November 12, 2006

End Time 2 (Last Judgment)

A wealthy English family once invited friends to spend some time at their beautiful estate. The happy gathering was almost plunged into a terrible tragedy on the first day. When the children went swimming, one of them got into deep water and was drowning. Fortunately, the gardener heard the others screaming and plunged into the pool to rescue the helpless victim. That youngster was a boy named Winston Churchill.  His parents, deeply grateful to the gardener, Mr. Fleming, asked what they could do to reward him. He hesitated, then said, “I wish my son could go to college someday and become a doctor.”  “We’ll pay his way,” replied Churchill’s parents.

Years later, when Sir Winston was prime minister of England, he was stricken with pneumonia. Greatly concerned, the king summoned the best physician who could be found to the bedside of the ailing leader. That doctor was Sir Alexander Fleming, the developer of penicillin. He was also the son of that gardener who had saved Winston from drowning as a boy! Later Churchill said, “Rarely has one man owed his life twice to the same person.”

What was rare in the case of the great English statesman is in a much deeper sense a wonderful reality for every believer in Christ. The Heavenly Father has given us the gift of physical life, and then through His Son, the Great Physician, He has imparted to us eternal life. We are doubly indebted to a God who has given us life.  Real life.  We have it now and forever.

But are you sitting here this morning thinking, “The life I am living right now is real life?  Really?  There’s gotta be more to life!”  And there is.  There is more to life than the daily routine we sometimes mistake for “life.”  There is a greater, fuller, more real kind of life that God intends for all of us to have.  It’s the kind of life that God created us for.  The kind of life that God Himself has.  You wanna know what real life is?  Look at the Father, Son, and Spirit…

Jesus said, “I tell you the truth…” In other words, “what I have to tell you right now is very important, so listen up!”  “The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.  For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.”  Do you see the relationship between Father and Son?  They are of one mind, will, and purpose.  There is perfect unity there.  The Son does exactly what the Father does.  He imitates Him perfectly.  And the Father loves Him.  The relationship is perfect.

You don’t hear of the Son rebelling against his Father, or questioning his decisions.  The Father doesn’t have to discipline his Son for doing his own thing.   There isn’t jealousy between them.  No power struggle. (and they’re both almighty!)  They don’t talk each other down or try to win more followers than the other.  They don’t give each other the silent treatment.  They don’t let their relationship grow stale.  They don’t forget about what is important and busy themselves with the daily routine and material things.  They never run out of patience for one another.  They have the perfect relationship.  They have real life.  The Son has been perfect.  The Son wants to do the things that His Father wants Him to do.  And so his Father loves Him as one of his own.

And that real life they enjoy isn’t dull or routine. Together with the Holy Spirit, they have set out on an adventure.  The greatest adventure there has even been.  The greatest story ever told.  The story of life.  The creation of the human race, people made in their image to glorify them with their lives.  A real love and attachment to us helpless humans.  And then, the quest to go out and rescue us wayward human beings when we wandered away from the real life we were created for!  A dangerous, harrowing adventure in which the Father gave up his Son and the Son gave up his life.  An adventure that included a glorious reunion when the Son returned, having accomplished the mission his Father sent Him on.  An adventure, a story that continues…

Now that is real life!  That is the life we were created for.  That was the story we were to be part of!  But does that describe our life?  First of all, the perfection?  Do our relationships look like the Father and the Son?  Do we have that kind of unity and harmony?  No!  We get tired of each other.  We fight.  We get jealous.  We lose patience.  We break our relationships.  We end our marriages.  We rebel against our parents.  We live to please ourselves instead of to serve others.  In all of our relationships with people, there is strife, hardship, anger, hatred, envy, gossip, quarreling, displaying pride, talking smack, and picking fights.  We have bitterly failed in having the kind of perfect unity that the Father and the Son have!

And that’s why we have cut ourselves out of His family.  That’s how we lost the perfect image God gave us.  That’s how we have all fallen far short of what God wants us to be.  That’s how we have all come under the anger of a righteous God.  The Father we rebelled against. 

And instead of having that perfect life, so full of joy and so full of fulfillment and adventure with God, we have settled for a meager life of meaningless routine.  School, work, chores, meals, bills, TV, and sleep. Sadly, the greatest “adventure” some people ever experience is watching TV or taking care of their house and yard like everyone else.  But that isn’t life.

