Jesus, Eternal Life

Introduction

Seasons are a certainty. Every year, Spring brings life and color back to the ground, Summer pounds the backs of those who labor and are diligent in reaping the rewards of the ground, Fall ushers in reprieve and comfort for a time before Winter comes like a white eraser to prepare the earth for another year. Sports seasons revolve, some that we wish would disappear and fade quickly, others that we reveal in, hoping that they last just a little longer, and when they end, we feel the loss of something special. Seasons of trials are endurable because we can trust that they will only ever be that, just a season. We cherish seasons of bliss and blessing like they are the safe harbor from which we can see storms rolling in. So while very few things in life are certain, seasons are because they are the way we group sections, blocks of our life together.

Sadly, our season here is one that is ending. When I came, I was fully willing for God to keep us here for however long he wanted to. We both knew God was calling us to come here and we came trusting him. Now we leave here trusting him. About half a year ago, I started feeling like my season here was drawing to a close. I prayed about it, Rebecca and I talked about it, and God confirmed it through much counsel, thought, and prayer. Yet, I hope that one things has been evident in us and our ministry here. I hope that as our family was observed, we served to point people towards Christ and the hope that his life, burial, and resurrection have for those who believe. As such, when Trask asked me to preach one last sermon, I had very little doubt about the passage I wanted to preach on:

John 17:3 CSB

3 This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent—Jesus Christ.

The Lasting Nature of Eternal Life

In my grief, these last couple of weeks have been filled with last things: last time eating at Ms. Sue’s, last time preparing for a sermon, last time hanging out with friends from here. Very few things offer even a small amount of comfort, if any. In fact, the easiest solution is to set my mind on task, on shows, on anything else that doesn’t make me deal with the fact that my season with people I love and some of my best friends is running out. It is true that I will likely still see you all again if God is willing, but it will not be the same. This season is coming to an end.

Yet, in two words I can find immeasurable comfort for leaving you all for a season and great hope in what will happen when I am gone. In two words I can express to you something which Children sing about and yet scholars are confounded by. In two words I can at once divide myself from those who are not interested in following Christ, yet unbreakably bind myself to you, my brothers and sisters in this room. Eternal life.

Eternal life, the topic of our verse for this morning, the content of the most quoted verse of all time, and our hope. John’s Gospel revolves around this theme of eternal life, and it begins with speaking of Jesus.

John 1:4–5 CSB

4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.

We were fully content to remain in our darkened world, full of death which we wrought upon ourselves in our quest to be like God. Then, like someone recoiling at the sudden light penetrating a room as the curtain was ripped back, we awakened, jolted to see that something had dawned, a new season had come, the times had changed. The Son who is life sprang forth, born of a virgin, healed the sick, cast out demons, breathed life into long rotting and dead corpses, and defeated death itself. Jesus is life, he is the dawn of life, the morning star that has crested the peaks of the valley of the shadow of death to dispel every shadow.

Are you a Christian who is struggling with sin, your saviors gaze is not blind. He sees every crack and crevice of your soul. The rays of his light run and bend around every wall and search your most inner parts. He sees all that you are. You are exposed before him with no place left to hid. He cannot be tricked into thinking that you are more godly than you are. You may be able to convince me, Trask, or any other person on the planet but him. And yet, believer, from the moment that you placed your trust in him, from the moment that you recognized you were sinful, deserving of death, and incapable of changing it yourself, your failures fell away from your saviors gaze. No longer did the lamb of God look at you with vengeance, but with pity, love, and with power. But beware, those who would have the saviors loving gaze while delighting in actions that plunge the nails further into his wrist. If your heart only desires to be freed from your deserved punishment, if you soul has no grief for the sin in it nor any desire to purge it away, the savior knows just that.

Do not think that making a profession and then coasting will end with you in paradise. Heed the words of Hebrews 10,

Hebrews 10:36–39 CSB

36 For you need endurance, so that after you have done God’s will, you may receive what was promised. 37 For yet in a very little while, the Coming One will come and not delay. 38 But my righteous one will live by faith; and if he draws back, I have no pleasure in him. 39 But we are not those who draw back and are destroyed, but those who have faith and are saved.

Do not draw away from God, but to him. Cling to his feet, bask in his purifying gaze and know that the savior of the world is bringing eternal life to bear on your life. Your faithfulness as a Christian is a testament to none other than Christ whose Spirit is planted in your soul and bringing forth fruit.

