he lifted them up out of Abraham's bosom and took them with him into heaven.

We want to think about that tonight, and I am going to show you from the Word of God that that is not the case. Our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob expected and also experienced what we call heaven—the very presence of God himself, the very Holy of Holies. As we have seen so far in this series of sermons, heaven does exist. The Old Testament saints, and all of humanity for that matter, have had implanted into our soul by God himself a sense of eternity (Ecclesiastes 3). He has placed eternity into the hearts of man, Ecclesiastes 3 says. We all know that there is something beyond the grave and beyond this life.

And then we saw a few weeks ago in our second sermon in this series what heaven is like. That God himself made it, and he made it for us, because how can we as creatures relate to our Creator? How can we as finite creatures relate to an infinite Creator? How can we as temporal creatures relate to an eternal Creator? Unless God himself makes himself known to us. Unless he reveals himself and unless he (in human terms) somehow encompasses himself in some locale for us to see him and experience him and to live with him. So the God who fills all things (remember the prayer of Solomon that heaven and even the heaven of heavens cannot contain him) and the God who made the highest of the heavens (this place we call heaven, the eternal realm of God and his people), he made it so that we would relate to him there.

So that we would not be like those who believe that after death we simply float upon clouds or we simply go to a place called nirvana, a place of unconscious eternity, floating somewhere and somehow apart from God. But that we upon death go to be with the Lord in a place of his own creation, in a place of his own presence, and a place where we will bow down before him for all of eternity, casting our golden crowns before him, singing, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

Progressive Revelation⤒🔗

But what about the Old Testament saints? We know that is true of us; we saw it from Revelation 4 a few weeks ago. That might be true of us, but what about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? In thinking about this question (also in terms of our intro), think of it like this: the Bible is an unfolding story, an unfolding drama. We talk in theological terms (in terms of how we read the Bible) of progressive revelation. What that very simply means is this: that God unfolds his plan. He makes himself known to us in an unfolding way—a little bit by little bit. It is progressive.

In the Old Testament, the Bible describes for us, the people of God were like a child, and God revealed himself to them in childish ways. In the New Testament, the people of God are like an adult. So in the Old Testament God built a temple for example, and I would like to say to you the Old Testament temple was nothing more than your child's crayon drawing which you magnet upon your refrigerator. That is all it was. It was never meant to be the reality of heaven itself. It was a crayon sketch. That is how God revealed himself to Moses, to David, to Solomon. We have Christ! We have matured from childhood. We no longer have that crayon drawing; we now have the reality of it in Jesus Christ!

Thinking in terms of the progress of how God reveals himself from Old to New Testament, one writer has described the Old Testament like a dimly lit room. Imagine it is early morning, all the blinds are shut, all the curtains are closed and it is dark. The room is full of furniture—there is a bed, there might be a couch, there might be a chair, there might be some other things there—but you cannot really see them all. You might be able to see the outline of a couch. You know it is there, but you do not know the colour of it. You do not know what it is made out of. You do not know the exact shape of it. You do not know the exact dimensions of it. You can see it, but you can only see it in a shadowy way. The New Testament is that very same room with all the blinds open. The light now penetrates in, and we see not just a couch, but we see it in its colours. We do not just see a painting upon a wall, but we see that it is the most amazing painting ever painted! God reveals himself to us like that.

As St. Augustine said, the New Testament is in the Old Testament concealed (it is hidden), and the Old Testament is the New Testament revealed. It is opened up for us to understand.

And finally, one other metaphor to think of it. The Old Testament was like a seed. God gave a promise to the seed of the woman, and all throughout the Old Testament God waters that seed, and little by little it begins to sprout. In the New Testament, that seed becomes a full blooming flower. From child to adulthood; a dimly lit room to a lit room; a seed to a flower. That is how the Old Testament and the New Testament relate.

And when we think about the Old Testament saints, we have to keep that in mind. There is not much said in the Old Testament about heaven. There are glimpses. There are shadows, like that shadowy painting or that shadowy couch. It is there, it is just not expressed in all of its fullness like it is in the New Testament. So it is easy to understand why believers would take strange and difficult texts (like one we will see in just a few moments) and conclude from that that the Old Testament saints did not go to heaven, but they went to a provisional place of heaven or they went to a temporary holding place before they went to heaven. 

We will notice from God's holy Word about the Old Testament saints and believers that they expected and they experienced heaven. They expected it and they experienced it.

Old Testament Believers Expected Heaven←⤒🔗

As we saw from Ecclesiastics 3, God has placed eternity in the hearts of all humanity. God placed that sense into our souls. They knew that there was something beyond the grave.

