Northside Church - Sydney
Anchor Points Week 5: Eternity is A Reality
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Well, what a surprise it was. What a stunning surprise. Could anybody have foreshadowed that this would take place? It absolutely took my breath away. I will never forget it. I'm talking about the new year's celebrations in the year 2000. The most important new year's celebrations for any of us because it introduced a brand new century and it introduced a brand new millennium. And unless you are going to enjoy remarkably good health, none of us will see that ever again. I wouldn't think unless you've, you know, who knows? I don't know. And what happened? On display, on the iconic Harbour Bridge, was this word. I was not ready for that. Who was down there when the actual fireworks were taking place? Oh, yes. There they are. A number of people. We chose to back off that week, that year, because I said to Beth, that's going to be paying the money down there. So good on you guys for being there. Well, some of you are living overseas or in the state when this went up. And you may not realize that whilst it's just a word around the world in every other country and every other state, it's just a word. But in Sydney, that word in that form has particular significance for this city. Because as many of you know, a man by the name of Arthur Stase was converted to Christ. He was an alcoholic. He was a vagrant. He was what we'd call today a homeless man, destitute, converted to Christ over on the Broadway at Saint Barnabas. And he was given a gift by God. He was barely literate. But he found that he could write that word like that in copper plating. And so he would get up at five o'clock most mornings and he would roam the city streets, the inner city streets. And he would write that word in chalk on the pavement as a way, I kind of a wake up call for people to think and to ponder about what eternity might mean for them. He did this over a 30 year period, 30 year period, amazing. Now the question, how did that word end up on the Harbour Bridge? I was stunned. I knew the story of Arthur Stase, but I thought, well, you know, he was a Christian, he was, why would they, normally we don't get that sort of prominence on New Year's Eve? Why would they do that? Well, Ignatius Jones, some of you may know Ignatius, he's the man who was behind the New Year celebration in 2000, the one who put it all together. And this was his reasoning behind it. And I quote, he said, it's incredibly Sydney, I'd love to say the way I thought he might have said it, but it's incredibly Sydney. It symbolises the madness, the mystery and the magic of this city. On the one hand there's the meaning of the word in its temporal sense, but on this night of fellowship and good cheer, it shouldn't just be about one night. The word says that this celebration should be eternal in human life. It's beautiful, but I don't think it's what Arthur Stase had in mind, I'm sure it's not. We'll come back to what he had in mind shortly, but one thing is for certain. That word on the Harbour Bridge, on Year's Eve 2000, gave Christians everywhere a golden opportunity to engage people in a conversation about eternity. And I'm sure many of you took advantage of that as I tried to. Now, friends, eternity is a central theme throughout the Bible. It's right there. You can't avoid it. It's one of the most powerful explanations of this mind-blowing theological and spiritual concept, eternity, out there, forever. One of the best explanations is right here in this reading that was brought to us by David a moment ago, verse 53 of 1 Corinthians 15, this is what Paul says. What is mortal must be changed into what is immortal. What will die must be changed into what cannot die. So here's Paul in the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians and a problem has arisen in the Corinthian church. And you won't believe this. A problem has arisen. There are already people who are doubting the reality of the resurrection. Can you believe it? Is it any wonder the church has some theological and doctrinal differences 2,000 years later. Within about 30 years of the resurrection of Jesus, there are people in the Corinthian church with doubts about the resurrection. Some of them would have been alive when he was raised. They're talking to Paul who had encountered the resurrected Christ. Jesus had said, "Because I live, you will live also." But there are some of these people who have been drawn, they've been brought into the church out of downright paganism, and they're really finding it hard to apply some of the teachings and some of the new theology that they're learning in Christianity. So Paul has a few challenges on his hands. In fact, he's got more than a few challenges. He's got real challenges with the Corinthians on a whole range of issues. And so to devote an entire chapter to the topic of resurrection and eternity, not to mention all the other things that he says in 1 Corinthians about the same theme and all these other writings as well. To devote a whole chapter is a clear indication that Paul believes that eternity, the reality of eternity, is