The Completion of Eternal Life

I find comfort in knowing that what I look out and see only in part here will be held in heaven’s hands complete. One day, we who love our precious savior will find our hearts filled will greater love and joy for one another than we can even comprehend now. One day, the hurt of having to go away will pass away and we will all be so perfectly united in Christ that no matter where we go, our connection will never fade. We will sing the praises of our God, the one true God who created us, and our voices will echo throughout all of space. We will harmonize with the voices of angels and saints who all bow before the one true God of the universe in adoration, in service, in peace. All seasons will be ushered out by the final eternal season. In our God’s presence, we will no longer be fearful of change for our God is the same yesterday, today, and forever more.

The Progression of Eternal Life

We will see him, our God. We will be drawn into his presence by the love he has for us. We will rejoice in his plan for us and the mercy he has shown us who sinned against him. We will sing as one as we begin the season of seasons, the joy of joys, as we know the one true God. This is eternal life. It is the desperate pursuit of knowing the one unlike any other, of serving him as he commissions us, of sinning against him no more. We will look upon sin and be astonished that it every was tempting when compared with the Almighty. We will revel in the ways that God reveals himself to us and delight our hearts in knowing him more fully. Are you content with what you know of God? Do thoughts about him and who he is rarely cross your mind? Are you satisfied? If so, repent. If you desire nothing more of God then you have never known him. Think of your favorite treat. Even just the thought, especially as we are getting close to lunch, will make you have cravings. Me asking you about your favorite food may cause you to change where you are going for lunch now all because you thought about, remembered, and were moved by how good something is. Does not God, who is infinitely more sweet than food, produce longing in the hearts of those who love him.

Psalm 16:11 CSB

11 You reveal the path of life to me; in your presence is abundant joy; at your right hand are eternal pleasures.

For God’s child, to take a break from God for a time is to strip away a part of their very soul, the totality of their happiness, the hope of their joy. Vacation from God’s presence is like Hell for his children. Run back to him, seek to know him as he wants to be known, and be assured that in doing so the things of this earth will grow strangely dim.

Sure, there are seasons in a Christian’s life, seasons where they seek God faithfully and where they don’t. Do not make the mistake of thinking about them as seasons of great and little blessing. No, they are seasons of being at home with the Father, feasting in the presence of his love and seasons of choosing to lay out in the wilderness, to starve, and to be ravaged by the forces of nature and stalked by predators. One is to sit around a fireplace, basked in its heat and serenaded by the wise and guiding voice of a Father who teaches and disciplines his children while the other is to wrap yourself in scraps as you lay on the frozen earth utterly bewildered as to which path will safely lead you home.

See, eternal life in not just a future hope, a final destination, but eternal life reaches back through eternity, arrest the hearts of believers, and wrenches them forward closer to who they will fully be in the presence of God. It is a future hope that alters us now. As Jesus said to the Lady at the well,

John 4:14 CSB

14 But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”

It is a well springing up in him for eternal life. To know the eternal life of the Son is to be changed by him now. Like someone who is used to drinking from a filthy and contaminated source of water being given a fresh well, he will be changed. Jesus does not just give hope of eternal life after this one, but eternal life at that very moment someone believes in him. It becomes a well of water springing up in him.

At Yellowstone National Park, you can see about half of the world’s geysers, the most wellknown being Old Faithful. Go to these parks and you will see steam coming from the ground, crowds gathered in anticipation. Approach Old Faithful, and for a time you may see nothing. You may wonder what all of the fuss is or why people marvel at a small fountain of steam. But give it time and, as it’s name suggest, the ground will rumble, the water will flash into steam, and a plum of steam and water will burst forth hundreds of feet into the sky.

Such is the power of God’s Spirit, the power of Christ, the source of eternal life in the believer. No longer are they content to be stagnant, but the Spirit of God lights a fire under them until the life of Christ in the believer erupts and is in full display. A Christian may, just like a geyser, recede underground for a time but just like Old Faithful, The Spirit of God will stir the people of God until his power is evident for all to see. He has to let the world know and to display his power so that the world cannot deny it, but that even those who seek to discredit Christianity and its claims are forced to recognize that something is evident and different. What a tragedy is the “Christian” who no one sees Christ in. Let me read you a quote from Facebook this past week, “My hometown really knows how to complain about wearing a mask, I don’t know why, they wear one every Sunday.” People, the first thing that we should find offence to as Christians in this post is that there is a consensus in our country that Christians are people who dress up, put on their best behavior on Sunday, yet seem no different in their character, temperament, nor actions than those who do not share their faith. Merely claiming the name of Christ means nothing if we do not have evidence hanging on our lives. Hoping for eternal life is hopeless if we do not have eternal life welling up within us now, stirring us to obedience and love of Christ. Love and obedience, two things that he said were inseparable.

Is this not what Jesus said when he said that we will know whether or not people are his followers by their fruit. Paul speaks about the fruit of the Spirit, like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Are these fruits adorning your life. Seasons of Winter may come when trees wither and shed their leaves but those whose hope is in Christ will flourish and display the power of God.