Psalms←↰⤒🔗

And when we look at the Old Testament in terms of their expectation, we know from all the hints that we get [that they expected heaven]. For example, the poetic expressions of the Psalms. “When I awake, I shall see your face” (Psalm 17:15): That is a shadowy way of describing what we understand as entering the presence of God and of knowing the joy of his presence upon death. David wrote of it as if he were asleep, and then when he awoke he saw the very face of his Lord.

Genesis 1–2←↰⤒🔗

We know that they expected heaven from Genesis 1 and 2. They expected heaven because God made all things with this expectation. God himself created in six days, and on the seventh day he rested. And we are to emulate that pattern. We are to work and we are to pattern ourselves after God's life, and then to enter into his rest on the seventh day. And that is more than just the earthly Sabbath rest, but that we through Jesus Christ are brought into that Garden in Eden, and then Christ offers up upon that mountain, where God dwelt in Eden, his obedience, and he dwelt with him forever. So we by faith in Jesus Christ are led up that holy mount to dwell in that holy temple with our holy God. They expected it. Creation moved towards something. Adam's life in the garden was to push him forward and upward to something greater—what we call heaven, the presence of God.

Abraham←↰⤒🔗

But think also in terms of Abraham as one concrete example from the Old Testament of their expectation. Abraham is a very good example, because he is the paradigm of the Old Testament saints. He is called by the Apostle Paul “the father of all believers.” So if Abraham is our father and he expected to dwell in heaven for eternity, how much more so shall we? He is our father; Galatians 3 describes us who have faith in Christ as the sons and the daughters of Abraham.

So what about him? What about his story teaches us that he expected to dwell in heaven? There he was in Babylon, in Ur of the Chaldeans, the Far East. There he was amongst his pagan family. So God comes to him out of sovereign, mere grace and calls him out of the land of his forefathers. And he calls him from that land to another land: the land of Canaan, the Promised Land. He journeys from Ur all the way over into Canaan, and he sees this land as what it is. As he and Lot stand there on the precipice and they choose their allotments, Lot chooses the part that, Genesis 13 says, was like the Garden of Eden: lush and beautiful and well-watered. This land of promise was a land flowing with milk and honey. It had all that there was to have in this life. It was an amazing land. It was a Promised Land. It was a provided land by God himself. They would subjugate it through Joshua. All their fields and all their houses would be theirs! “All that you need, people of God,” the Lord was saying, “I have already given it to you. It is already there waiting for you. Enter into your inheritance, my beloved.”

But yet, all throughout the Old Testament, Abraham, this wonderful pilgrim, describes himself as a wanderer and as a sojourner. He has this promise of a land that God himself would give to him. But yet notice with me from Hebrews 11 that Abraham—the father of all who believe, the father of the Israelites, the one with whom God made his covenant of grace and gave him the sign of circumcision, God himself passing through those animals, God saying, “I will multiply you and I will bless you; I will curse your enemies” and that there will be a seed who would come, the Lord Jesus Christ, through him—isn't it interesting that with all of his earthly blessings, with all of his earthly promises, with all the glory that awaits him in that land of promise…what did he honestly and truly expect? Just another homeland? “Leave that land and go to that land”? [The writer of Hebrews says this about his expectation] (Hebrews 11:10): “For [Abraham] was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.”

He was looking forward! Not to the cities upon this earth, not to a city that was built up with all of its glory, not to a fortified place, not to a place that was already inhabited to take over their inhabitations, not to a place that had well-watered gardens and food and all that was necessary for this life, not a land that was safe from their enemies, not a land that was vast (as the promise was given, from the Nile River all the way to the Euphrates River, all the known world in those days). For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations! The cities of this life are toppling cities; they are transitory cities. But he looked for that city whose builder, whose designer and maker is God himself.

And then he goes on. The writer of the Hebrews says this in verse 13: “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised…” Abraham never received the land of promise.

…but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out…(The land of Abraham’s forefathers, Ur of the Chaldeans)…they would have had opportunity to return. Hebrews 11:13-15, ESV

 “Where is this land, God?” Abraham could have said. “Where is the promise of this protected, provided-for place? Why do I not just go back to where I had it very good?”

But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. Hebrews 11:16, ESV

Isn't that amazing? Here is God coming to you, saying to you, “All that you need for life, I will give it to you. A 3,500 square foot house on two acres, with a lush garden, with all kinds of fruit trees, a vegetable garden, all kinds of animals, it overlooks the ocean…and in fact, I am going to give you the entire thing and everything around it! In fact, I will bless you and you will multiply. I will bless those who bless you; I will curse those who curse you. What do you want? There it is. I will give it to you.” But Abraham, and us, desire a better country. That is to say (as Hebrew says), a heavenly one.

