What Does Jesus Say About Heaven?

Matthew 13:31-34
July 19, 2026
Matt Goodale

When you hear the word “heaven”, what comes to mind? What do you picture?

For many of us, whether you grew up in the church or not, the answer is almost automatic. Heaven is where we go when we die. It’s a place “up there” somewhere full of clouds and angel choruses. If you grew up in church, you probably learned in some shape or form that the goal of the Christian life is to make sure we end up there instead of somewhere else.

It’s such a common understanding of heaven that we often assume that’s what Jesus meant whenever he talked about heaven. But what if that’s not quite what he meant?

Today we are exploring another topic in our sermon series where you get to tell me what to preach on. And one of you asked me to preach on heaven, and another asked me to preach on hell, which I will do next week. So thank you very much to both of you for these very easy topics!

Before jumping into the topic of heaven I want to acknowledge that this is a weighty and dense topic. This sermon will be a little more theological than most of my others. And this is a topic that Christians have speculated on and disagreed about and split churches over for centuries. And I want to start by saying this at the outset: Christians today and throughout history have had a difficult time agreeing on the topic of heaven.

However, there are some perspectives on heaven that are more biblically based than others. So, what my hope is on preaching on this topic is to share my perspective on heaven, based on how I read scripture, particularly Jesus’ words—and based on how some theologians and mentors I really trust view heaven. A fifteen minute sermon can hardly do the whole topic justice, but I will try, and I’m happy to sit down and discuss more over coffee for anyone interested.

I want to start with the peculiar thing that Jesus says over and over again about heaven. “The kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Notice from the outset, how different that sounds from the picture of heaven we all probably thought of at the beginning: heaven, a place where we go when we die, a place up the sky or something. What is remarkable is how little Jesus focuses on going to heaven compared with how often he talks about heaven coming here.

Jesus talks about heaven as a reality that is coming and has already in some form, come here. But to understand what Jesus is talking about, we need a brief jaunt through history to see how people in the ancient world thought about heaven.

The ancient Hebrews understood heaven first and foremost as God’s dwelling place. Heaven was where God reigned; earth was where humanity lived. The Hebrew word for heaven was shamayim. Which meant heaven, and sky. This is where the idea of heaven being in the sky beyond the clouds kind of comes from. But the Hebrews didn’t think of heaven and earth as places separated by millions of miles, but as different dimensions of reality.

Think about the creation story in the opening pages of Genesis. Heaven and earth are created together and God’s dwelling place is in the garden with humanity. Heaven and earth are not separate places—they overlap!

Until sin enters the story. The tragedy of sin in the Hebrew mind, isn’t that people can no longer get to heaven; it’s that heaven and earth have been torn apart. God’s dwelling place is no longer with humanity. They’re separate now.

And so throughout the Old Testament, Israel’s great hope isn’t escaping earth. It’s that God will once again come dwell on the earth with God’s people. This is why the temple is such a big deal. Because the temple was believed to be the one place where heaven and earth met, the one place where God dwelt on earth.

And the prophets dream of a day when God’s presence will fill not just the temple but the whole earth. A day when “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord,” when justice rolls down like waters, when swords become plowshares, when God’s presence fills creation once again.

The biblical story is always moving toward heaven and earth being reunited. Because remember, heaven is God’s dwelling place, and the people hope that God will come to dwell with them again.

But fast forward several hundred years, by the time Jesus arrives, Jewish culture has lived for centuries in the Greek world. And Greek philosophy, especially Plato, viewed things differently. In the Greek worldview, the physical world was temporary and imperfect. The spiritual world was eternal and perfect. Salvation meant leaving the material world behind and escaping/ascending in consciousness, or your soul to a higher spiritual reality. The physical and spiritual worlds are separate/will always be separate and the goal is to leave one for the other.

Now let me ask you, which worldview feels most familiar to us today? The Hebrew worldview, where our hope is the heaven and earth would become united again, or the Greek worldview, where our hope is that once we die our soul will go on to heaven, while we leave our body and this world behind forever? Which version did you grow up with?

Most of us would say the Greek worldview. This is because Plato’s way of thinking has profoundly shaped Christianity. Many of us—even if we’ve never read Plato—have inherited his imagination. We think and have been taught that the Christian story is about leaving earth for heaven. I grew up believing that at the end of time we all go up to heaven and then this earth is all just burned up and God will start over with something new.

But this isn’t the story Jesus tells. Jesus tells a different story, one that is very Hebrew.

Jesus doesn’t announce, “Earth is ending, so prepare your escape!” He doesn’t say, “Make sure your soul is saved so that when you die it can go to heaven.”

He says, repeatedly, “The kingdom of heaven—God’s kingdom, God’s dwelling place—has come near.”

Because here’s the thing. God doesn’t make rubbish. The earth we live on—the trees, the mountains, the flowers, the rivers—these bodies we inhabit, they are not junk.

If God’s solution to creation was simply to throw it away, then Genesis was a failure. If God’s solution is to simply burn it all up, then resurrection makes very little sense. Christians don’t believe in disposal, we believe in resurrection.