Jesus said, “Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these.  For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.”  God is going to show us something greater than we have ever seen!  Real life is something hard for us to even conceive of here on earth!  Jesus had just healed a lame man.  And now He says that we will see greater things than that.  We would see Jesus raise Jairus’ daughter, the widow’s son, and Lazarus from the dead!  We will see Him raise us from the dead.  But He also has the power to give us spiritual life!  Real life in heaven.  Real life right now.

Joe Bailey, in his book "A View From a Hearse" tells of the day his boy died of cancer. He had returned to the clinic to thank them for their kindness and care of his son. As he spoke to the receptionist, she motioned toward a woman whose son was playing quietly with toys in the waiting area. "He has the same cancer your son had" she said. "Why don’t you go over and see if you can talk with her."

Bailey went reluctantly over to sit next to her and they whispered just out of hearing of the boy. "It must be hard bringing him in for the treatments," he said, more a statement than a question.  "Hard?" she turned with anguish in her eyes, "I die every time I have to bring him in. What makes it worse is that I know it’s not going to stop the cancer and that he’s going to die." Uncomfortable, Bailey ventured: "Still it is some comfort to know that when that happens there is no more pain and suffering, and that he will go to a better place."  "No," with hardness in her voice, "when he dies I’m just going to bury him in the cemetery and I’ll never see him again."

Bailey wanted to leave. It was uncomfortable to be reminded of his loss and even more uncomfortable to speak with this woman who obviously had no hope. Then he spoke quietly, "I buried my boy just yesterday, and I’ve only come today to thank the doctors and nurses for their kindness. I know what you’re feeling but I also know that there is a better life for my son now." "How could you believe such a thing?" she challenged. And then Joe Bailey told her about Jesus.

Friends, Jesus gives us life.  Real life.  “the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.”  First of all, He gives us life when we deserved death.  Your sins and mine have so disqualified us from being loved by God as a member of his family. We deserve his anger for eternity.  But Jesus went on a mission to give us our lives back by allowing his own life to be taken away.  By standing underneath all of God’s anger over our sin.  Jesus took that for us.  Now, because of Jesus, we have nothing to be judged for.  There is nothing for which we can be condemned!  We have been saved from spiritual death!  We HAVE life!  The image we had at creation has been restored!  You are forgiven.  You are loved by God.  You have life!

That also means you are freed from the hum-drum of what we mistake for life on this earth.  You don’t live in some meaningless existence.  You have a purpose!  You have a mission!  An adventure to be part of!  To live your life differently!  To use all the gifts and abilities God has given you!  To do what you love to do in life!  In a way that brings glory to God!  To tell others about Jesus!  And because of Jesus, you do have a way to meet hardships.  To get through grief.  To face death.  To be prepared for the Last Day.  To look forward to the next chapter.

Your last day, whether it is the day you die, or the day that Jesus returns, is now nothing you have to fear.  But something to look forward to!  It is the ultimate day of triumph!  It is the beginning of the your real story!  Your real life!  Your real adventure.  Jesus gives us another very important statement: “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.”  Because of what Jesus did for us with his life and with his cross, we have crossed over from death to life!  God has brought you back into the family.  It’s a gift.  Receive that gift.  Believe it. 

When Judgment Day comes, the verdict we will be given will simply be on the basis of our relationship with Jesus.  That is why the text says that the Father judges no one but has entrusted all judgment to his Son.  The Father wants everyone in heaven with Him.  So does the Son.  When we honour Jesus, when we trust in Him as our Saviour, then we will honour God by accepting the free gift of salvation, the gift of real life that He wants so badly for us to have.

So hear his Word and believe in Him!  That is How To Have Real Life!  That is how we cross over from death to life.  That is how we prepare for eternal life.  Our real story.  Our real adventure.  In C. S. Lewis’ series, The Chronicles of Narnia, he creatively describes what our hope is and what eternity will be like:  At the end of the last book, The Last Battle, Aslan the Lion (who is the character of Jesus) tells Peter, Edmund, and Lucy there has been a railroad accident and they are dead.

Here is how the text goes:  “And as he [Aslan] spoke he no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

God will grant you such a future as well, when you hear His Word and believe Him who sent Jesus.  You, too, will have eternal life, where each moment is better than the one before.  Amen.

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