Let no one ever say that they did not expect to go to heaven. Let no one ever say that Abraham expected some provisional place. May we never say that Abraham looked forward to some place in the heart of the earth as a temporary holding pattern! But with the book of Hebrews, let us say, “By faith he desired a heavenly country.” Heaven itself! Something far greater and something much more majestic. For God has prepared a city for them. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, all of our forefathers—they knew of heaven and they wanted to go there! They expected to be there upon their death bed. “When my eyes open, I shall see your face,” David said (Psalm 17:15). That was his expectation! Not a dark underworld! Not a dark place where God might be there but he is not yet there completely! Not a place that was a place of shadows! They expected to ascend the holy mountain and to enter God's heavenly presence. They expected heaven.

Old Testament Believers Experienced Heaven←⤒🔗

I want you to notice also from our two texts and a few others we will look at that they experienced it. Some might say to us, “Well, they may have expected to go to heaven upon death, but they really did not go there. Abraham looked for a heavenly city, David expected to open his eyes upon death and see God's face, but they did not actually experience it. Their hope did not match reality.”

Matthew 22:22-33←↰⤒🔗

Notice Jesus' words in Matthew 22:22-33. I have to say, isn't Jesus a wonderful expositor of the Bible? Here are the Sadducees. As Matthew writes to us parenthetically, they are those “who say that there is no resurrection.” The Sadducees believed (as the literature tells us) that when a person died, not only did their body cease to have life, but their soul ceased to have life. When you died and when you were buried, your body and your soul together stopped. That was it. This life is all there is. It was a very materialistic worldview. It was a very fatalistic worldview. So the Sadducees—who say there is no life after death, there are no angels, there is no supernatural realm, there is no resurrection from the dead—have the audacity to ask Jesus a question about heaven! That is the irony of this question. Who are you to ask Jesus?

So they who deny the resurrection pose this hypothetical question to Jesus. And this comes right out of the Old Testament law. It is a law that is called the law of levirate marriage. If you as a husband died, and if you had never had children before you died, your brother by the law was required to take your wife as his wife. And then the firstborn son would take the name of your brother, because the whole point was to keep your line going, to show the faithfulness of God's covenant of grace. So they pose this hypothetical question: “What if this happens and seven brothers, one after another after another, marry the poor wife and none of them give her a child? When they all die and when the resurrection of the body occurs, whose wife will she be?”

She has had seven husbands. Will she be raised up with her first husband, her second, her third, all way up to her seventh husband? Which one will be her husband in the resurrection? [Were] the Sadducees asking that question honestly seeking the Lord and honestly desiring to hear his truth? No, they are trying to trap him! They want him to side with either the Sadducees and with all the political parts of their power, or with the Pharisees (and if you side with them, then you are against the Sadducees). And you see the political game they are playing. If you are with the Sadducees, then you are with Caesar; if you are with the Pharisees, you are with the sectarians, the Zealots, the enemies of the states and even of the religion in the status quo.

Whose wife will she be? Jesus, like Jesus always does, cuts to the chase. “You are wrong.” Period. “Because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” Don't you know your own Bible, Sadducees? The Sadducees, incidentally, only believed the first five books of the Bible were the Word of God. It is no coincidence then that he quotes from Exodus 3:6. “You do not know the Scriptures” (Exodus 3:6, which he quotes) “nor the power of God” (the God who spoke into nothing and made all things—can he not raise the dead? And even if this were a true situation, could he not solve it and figure it out?)

Jesus quotes for them the Scripture, Exodus 3:6, where God the LORD, Yahweh, meets Moses on the mountain in a burning bush that was not consumed. And the LORD reveals himself, saying, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Notice how Jesus exposits that text to those that say there is no resurrection and there is no afterlife (and even in our context, to those who would say the Old Testament saints did not go to heaven). Jesus quotes the text. Notice it says, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” When God said those words, he spoke them to Moses. 400-500 years after Abraham died, about 400 years after Isaac, and about 350 years after Jacob, here is God upon a mountain in a burning bush saying, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” So Jesus says, “He is not the God of the dead.” He did not say, “I was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

“I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—not just when they lived, but even after they have died. I was their God, I am their God, and I will be their God forever and forever!” He is not the God of only dead people, but of alive people. And those living people are not those living upon the earth. “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living”—the living are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They have been dead for millennia at the time of Jesus saying this!

The crowds were astonished. What a rabbi! What a teacher! What an argument! Period. End of story. God is the God of the living! Isaac, Abraham, David, Solomon, Joshua, all the prophets saw the Lord. He is their God and they dwell with him, for they are his people. That is God's covenant of grace: “I will be your God and you shall be my people.” Not just in life, but in eternity. Jesus absolutely decimates the Sadducees and he decimates anyone who would think that this life is the end of life. God is the God of the living—Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Psalm 16←↰⤒🔗

And then notice just a few Old Testament texts. We might say, “Well, that is Jesus saying it. He is in the New Testament. What about the Old Testament?”

