By
Shelby G. Floyd
Good morning. It is a beautiful day. We are glad that spring has finally sprung! It is good to see your smiling faces and we have a good number present today. We appreciate you coming out to worship our God on the Lord’s day. How many have been out playing golf already? I see several hands. That is a good thing to do, especially when the weather is really nice.
When my wife passed away recently somebody said that she had gone to paradise. That word paradise stuck in my mind, so I started thinking about paradise and it has been very therapeutic for me to work on this sermon that I am presenting today. And the title of it is The Paradise of God. The word paradise is a Persian word spelled pardes. The Greek word for paradise is paradeisos. Paradise refers to a beautiful garden, a park, orchard, and a pleasure ground. And that word paradise is used in both the Old Testament and the New Testament.
I searched the Internet for the best icon that I could find that might represent what paradise might look like and I think the best place that I produced would be the Masters Golf Tournament course down in Augusta, Georgia. It is so beautiful and the only thing it would lack to be paradise as I picture it in the Bible would be some fruit trees and fruit bushes for food. Therefore a photo of the Masters Golf course is the first picture you see today.
This introduces our subject today, The Paradise of God. The word paradise occurs three times in the New Testament, and we are going to look at each one of those and make application to what the Bible says about the departed spirits of those who are the children of God. Paradise is found in Luke 23:43, 2nd Corinthians 12:4, and Revelation 2:7. And we will examine each one of those and make the proper application.
One time Jesus encountered a group of Jewish people called Sadducees and they did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, neither did they believe in spirits. When he confronted them he said do you not remember the episode with Moses that took place at the burning bush? When Moses saw the burning bush that was not consumed, he stepped aside to take a closer look at it. And God said take your shoes off for the ground you stand on is holy ground. God said that he was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus then said that God is the God of the living not the dead. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been dead a long time as to their earthly body, but they were still alive in another place (Exodus 3:6; Luke 20:38). Continue reading “THE PARADISE OF GOD”