Quotable
Somebody asked John Quincy Adams one time how he was. He gave an interesting reply. He said, "John Quincy Adams is well, sir, very well. The house in which he has been living is dilapidated and old and he has received word from its maker that he must vacate soon. But, John Quincy Adams is well sir, very well."Well, that's just how it is.The outer man is decaying all the time and the earthly tent is being torn down and when that's gone, we know we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens...in the heavens. So we look to heaven where we will have that eternal weight of glory, that new house from God. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 2, "For indeed in this house we groan." We groan in this house. I know we do. You do, I do, we all do. We groan because of the infirmities of our physical being. We groan because of the sin that reigns, as it were, in our flesh. We groan because we cannot be what we ought to be and do what we ought to do. We're debilitated continuously in this human form and so we groan along with all the rest of creation as Romans 8 says, groan...waiting for the glorious manifestation of the sons of God, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven. We want our heavenly body.Now do you feel that way? Can you identify with Paul? Can you say, "Oh, how I long to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven?" Or is your prayer more like, "Lord, how I long to get to the mall so that I may be clothed with whatever's on sale at Nordstrom?" I mean, just where is your, you know, where is your desire? Where is your longing? I mean, if you look at the church today, we would have to say there are very few people wandering around pining their hearts away because they're so deeply longing to be in the presence of God in heaven. That's sad. But he says we long to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven inasmuch as we having put it on shall not be found naked.Why do you want that, Paul? Why are you so anxious to not be unclothed but clothed with that eternal body? Verse 4, "For indeed while we are in this tent we groan, we are burdened,"burdened by sin, burdened by sickness, burdened by death, burdened by tears and sorrow and sadness and pain and all the rest. We do not want to be unclothed. In other words, it's not enough just for us to have our spirits go into the presence of God, we want our bodies as well. We want to be clothed in order that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.John MacArthur