of crucial importance when it comes to our identity and our stability in Jesus Christ, hence that reference to the anchor. I mean, it's imperative. It's imperative that we have this aspect of our beliefs sure and steadfast, rock solid. It's so important. That's why it had to be included in this series. You see, the reality of eternity is an anchor point to the Christian because it holds us fast like anchors are supposed to do. It holds us fast when we're faced with some of the big issues that have the potential to undermine our faith in Christ and to weaken our allegiance to him, belief in eternity. We have to get this right. It holds the key to handling and managing so many of the big ticket items that can pose as threats to the nurture and the maintenance of a healthy relationship with Jesus Christ. For instance, the reality of eternity is an anchor point when faced with the meaning of life and we all have to face that question at some point or another. What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of my life? The pure secularist says, "Well, you're born, you live, you die." That's it. Brick wall. That's all there is. You probably know people like that as I do. It's like the avowed atheist who died and his family dressed him up in his finest beautiful suit shirt, beautiful tie, laid in the rest in the coffin and the gravestone red all dressed up for nowhere to go. That's how it was for him. If our perspective on human existence does not include the belief that we are destined for an eternal relationship with our maker, if we don't factor that in, then we exclude a huge segment of our spiritual potential as human beings, as Paul writes in the 19th verse of this incredible chapter, chapter 15, he says, "If our hope in Christ is good for this life only and no more, then we deserve more pity than anyone else in the world." That's what he believed. Friends of reality is this life, this life is not our final destination. As the old Negro spiritual says, "This world is not my home. I'm just a passing through." Our arrival to this earth is from eternity. Our arrival to this earth is from eternity. Listen to Jeremiah chapter 1 verse 5, God speaking to Jeremiah, "I chose you before I gave you life, and before you were born I selected you to be a prophet to the nation." Isn't that spectacular? To think that God is thinking about you and me and the meaning of our lives long before we're born. And of course, our departure from this earth is a return journey to eternity. As Paul says, "What will die must be changed into what cannot die." One of the plays I remember studying it at high school was Arthur Miller's death of a salesman, anybody else from my era do death of a salesman? Yeah, you're not from my era, Catherine, but no, well it's obviously been a very popular literary piece over the years. And of course, it's essentially the story of a salesman who just never finds any meaning to his life, he's a sad individual. And on one occasion, Arthur Miller was commenting on his character, this willy Lohman, this character he'd developed in death of the salesman, and he said this, he during his life, he was carving his name into a block of ice on a very hot day. Whereas he'd rather, he'd rather, he was writing it or carving it in stone. What a sad and poignant way of describing the life of someone who was racked with insecurity, stuffed with self-doubt, and struggled always with a feeling of futility in life. Writing his name, carving his name into a block of ice on a very hot day. Now you contrast that with the testimony of Paul in Romans chapter 14 verses 7 to 9, listen to this, listen to this in contrast, talk about meaning of life. We do not live for ourselves only, says Paul, and we do not die for ourselves only. If we live, it is for the Lord that we live, and if we die, it is for the Lord that we die. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For Christ died and rose to life in order to be the Lord of the living and of the dead. And then in Philippians chapter 1, he gets very personal and he sharpens the focus incredibly when in verses 20 to 24, this is Paul speaking, says to the Philippians, my deep desire and hope is that I shall never fail in my duty, but that at all times, and especially right now, I shall be full of courage, so that with my whole being I shall bring honor to Christ, whether I live or die, for what is life? To me it is Christ, death then will bring more. But if by continuing to live, I can do more worthwhile work that I'm not sure which I should choose. I'm Paul in two directions. I want very much to leave this life and be with Christ, which is a far better thing, but for your sake, it is much more important that I remain alive. Now, this is not a guy with suicidal tendencies, it is nothing to do with that, it is a guy who just had the meaning of life in perspective. He loved life, but he also knew where his ultimate destination was. The reality of eternity provides another rank of point, and it's in relation to the mystery of suffering, the mystery of suffering. I said in one of my hope, 103.2 spots this week that the dealing with questions about suffering