They not only expected, but they experienced heaven. Psalm 16, the words of David. We know this text probably from Easter Sunday, as it is read as an Old Testament prophecy of Jesus' resurrection. But notice what David says about his Lord in verse 11: “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” He did not just expect that, but he knew that in this life already. How much more so in the life to come? Fullness of joy. The joy that David must have known to have been called by God, preserved by God from Saul and all of his enemies. The joy that David must have known as he penned and as he sung the Psalms of praise. But yet, in the presence of God there is fullness of joy; at his right hand pleasures forevermore.

Psalm 17←↰⤒🔗

And then in the very next Psalm, Psalm 17:15. He contrasts his enemies with [himself]—his enemies as they are expecting a great blessing in this life. God himself even gives them their portion in this life (verse 14). God fills their wombs with treasure. They sat there satisfied with children. They have their abundance in their infants. David is saying the unbelievers have many blessings in this life. Verse 15: “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.”

The face of God is the image in the Old Testament of every blessing that God gives. When his face is against you, you are his enemy. When his face is turned around from you and not facing you, you are his enemy. When his face shines upon you (as we hear in the benediction), he is gracious to us, he is our friend, he is upon our side and we are his people.

And he describes his death as awaking. This is how Paul describes death in the New Testament almost (he describes death as falling asleep). David describes the other side of that metaphor, falling asleep, of awaking. “When I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.”

Isaiah 57:2←↰⤒🔗

And then finally, notice Isaiah 57. Here the prophet writes to an unfaithful nation. He writes about their idolatry; he writes about their sinfulness; he writes about their enemies; he writes about their false shepherds; he writes about all of their wickedness. And then he says this, as he is describing what happens to us when we die:

The righteous man perishes, and no one lays it to heart; devout men are taken away while no one understands. For the righteous man is taken away from calamity; he enters into peace; they rest in their beds who walk in their uprightness. Isaiah 57:1-2, ESV

The elect of God who dwelt among the covenant people. Although the covenant people were disobedient and exiled and punished for their sins, among that covenant people of God the elect were found. And upon their death, in all the tumults and all the struggles of their life, all the enemies they have, all the problems, all the stress, all the anxiety (imagine what it must have been like to be exiled!): “the righteous man is taken away from calamity; he enters into peace.” No more war with God; no more war with enemies; no more war amongst the people of God. He enters peace. That is what heaven is!

Then he says: “They rest in their beds.” What an amazing picture. [Think about] that strange text, Luke 16:22 (the text that many of our friends might use as a pretext to teach that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for example, did not go to heaven upon death but went to a provisional place). But listen to what Jesus says in that text. He gives this strange image, and he describes the place of the blessed as “Abraham's bosom.” Isaiah 57: “They rest in their beds.” Psalm 17: “When I awake, I shall see your face in righteousness.” Abraham's bosom means to be close to Abraham. It means to be hugged by Abraham, welcomed into the kingdom of God. The forefather of all the faithful. Jesus gives the imagery/illustration to say that when they died they entered into heaven, the place that Abraham went, the place he looked forward to. And it is described (because Abraham is the father of the faithful) as his bosom. To be nestled near the father of the faithful—the one who received all the promises, the one to whom God gave so much. Even the least who trust in the Lord entered into a place that is described as being near to him, nestled in close to his bosom. In Abraham's fellowship. And what did Abraham fellowship but in heaven, the presence of Almighty God, the Creator and the Redeemer of all things. The God of the living.

Our forefathers expected it and they experienced it. But isn't it amazing that Abraham expected to enter heaven, and he experienced heaven upon his death, and that is the Old Testament shadow? That is the dimly lit room! That is the seed. And here we are 4,000 years after Abraham lived. We have in Christ the fullness of what they expected and hoped for. What we expect and hope for—the “life of the world to come” the creed says—we will experience! How much greater is it for us than these metaphors, these shadows, these images, these scant phrases of peace, rest, seeing the face of God, Abraham's bosom, joy forevermore, pleasures and fullness of joy?

We have that now already in Christ! And what is amazing is that “no eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor has entered the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). This is just the crayon drawing for you about what they hoped for and what they experienced. It is so much greater. It is so much more amazing. It is ineffable; it is unspeakable. I cannot even describe it to you—no one can. But what we know is that we will be with him. John the apostle himself said, “We do not know what we will be like, but we know this: we will be like him” (1 John 3:2). That is our hope and that is what we will experience upon our death.