It's All About the People | The People's Forever

Message

“Here we are between all of our hopes and fears.”

On the borderlines.

In the space between heaven and earth. Life and death. Death and life.

All of us long for heaven in our little part of this place called earth, when all that is broken would be made right, where all that is lost would be found.

On Easter Sunday, our Senior Pastor asked all of us to repeat a statement, saying, “Absent in the Body, present with the Lord.” In fact, let’s repeat it together again…

This statement is the King James Version of what the Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:8, when he said: “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” 2 Corinthians 5:8

In this passage, Paul boldly declares that Christ followers ought to prefer living away from their very own body and, instead, at home eternal with their Lord.

Paul’s declaration, while true, directly confronts one of humanity’s greatest fears: death.

In October 2009, I visited a friend who attended Harvard Medical school. He took me on a tour of the school and showed me all of the famous historic sites in the city, including one that he considered his personal favorite.

[[[show pic]]]

This painting hangs on the front wall of the Ether Dome, which is a surgical operating amphitheater inside of the Massachusetts General Hospital.

The title of the painting is Ether Day. It depicts the first successful use of anesthesia during a surgical operation. In October 1846, Dr. John Collins Warren administered sulfuric ether to remove a tumor from the neck of his patient.

Within months, physicians around the world began to administer ether as a general anesthetic. Within years, major surgeries and amputations under general anesthesia became routine procedures.

And within the last 170 years, only 8 generations after that all-important moment in medical science, death, which was once a visible, up close, and personal stage of human life and culture, is now considered preventable in most circumstances, and praise God!

His wisdom is made manifest in the wonder and miracle of modern medicine and technology. Yet, the shadow side of medicine seeks to remove death altogether from our lives.

One surgeon named Atul Gawande argues in his best-selling 2014 book “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End” that a medicalized view of death frequently results in people dying in institutions, cut off from their loved ones and their comforts.

After this past year, many of us know firsthand the profound pain of this statement.

Gawande writes, “I am in a profession that has succeeded because of its ability to fix. If your problem is fixable, we know just what to do. But if it’s not? The fact that we have had no adequate answers to this question is troubling and has caused callousness, inhumanity, and extraordinary suffering.”

In our society today, Death has become an enemy to be defeated, a failure to be prevented, rather than an expected stage of life that every single one of us will eventually experience.

And why? Because removing death from our daily lives removes our greatest fear.

Yet, the good news of Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday morning proclaims that death does not speak the final word over us.

As a matter of fact, the victory of Easter declares that we have nothing to fear, not even death itself, so perhaps the better question to ask is what does God want us to know about eternal life?

During the 40 days following Jesus’ resurrection, His life showed us life after death, which promises more life, more victory, and more peace for those who place their life in his.

Through the inspired words of Jesus’ most beloved disciple, John, God gives us a clear word about death by giving us confident knowledge of eternal life.

Unlike one of the well constructed letters that you read in the New Testament, God inspired John to write his first letter with passion, simple to read but profound in its meaning!

John wasn’t a scholar. He was a practical leader who desired to keep his people on point with Jesus Christ, whom he called, “The Word of life. John wrote, This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life.” 1 John 1:1–2.

Jesus is eternal life, and John provides three knowledge bases for how we can know this truth for ourselves and with confidence.

Today, my aim is that every person within the sound of my voice will leave this message with a growing certainty of God’s promise of eternal life for you.

John describes the first knowledge base in chapter 2, when he wrote:

3 And we can be sure that we know him [[[the one who is eternal life and gives us the power to resist sin]]] if we obey his commandments.

What are his commandments: love God and love others as yourself. (Matthew 22:35-40; Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:27)

On the surface, this may sound like John is saying that we need to love God and others first in order to earn God’s love.

This is a widely held criticism against Christianity, but John addresses it, saying:

“We love each other because he loved us first.” 1 John 4:19

By keeping and practicing Jesus’ commandments to love God and others, we show our reception of God’s first love to us.

The love we give is from the outflow of the love we receive.

If someone claims, “I know God,” but doesn’t obey God’s commandments, that person is a liar and is not living in the truth.

They neither recognize nor obey God’s first love given to them.

But those who obey God’s word truly show how completely they love him.

Because they also know how completely God loves them.

Obedience is the fruit of a transformed life.

If we obey his commandments and give love out of the overflow of God’s love to us, then we demonstrate that we know God and his eternal life for us.