Knowing God is not merely learning facts about God, but letting what you have learned from him saturate you. Listening to preaching, studying in Sunday school, it all means nothing if it stops there. True knowledge of something is not just theoretical knowledge, like you learn from a text book. It is also experiential knowledge. I can theoretically know what it is like to give birth. I can go find the labor simulators that shock your abdominal muscles. I can read about the accounts of women and know what they said it felt like. I can study the physiological processes and the anatomical structure of the female body. But, women of New Castle, does any of that mean that I now know what it is like to give birth? Not in the slightest. I may know every textbook answer about what it means to give birth but I have not experienced it. I lack knowledge that those who have experienced it possess. Knowing God is not just something that happens in church or while you read your Bible. It also happens when your wife speaks to you harshly and you choose to do what God would do in your shoes, to be obedient, to experience the way that God’s character plays out. When you love those who hate you, you can begin to feel and experience to a greater degree what Jesus did when he was being mistreated. When you confront someone who professes to follow God and yet is living in sin, you experience what it Jesus did as he showed love by being more concerned with repentance than comfort. When we do what Christ has commanded us to do, we grow in our knowledge of God. Meditating on God’s instructions and obedience to them is how we know God.

Psalm 1 CSB

1 How happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the company of mockers! 2 Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night. 3 He is like a tree planted beside flowing streams that bears its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. 4 The wicked are not like this; instead, they are like chaff that the wind blows away. 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand up in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. 6 For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to ruin.

The one who delight in knowing God through knowledge and obedience will be nourished, protected, and sustained until the God-determined moments arrive when the power of God rushes up and burst forth.

Do you want to know why Jesus could be so certain that fruit, fruit so evident that it testified to whether or not they were believers, would come? Because he is the source. He is the water of life. He is the source of life. He is the energy, the force, the power in the hearts of believers that energizes them in such a way that they will have to burst forth in obedience, in faith, in praise for their king, the one who God sent, Jesus Christ. If your life does not bear fruit that testifies to God working in you, repent! Turn from your sin and be obedient to Christ. Know that you are not earning his favor, but that he will have pity on you, he will aid you, he will save you if you stop thinking that you are able to save yourself. He is not called our savior because we figured out how to make it on our own, but because we were helpless, drifting with the currents, drowned at the bottom of the sea and yet he breathed life into our dead corpse and made us alive.

If you do not have the fruit that the Spirit of Christ produces, run to him, fall on your knees, call him Lord, and know that he will save you. He will change you. He will give you eternal life.

And this, Christ’s power at work in those who believe, is what gives me comfort as I leave you. I know that in this room there are believers who are thriving in their faith, seeking to know God more every day, to faithfully pursue him. These believers have actually been sources of conviction in my own life as I have witnessed the Spirit of God in their lives in ways that I may been neglecting or stifling him. God is wise in placing you all here for one another. You are all instruments of eternal life which God is using to shape the others into a people holy and pleasing to him. Spit out division, for to reject your brothers and sisters in this room is to reject God’s provision for you. Rely on one another for God has distributed arms, legs, and hands for the sake of building up one another and running our race into completion. You will only have one another for a season, and your time together may be much shorter than any of us realize. Don’t take your Church family for granted. Build up one another and be built up. Your church family aids in your eternal life, showing you examples of God’s Spirit in action and what obedience looks like, or providing you with opportunities to expose sin for the sake of helping one another draw nearer to Christ.

Conclusion

John 17:3 CSB

3 This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent—Jesus Christ.

To know God. To know the holy, loving, kind, just God who created us, designed us, and can save us. To know Jesus Christ, his only Son who offered himself in our place, on our our cross, was placed in our grave, but defeated them all. To know our risen king, the head of the Church, the bridegroom of the Church, the defender of his church. Look around you. Eternal life is not we have to wait until death to see. Look around, for where you see God’s Spirit moving you see eternal life reaching back through history and shaping the destiny of man. Look around, and know that everyone in this room who is a member of this church, who professes the name of Christ, they are all placed here for you to serve through kindness, love, and building up. Know that any sin allowed to grow in this church will suppress the eternal life God has planted. Know that the sin you tolerate and permit will lead people away from God, label you hypocrites and Sunday mask wearers, and defame the name of Christ, our one hope, our only source of living water. It is like going to a hospital and defacing the sign so that it says morgue, disguising a place meant for life as one full of the dead. Please, my one desire for this church is that you all, through obedience to Christ and reliance on his Spirit, will know God more, that you will know eternal life more. Then, one day, this time of living with divided hearts, of struggling to love someone who gave his life for us, this season will pass and we will be united in the presence of God. We will know the one true God. We will know his Son. We will be in the everlasting season of eternal life.