Jn 5:24-27; Lk 23:32-33; 39-43; Rev 21:1-5 – ‘I believe in…the life everlasting’ (sermon notes)
“I believe in…the life everlasting.”
‘Who wants to live forever?’ (song by Queen).
How would you like to live to be 1,000? According to Dr Aubrey de Gray, co-founder of the SENS Research Foundation, scientists are well on the way to ending bodily aging. The first person to live to be 1,000, he claims, has already been born.
Or how about having your body deep frozen after you die, in the hope that one day science will be able to resuscitate it? In the US, hundreds of people have each paid up to $200,000 for precisely that.
Or perhaps your concept of endless life is that of ‘Groundhog Day’? Bill Murray is trapped in a time-loop, forcing him to re-live the same day – 2nd February – over and over again.
Are you sure you would like to live for ever? After you have climbed every mountain, sampled every food, read every book, met every famous person, learned to play every musical instrument, mowed the lawn yet again, what then?
‘Thousands hope to live for ever, who don’t know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.’
As Christians, we do not pin our hopes on an endless existence. We believe, rather, in ‘the life everlasting’. There is a world of difference.
The Bible unfolds this ‘life everlasting’ in three stages.
1. Life now
First reading – John 5:24-27
“Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. 25 Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.”
We tend to think of heaven as distant in time and place. But, right here and now:-
- Our citizenship is ‘in heaven.’ (Phil 3:20).
- God has given us ‘every spiritual blessing in the heavenly world (Eph 1:3, GNB)
- Our struggle is ‘against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world.’ (Eph 6:12, GNB)
- We should “store up…treasures in heaven.” (Mt 6:19)
- We should ‘set [our] hearts on the things that are in heaven.’ (Col 3:2, GNB)
John Stott tells of ‘a young man who found a five-pound note on the street and who from that time on never lifted his eyes when walking. Over the years he accumulated 29,516 buttons, 54,172 pins, 12 pence, a bent back and a miserly disposition. But think what he lost. He could not see the radiance of the sunlight, the sheen of the stars, the smiles on the faces of his friends or the blossoms of springtime, for his eyes were in the gutter. There are too many Christians like that. We have important duties on earth, but we must never allow them to preoccupy us in such a way that we forget who we are and where we are going.’
But does this condemn us to being ‘too heavenly-minded to be any earthly good’?
C.S. Lewis – ‘It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in: aim at earth and you will get neither.’
Let it be said of us, what was once said of a saintly Christian, ‘Heaven was in him before he was in heaven.’
The life everlasting, then, begins here and now.
But ‘if for this life only we have hoped in Christ, then we are of all people most to be pitied.’ (1 Cor 15:19)
2. Life after death
Second reading – Luke 23:32-33; 39-43
Lk 23:43 – “Today you will be with me in paradise.”
Phil 1:23 – ‘…to depart and be with Christ.’
2 Cor 5:8 – ‘away from the body and at home with the Lord.’
The teaching of the Bible is that when he or she dies, the child of God goes immediately into the presence of Christ in heaven.
‘The moment we take our last breath on earth, we take our first breath in heaven.’
I don’t want to minimise the pain of death. We feel it to be unnatural, and so it is. But the message of Scripture is, that we do not need to ‘grieve as others do who have no hope’ 1 Thess 4:13, ESV.
Mr. Standfast, one of John Bunyan’s characters in Pilgrim’s Progress, said these words as he was dying: “I am now going to see that head that was crowned with thorns, and see the face that was spit upon for me. I have formerly lived by hearsay and faith, but now I go where I shall live by sight, and shall be with him in whose company I delight myself.”
Truly, ‘death is only a grim porter to let us into a stately palace.’
It is this of which we sing in the great hymn, ‘For all the saints’:
‘The golden evening brightens in the west.
Soon, soon to faithful servants cometh rest.
Sweet is the calm of paradise the bless’d.
Alleluia, alleluia!’
But this is not the end of the story.
‘But lo! There breaks a yet more glorious day;
the saints triumphant rise in bright array,
the King of Glory passes on his way.
Alleluia, alleluia!’
3. Life after life after death
Third reading: Rev 21:1-5
The day is fast approaching when Christ will return in glory to judge the world, and to raise up all who are his, be they living or dead, to be with him for ever. Their eternal home is called ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ (v1)
(a) It will be an embodied life, 1 Cor 15:35-58
The bodies of believers long dead will rise from the dust, (1 Cor 15:52) ‘in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.’
Our eternal home will be occupied by the whole person, not by some disembodied spirit.
Romans 8 teaches that the whole creation is straining on tiptoes, waiting for this to happen. Indeed, ‘the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.’
Neither our bodies nor this home we call ‘planet earth’ are destined for the scrap-heap. God’s plan is one day to gloriously renew them. If God’s intention is to honour them in the life to come, then we have ample reasons to honour them in this present life.
(b) It will be a pure life. Rev 21:27 – ‘Nothing impure will ever enter it.’
It is the pure in heart who will see God, Mt 5:8. We are to strive for holiness, without which no-one will see the Lord (Heb 12:14).
J.C. Ryle: ‘Suppose for a moment that you were allowed to enter heaven without holiness. What would you do? What possible enjoyment could you feel there? To which of all the saints would you join yourself, and by whose side would you sit down? Their pleasures are not your pleasures, their tastes nor your tastes, their character not your character. How could you possibly be happy, if you had not been holy on earth?’
What an incentive to keep short accounts with God!
(c) It will be an active life, Rev 7:15 – We will ‘serve him day and night.’
There once was a woman who always was tired
She lived in a house where no help was hired.
On her death bed she said, dear friends I am goin
Where washing aint done nor cookin nor sewin,
And everything there will be just to my wishes,
For where they don’t eat there’s no washin of dishes.
Don’t mourn for me now, don’t mourn for me ever,
For I’m goin to do nothin, forever and ever.
But how long before that dream became a nightmare?
In the new heaven and the new earth we will not spend our time in idleness. We will have work without weariness. We will have activity without toil. We will continue to grow and develop but never again become old and frail. There will be plenty to do in heaven.
(d) It will be a social life, Rev 7:9 – ‘a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.’
The Bible is all about community. And the Bible’s pictures of life in heaven are all corporate. It is described as a city, a temple, and a kingdom.
We are going to spend a long time together in heaven; we had better get used to it now!
I love how Geoffrey Paul puts it: ‘There is no way of belonging to Christ except by belonging gladly and irrevocably to that marvellous and extraordinary ragbag of saints and fatheads who make up the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.’
(e) It will be a happy life, Rev 21:3f
No more tears, no more death, no more mourning or crying or pain; that’s the negative. And here’s the positive: ‘God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.’
Jonathan Edwards: ‘The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied…Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams, but God is the ocean.’
I commend to you ‘the life everlasting’. It is a life:
- in which God’s beloved children will flourish for ever in the new heavens and the new earth: their lives solidly embodied, spotlessly pure, vigorously active, joyfully social, extravagantly happy.
- which triumphs over death itself, for the promise of Jesus applies to each penitent sinner as they draw their final breath: ‘Today you will be with me in paradise.’
- which begins here and now, for the Saviour declared: ‘whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.’
What is the passport to this life? –
For so loved God the world
That he gave his only Son
That whoever believes in him
Should not perish
But have ‘the life everlasting’.