That is how we know we are living in him.

Here John offers the first of three knowledge bases toward confidence in eternal life, using a Greek term called ‘ginosko,’ referring to how we gain knowledge through practice and experience.

Ginosko knowledge reminds me of Costco samples - you know those ones at the end of the food aisles? Que sabrozo! Haha!

Those samples give you just enough to whet your appetite and tease you into experiencing more.

Our obedience to Jesus’ commandments does the same thing. Obedience whets our appetite for eternal life.

Now, obedience isn’t a sexy word in our society. It’s counter intuitive to think of obedience as a way of experiencing God’s love and goodness, but consider what Jesus himself said in Matthew 11,

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” Matthew 11:28-30.

Obedience to Jesus leads to rest and ease, and the more we “Taste and see that the LORD is good,” Psalm 34:8 then the less we will fear death or fear anything for that matter :) because our experiential knowledge of eternal life will become more and more tangible to our senses and certain in our expectation!

In chapter 3, John offers a second knowledge base toward confidence in eternal life. He writes,

Dear friends, we are already God’s children,

You become God’s child when you profess faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior; “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Romans 10:13

and at that moment, a person becomes an adopted son or daughter into God’s family with the inherited right to eternal life. In fact, for those who place their trust in Jesus, God gives His Spirit as a guarantee of his promise of eternal life! - that’s direct from Ephesians 1.

But [[[John says]]] he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. [[[though it’s promised, eternal life is still a mystery. The Apostle Paul declared, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him” 1 Corinthians 2:9

But we do know [[[John tells us]]] that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is. … In all of God’s incomprehensible glory, righteousness, and love!

Here John uses a different term for know than he used in the previous verse.

The term he used is ‘oida,’ which refers to how we gain knowledge through perception and relationship, and John’s use of this term reveals a brilliant insight into how we know God’s promise of eternal life.

John says that we know we will be like him because we’ll see him for who he really is, meaning that we will know God and know ourselves in eternity through our rightly restored relationship with Jesus!

Paul writes in Corinthians:

And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are [[[being]]] changed into his glorious image.” 2 Corinthians 3:18

We are being changed into Christlikeness now... for eternity.

Both John and Paul agree that as our relationship with Jesus grows, not only do we gain confidence in our knowledge of eternal life, but we also become transformed into his likeness.

This won’t fully take place in this life, but all of this begins in this life.

The other night, I watched one of my favorite movies and pumped my fist like I always do when I heard my favorite movie quote of all time: “What we do in life echoes in eternity.” Gladiator, strength and honor.

Jesus tells us that “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 18:18). What a mysterious statement, but the heartbeat of it speaks to how the character and integrity of your words and actions in this life done in Christ’s name echoes throughout all eternity.

When you share God’s love and invite others to join you in relational knowledge of Jesus, lives change for eternity. Your effort echoes in eternity!

So what can you do to grow in our relational knowledge of Jesus? If you feel like your speedometer is hovering around zero and you need a new starting point, then Allow me to recommend beginning a daily journey with Jesus by adopting a method that I call the 5x5x5. 5 min of Bible reading, 5 minutes of prayer, and 5 minutes of journaling whatever God shows you.

Start with John’s letters. Then read John’s Gospel or  dig into Luke’s Gospel. Download the YouVersion Bible app and start a 5 day reading plan on any one of these letters or another topic that resonates with a need or question. Invite a friend to grow with you and talk about what you learn. Consider joining a small group.

As your relationship with Jesus grows, then so also does your confident hope in eternal life.

Let me ask you a question: how many of you play sports? Do you remember when you first started playing and learning the game? You probably stood back, watched, maybe even hesitated a bit until you learned the sport and grew in your confidence to play it, right? As your skills developed, so also did your confidence. That is, until you fell short and lost, right? And then what happened? You lost confidence, felt guilty. The same thing happens in our faith. Our confident hope in God and his promise of eternal life suffers when we fall short with God and one another. We lose confidence and feel guilty. John addressed this issue in his letter, saying:

Even if we feel guilty, [[[we will fall short with God and one another, so when that happens, take hope, because…]]] God is greater than our feelings,

[[[wow, to read this in God’s Word gives me so much hope because when you don’t feel God or when you fall short of God, he is still greater]]]

and he knows everything. 1 John 3:20

Here, John shifts the focus of knowledge from human beings as the subject to God, and interestingly, the word that John used in this verse is ‘ginosko’ knowledge, meaning that God knows everything based on his own first-hand, evidence-based experience.