is one of the toughest things I've faced in my ministry, I think most pastors would say the same thing, hardly a week goes by that you don't get people engaged with people on the issue of suffering, why does this happen Graham, what's going on, how can we pray for this and nothing is happening? You know, the Bible is pretty clear on this, I'm not suggesting it's simplistically clear, but it's pretty straightforward, I don't know why we allow ourselves to linger permanently in a state of bewilderment and confusion about these matters. I mean, Romans 8 says Paul says, "I consider that what we suffer at this present time, that is in this life, cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us." That is eternity. So he's contrasting this life and says, "You can't even compare it to what it's going to be like in the hereafter." And he was a man who was very familiar with suffering, you know, he talks about his thorn in the flesh, whatever that was, God said, "No, my grace is sufficient, you just bear it and you'll still be my man, you'll still bring glory to me, but you're going to have to cope with that affliction, that ailment." And of course then he was shipwrecked, then he was imprisoned and he was chased from one into the empire of the other, this man knew what suffering was all about. There are so many other scriptures we could bring to bear on this point, but for me the most compelling and in terms of the enlightenment it provides, the most helpful is Revelation chapter 21 verses one to five. This to me, I mean, this sums it up, I use these verses at funerals and we shouldn't just restrict them to funerals. But we should read these verses a lot when we're faced with the challenges and the struggles of unanswered prayer and just wondering where it's all, what's happening as it is, the whole mystery of suffering. Here's the writer, here's John and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he's putting together an amazing literary portrait of eternity. That's, anyway, can describe this. It's a literary portrait, it's a virtual masterpiece in terms of the style and the kind of language that he uses. It's absolutely spectacular. Listen to this, he says, "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The first heaven and the first earth disappeared, the sea vanished. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God prepared and ready like a bride dressed to meet her husband." I heard a loud voice speaking from the throne, "Now God's home is with people. He will live with them and they will be His people. God Himself will be with them and He will be their God. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes." There'll be no more death, no more grief, no more crying, no more pain. The old things have disappeared, then the one who sits on the throne said, "And now I make all things new." Now, friends, the only way, the only way you can interpret that passage is to see the fact that if there's to be no more suffering in eternity, then that's obviously being contrasted with the way it's going to be here and now. Like it's the only, it's one of those before and after scenarios. Eternity's going to be in sharp contrast to now, there'll be no more suffering there, but the inference very clearly is, don't be surprised that there'll be suffering here and now. It's like those ads for bathroom cleaning agents, you know, first seen, you know, all the scum and the blackness of the shower and mixed them, you know, sparkles everywhere and all clean. I've never found it even to work quite like that, actually, you know, it's a great image in it, you know, you go out and you buy the stuff, but it's not quite as easy as that. Well the promise of eternity helps us to make sense of suffering because it really means that the ultimate healing is death. You know, that's a big one to get our heads around, but the ultimate healing is death. It's hard on the relatives. It's hard on the loved ones, but that's the ultimate healing, our transition from this world to the new world in which there is no more suffering, no more pain, no more disability. Well, I don't know, the scriptures are pretty clear on that, here's another anchor point. The reality of eternity gives us a strong point of referral when confronted by the pain of injustice, and there are many other words I could have used in place of pain, the pain of injustice. The Bible says it is appointed for us once to die and after this, the judgment, that's Hebrews 9, 27. There is a day of reckoning coming when everyone will be asked to give an account of what they have done or not done in this life. Now for the Christian, that poses no fear because for the Christian, our salvation will involve Jesus Christ standing beside us and declaring us innocent in front of the Father. That's the promise of our salvation. But it is of enormous comfort to me and I'm sure to you to know that evil and injustice will not always go without punishment. Evil and injustice will not always go without punishment. There's coming a day when dictators and despots and terrorists and people smugglers and those who deal in human trafficking will all be brought to