Hear, Believe, and Live
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I’m so thankful for the hope of eternal life.
Even as we grieve our loss, we rejoice at the thought that my Grandpa Harry Newton is in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is an amazing hope we have as believers, that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord forever.
And David says in Psalm 16, “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
This is what Harry Newton is experiencing right now, and will experience for eternity. Full joy and eternal pleasure, far greater than anything we experience here on earth. Just one moment in his presence is greater than all the best experiences of this life. And for the believer, this is a joy and pleasure that goes on forever. It never ends.
But something must happen to us so that we can be assured of this hope.
Scripture tells us that we are born in sin, that we have inherited the guilt of Adam’s sin, and we ourselves have sinned. We have treasured other things more than the glory of God. We have rejected God and gone our own way. We have failed to live up to his glorious standard in our thoughts, desires, words, and actions.
And God has told us that the wages of sin is death. We deserve to die because of our sins, and in fact we are born dead in sins and headed for destruction apart from an amazing work of God’s grace.
But God has done an amazing work of grace by sending his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Lamb of God who has taken away our sin by the sacrifice of himself on the cross. He bore our sins in his body on the tree so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. He gave himself for us to redeem us from every wicked deed and purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous of good deeds.
And Jesus rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures.
This is the gospel, the Good News about how God has acted in his Son to save sinners for his glory.
And in the Gospel of John, we are presented over and over again with the two possible responses to the truth about Jesus.
You can hear his word, believe his claims, trust in him, love him, follow him, come to him — and enjoy the pleasure of eternal life with him.
or
You can ignore his word, disregard his claims, distrust him, hate him, walk away from him — and remain dead in your sins and separated from God in torment forever.
Listen to what Jesus says in John 5:24-26
24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
25 “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.
26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.
Unless something happens, we will come into judgment as v. 24 says. Unless something changes, we are on the side of death. We are by nature dead as v. 25 describes.
Which side are you on? Are you on the side of death or life? Will you come into judgment or experience joy in his presence?
Do you hear the voice of Jesus? Do you hear him calling you through his word? Do you hear him compelling you to come and follow him? This is the sovereign call of the Good Shepherd. He speaks through his word, and it is by this word that he creates faith in our hearts. If you do hear his voice, you will follow him. If you don’t hear his voice, pray that you will, and open your Bible and read, praying to hear his voice.
Do you believe what he says and what the Father says about him? (This is the result of truly hearing his voice) Here are some things we learn about Jesus in John’s Gospel:
He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world
He is the Son of God
He is the Messiah, in whom and through whom God fulfills all his promises
He is the fountain of living water and the bread of life who will satisfy our souls if we come to him
He is the light of the world
He is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep
He is the way, the truth, and the life
My Grandpa heard the voice of Jesus and believed him.
One of his favorite verses was 2 Timothy 1:12
12 which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me.
“I know whom I have believed.”
His faith was solid. He knew Jesus and trusted in him. And what an amazing legacy he has left by passing that faith to the next generation.
Jesus says something very similar in John 10:27-28
27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
Jesus promises to those who hear his voice and follow him eternal life and he promises that they will never perish — they will never die.
You will live forever and never die.
Jesus states this same reality in even clearer terms in John 8:51 and 11:26:
51 Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,
26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
What Jesus says is that those who die trusting in Christ do not really die — their address has changed from earth to heaven, and they will be without a body for a while, but as far as God is concerned, they haven’t really died. Death did not get the final word, because Christ has conquered our death by his own death.
To us it seems that Harry Newton has died, but to God he is alive.
Listen to what Jesus says to the Sadducees about the resurrection: (Matthew 22:29-32)
English Standard Version Chapter 22
29 But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 31 And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.”
God is the God of the living. God is the God of my grandfather, Harry Newton, and so Harry Newton is alive.
I think we could even say that he is more alive now than he has ever been. Not as much as he will be at the resurrection when body and soul are reunited, but more alive than he was on this earth.
If we will believe this, it will change our lives.
Consider who the one saying these things is. When Jesus tells Martha these things in John 11, he asks her at the end of v. 26, “Do you believe this?” He asks us the same question today. Do you hear his voice? Do you believe this? That if you trust in him, death will have no power over you, but you will always be alive in the presence of God?
Martha’s response in v. 27 is one of the clearest statements in John of the identity of Jesus: John 11:27
27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”
This is the whole point of John’s Gospel. John shows us in many different ways that Jesus is the Messiah, He is the Son of God, and John seeks to compel us to trust in him with the result of eternal life.
Jesus demonstrated his authority over death by raising Lazarus who had been dead four days.
One day, according to Jesus in John 5:28-29, he will not just raise one person, but all who are in the graves will hear the voice of the Son of God and come out. Jesus gave us a small sample of what that looks like when he raised Lazarus and when he himself rose from the dead.
And the hope of every believer is two-fold:
We will never really die. What we call death is not the end, but a transition to a new stage of our life in Christ. We will still be alive in him, we will be with him, and there is not a moment of separation from God at the end of this life for the believer.
One day we will be reunited with our glorified bodies, which will never die or wear out, and we will continue to live forever in the joy of his presence.
Do you have this hope? If not, we would love to share more about how you can know Christ and share the hope of eternal life.
If you do have this hope, live free from the fear of death.
Everyone around us lives in fear of death, whether they realize it or not, and sometimes this mentality can still affect us as believers. But by God’s grace, we no longer need live in fear of death, because its power has been conquered. In Christ we are free from the power and fear of death:
14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,
15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.
16 For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham.
Live a fearless life of love toward God and others because Christ has set you free.
You don’t have to die. You can live forever.