And Jesus is insistent that God’s plan isn’t an escape plan. It’s a plan for new creation. And this new creation Jesus talks about is a coming together of heaven and earth. In Revelation there’s a dazzling picture of the “new heavens and new earth”…but in the picture what we see isn’t all that new. We see trees and rivers, people walking around a city in their bodies…but the difference is, God dwells there with them. It’s a picture of heaven and earth coming together again.

And the people in Jesus’ day wondered at this. They asked him and wanted to know, what does the kingdom of heaven actually look like? You say it’s coming near, what does it actually look like?

Jesus answers with a bunch of stories.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed…”

“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast in unleavened bread…”

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field…”

Isn’t that interesting? To describe heaven, Jesus doesn’t go reaching for otherworldly images like clouds and angels and an opulent white city. And he doesn’t talk about leaving or ascending or escaping.

Instead, he talks about seeds growing in fields. Yeast being worked into dough. Treasure hidden beneath dirt. In other places he talks about heaven in terms of great feasts and sons coming home and women finding things that were lost.

Everything about how Jesus describes heaven is earthy. It’s local, it’s happening here!

Take the parable of the yeast. A woman takes tiny bit of yeast and works it into an enormous amount of flour until all of it is leavened. The yeast doesn’t replace the dough, it transforms it. The yeast is the kingdom of heaven. God isn’t throwing creation away, he is transforming it, renewing it from within.

Or think about the mustard seed. It’s almost invisible. No one would expect something so small to become a great tree where birds make their nests. That’s the kingdom of heaven too. Not arriving all at once with fireworks and fanfare, but growing quietly, patiently, almost unnoticed. Until one day everyone can see what it has become.

That’s what Jesus’ entire ministry looks like. Wherever Jesus goes, heaven begins breaking into earth. The blind see. The sick are healed. Sinners are forgiven. The hungry are fed. Outcasts are welcomed in. Enemies eat at the same table. It’s as though little windows of heaven begin opening all over Galilee. Not because people are leaving earth, but because God’s kingdom—heaven—is arriving here. God is coming to dwell with us.

But that raises an important question.

If heaven has come near, then what does that actually mean for our lives today?

This is where another phrase Christians use all the time becomes really important: eternal life.

When we hear those words, many of us think, “life after death.” Eternal life becomes almost synonymous with going to heaven when we die. But listen to how Jesus defines eternal life.

“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Notice that Jesus doesn’t describe eternal life as a destination. He describes it as a relationship—a life lived in communion with God. Eternal life isn’t simply life that lasts forever; it’s God’s own life shared with us.

I want to be very clear here: None of this means life after death isn’t real. The New Testament gives us every reason to trust that when we die we are with Christ, held safely in God’s love until the resurrection—until the day when God renews all of creation and every tear is wiped away.

But what’s fascinating is that the New Testament doesn’t spend much time satisfying our curiosity about heaven after death. I think it’s very clear that we are safe with God after we die—whatever that means, and it doesn’t tell us exactly what that means. Instead, what is clear, is that it keeps drawing our attention to God’s ultimate future—the renewal of creation, and a kingdom that, in Jesus, has already begun here and now.

And we see it everywhere if we have the eyes for it: We begin to catch glimpses of heaven breaking into earth. A husband and wife who practice forgiveness and vulnerability; a recovering addict who finds hope again; a child who discovers they are deeply loved. A meal shared with someone who thought they had been forgotten. That’s what heaven looks like: it looks like forgiveness, peace, joy, justice, love. When we embody these things, God’s Spirit takes up residence in us, and through the Spirit, the life of heaven begins reshaping us into a new creation.

And yes, there is still so much wrong in the world. That’s why Jesus’ proclamation that heaven has come near is so profoundly hopeful.

Think about it this way: imagine it’s February. Everything looks dead. The trees are bare and the ground is frozen. Then you see one crocus pokes through. We had this little patch of crocuses by our front walk. Purple, white and yellow. And they would pop up when everything else still looked very dead. Those flowers aren’t the end of winter—there’s still more months of cold and maybe even snow. But it’s the future arriving early. Spring has begun. The kingdom of heaven is like that. Jesus doesn’t remove the winter. He plants spring in the middle of it.

So that means, every can of food given out through our pantry, every child who discovers they are loved exactly as they are, every lonely person who finds a seat at the table, every casserole taken to someone, every visit to someone in the hospital, every time we forgive…these are all like spring flowers. They’re signs of heaven breaking into earth…signs of what the whole world is becoming and will one day fully be: a place where God dwells with us and where there is no more pain and suffering nor death, and everyone is included and every tear will be wiped away by God himself.

Which means, each morning we wake up with a choice: will I be a part of heaven breaking into earth? Will I contribute to winter or will I help plant spring?

Every Sunday we pray in the Lord’s Prayer: “Your kingdom come, you will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Maybe Jesus wasn’t simply giving us words to recite. Maybe he was teaching us what to hope for and what kind of people to become.

Jesus began his ministry by saying, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” And every time we choose love over fear, forgiveness over revenge, welcome over exclusion, hope over despair…heaven comes nearer. Until that day when heaven and earth are fully united again and God himself will wipe away every tear. That is our hope.

Amen and may it be so.