This is remarkable!

John tells us that God knows everything, but not from some far off distance. Rather, God knows everything, including you, in the most personal, intimate, and experiential way - in the same way that you would know your best friend or spouse - that’s how God knows you.

How does this work:

The Apostle Paul wrote, Through Christ God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth… Everything was created through him and for him. He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together. Colossians 1:16-17

God formed you, pieced you together, knows you inside and out…

Then why would God ever want me?

Friend, No matter what your history or how you came into this building today, God desires you and loves you.

He knows your joys and your broken places. Do you know Jesus, and are you confident in your eternal future?

John offers a third and final knowledge base toward confidence in eternal life. He wrote:

All who believe in the Son of God know in their hearts that this testimony is true. 1 John 5:10.

John uses the Greek term ‘Eko’, meaning a knowledge gained through intuition and instinct.

Think of this like built-in, hardware knowledge — like that feeling when you know something simply because you know it — like the feeling of you just know that you know that you know. That’s eko knowledge.

The author of Ecclesiastes tells us that “God has planted eternity in the human heart.” Ecclesiastes 3:11

Somethings, you just know. And [[[triad image]]] God’s Word gives just as much credibility to Eko knowledge — intuition, instinct knowledge — as it does to Ginosko knowledge — experiential, evidence-based, scientific method-type knowledge — and Oida knowledge — perceived, relational knowledge.

In fact, when you limit the scope of your understanding to only one of these knowledge bases rather than encompassing all three of them equally, then your knowledge of God and his promise of eternal life diminishes, along with your confident hope in this truth!

If you are in a place in life right now where you feel confident that you know that you know that you know, then my friend, please hear me say: you have a responsibility to help others grow in their confident knowledge of eternal life, as well.

And the best place to begin your journey to help others is right here among your Christ Journey family.

Allow me to encourage you and even push you to consider leading a small group or helping our kids, middle school students, or high school students grow in their confident knowledge of eternal life.

John talks all throughout this letter about the importance of community. We need each other. I am here - doing this today - because countless heroes answered God’s call to help someone else grow into maturity. Be that hero for someone else.

Wondering if I am talking to you, I am. You only need to be a few yards ahead to help to help the person behind you run the ball.

As our knowledge of God’s love for us grows, then our love for God grows in return, creating fellowship and togetherness, and not just between you and God, but among us.

Just a few days ago, on a walk with my kids, my 7 year old daughter, Hannah, without skipping a beat asked me in the sweetest, most innocent way, “Daddy, do people want to die?” Of course, while my daughter is busy asking me existential questions about life, my son, Levi, wants to know if he can pee in the neighbor’s bush!

So I said, so long as it’s the neighbor’s bush, I don’t mind! :-)

I think some of you might be wondering if I really said that. :)

I answered my daughter’s question by saying, “Well, I don’t think most people want to die, but we don’t need to fear it.”

I told her that God gives every breath to us and loves us so much, but eventually, everybody dies. I told her that when my grandpa died, I felt sad, but also hopeful because my grandpa knew without any doubt that on the other side of death meant life forever with Jesus.

Do you know without any doubt that on the other side of your death is life?

Listen, my friend, Jesus isn’t about weighing the scales between gold and bad.

Jesus isn’t about recycling you until karma gets washed out and you’re good enough to get-in.

Jesus isn’t wishful thinking.

Jesus isn’t about making you sign on the dotted line

Jesus isn’t about making you do stuff.

Jesus isn’t a version of life.

Jesus is life!

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life!

Jesus is your life.

Jesus is your satisfaction, your peace.

Jesus is your eternity!

Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life. 1 John 5:12

Period. It’s As simple as that.

Do you want life? Real life, then do you have the son?

If you don’t have the son, then no matter what you do, who you do, what you try, what you believe, you’ll never, ever be satisfied, and worse, you will be forever apart from the unconditional love of the one and only true God!

So, today, if you are wondering if you have eternal life, then do you have the Son?

In Christ, death does not pronounce the final word over you. Life does. Love does. The Son does!

Do you have the Son?

Choose life forever today.

Choose the Son!

May your first day of eternity begin here, today.

And may you be willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord - where every son and daughter will know their worth!

Pray…