account. It doesn't absolve us from our responsibility in trying to curb and overcome these problems in the best way we can. But it does mean, it does mean that one day those who do these awful things will be brought to account. That's God's plan. Using very graphic, some would say very symbolic language, Revelation 20 talks about the books being opened. The books being opened. It talks about eternal punishments being metered out. It's pretty graphic. Those in Christ need not fear. In that sense, eternity is an anchor point. It's a strong anchor point. Just as it is when we're contemplating the threat of death. When a society is as obsessed as ours is about the here and now, it's all now. Go, go, go, right here, right now, don't worry about tomorrow, just now. When that's the case, death is a topic nobody wants to really talk about with any kind of seriousness until, of course, their face with their own. If there's one area of my work that has deepened my face immeasurably, it would be this particular area where I have seen over the years, scores of people in my various congregations, including this one, scores of people face the inevitability of their own death with a terminal illness or whatever with incredible courage and confidence. It's been nothing short of inspirational. When you see it, and I've seen it many times over the years, particularly as some of you know in my last congregation, I don't know why we've had minimal number of deaths in this congregation, but my last church, which was a much bigger church, so I guess the chances of something happening were greater, but we had so many people die, young people, teenagers, children, and I've seen the way families with their faith in Christ handled this, or because of their certainty about their destination. In one of the closing conversations I had with my own father, my dad had been sick for many years with the chronic heart disease in the last six months of his life. It was very, very clear that he was losing his health very fast. And on one of my trips to Melbourne, I said to my dad, he was a great man of faith, just to give him the opportunity to take the conversation to where he wanted to take it. This is not a bad question to ask if you are looking for a question in a difficult situation where you allow the person to take it as high or as low as they want to. I asked my dad, what sort of thoughts go through your mind at a time like this? It's a question I ask a lot of people in suffering. It's a very open-ended question, and they can either answer it superficially, or they can answer it in a very deep way. It's much less confronting than to ask, you know, what's it like to prepare for your death? You know, that's pretty confronting. Whereas, what sort of thoughts go through your mind at a time like this? And my dad said, well, I've got no fear about dying. And he said that with quite a little smile on his face, but he said, I'm going to really miss you guys. I'm going to really miss you guys. See, my dad believed as followers of Jesus do believe. As Paul believed, the death is destroyed, victory is complete, where death is your victory, where death is your power to hurt. So we had eternity on the bridge in 2000, and we got a lot of publicity worldwide for that particular word. And it was given a rather shallow and superficial meaning that night, sort of the night, you know, going on forever. Well, if only we could have had more publicity about the significance of the word for the man who used to originally write it, wouldn't that have been terrific, Arthur Stace, the man who literally was brought from darkness into light, the man who was so anchored in his belief about eternity, that he saw it as his own personal mission to confront people with the prospect of their own eternity on a daily basis. That was his whole mission. And they say that who knows how many people came to Christ as a result of being confronted with that and who knows how God led them to think about it and whatever. I never had the privilege of meeting Arthur Stace, but I'll bet that if we talked in the conversation it would come around, why are you so passionate about eternity? And he'd probably have answers like because it provides the key to the meaning of life. It unlocks the mystery of suffering. It provides a little bit of peace in the face of injustice, and it certainly is what you need in light of the threat of death. Friends, the question is, are you ready for your eternity? Are you ready for your ultimate destination? If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, you can be, you need to be. He wants you to be. I speak to a lot of Christians who go, "Ooh, I hope I make it." I'm not really sure last week was a really bad week. Look, it's got nothing to do with daily performance. It's to do with your standing as an heir, as a child of God, celebrate your eternal certainty this day. And bear in mind those known to you who don't have a certain eternity and pray into those situations and see if God may in fact use you to help people you know get some clarity and some reassurance in the areas we've listed this morning. Let's join in prayer, shall we?