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"Experience Everlasting Life"
April 4, 2004
The Rev. Dr. John Ward
I would like for us to look at our New Testament passages this morning, and I'd like for you to turn specifically to page 106 in the New Testament section of the Bibles, because as we read John's account of the triumphal entry, we'll also read our Old Testament passage as well--Psalm 118, verses 25 through 26, and Zechariah 9:9, because those passages are folded right into what the people are saying as Jesus rides into Jerusalem. Page 106 in your pew Bibles. This is John chapter 12, starting at verse 12, and reading through verse 19.
The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord-- the King of Israel!" Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written: "Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt!" His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him. So the crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to testify. It was also because they heard that he had performed this sign that the crowd went to meet him. The Pharisees then said to one another, "You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him!"
This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God!
Let me give you our second passage from the New Testament, as well. I'd like for you to turn to the book of Revelation, and to the opening of it, which you will find on page 245 in the pew Bibles. This is our second New Testament reading. We jumped ahead a bit. What is our hope, and actually, our faith, and our assurance? As we look at Revelation chapter 1, I'm going to start at verse 9. John received the vision, which he is to write down, and that becomes for us, then, the book of Revelation, reminding us of the triumphant Christ who comes to receive us to the Father once and for all.
I, John, your brother who share with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, "Write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea." Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven gold lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest. His head and his hair were white as wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, "Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades. . ."
This final vision of the triumphant Christ, the Lamb who was sacrificed and came alive, is one we like to keep in mind even as we celebrate the triumphal entry. We have a tendency to want to repeat Holy Week, but really, you can't repeat it because we live on this side of the cross. We can remember it, but we can't repeat it, because we know things that the crowd who followed Jesus at the triumphal entry didn't know. And, in fact, in John's gospel, it says that they did not understand what this all meant until Jesus had been glorified. And we understand the glorification of Jesus as it is prophesied in the book of Revelation, but as well, as He glorified Himself in the resurrection, as he was resurrected from the dead on Easter Sunday, which we will celebrate and remember in just a week.
It was a wonderful parade that was occurring at the triumphal entry. People were following Jesus. They were getting excited about it. They were shouting out, "Hosanna!" "Hosanna" out of Psalms means literally, "save us," or "save, please." And this was a reference to Jesus being something more than just a great teacher. But what was this Person about? People were trying to figure that out. Many of these, as John attests in the triumphal entry, were those who saw Lazarus raised from the dead, so they were following after Jesus, really, to see what He was going to do next. There were those who hoped that He would be, indeed, a religious leader for Israel, like King David--the branch of the root of Jesse returned once again.
Jesus came to be more than just that. If anyone really had a clue, they would have looked back once again on Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9, to see that Jesus chose, instead of riding into Jerusalem on a horse (which would have been a symbol of military power; and indeed, His claiming to be the new king to overthrow Rome)--instead, He came in a prophetic role, and in a humble role as One who was coming in on a donkey. And even the Pharisees themselves were wondering what this was all about--because, remember, they were hoping that Jesus would not be one to create such a stir. They were afraid of what Rome might do with another zealous person.
And so Jesus coming in, for many people, had many hopes, but not really an understanding of what was going to happen next. Even the disciples did not understand. They had high hopes. Some had hopes that He would do some more miracles, like the raising of Lazarus. Pretty exciting, wouldn't you think? Some had high hopes, again, that He would be the political ruler for Israel and finally allow Israel to get out from underneath the grip and the foot of Rome. The Pharisees themselves had hopes as well that this wouldn't be such a big deal, and that this prophet would soon lose His followers and go away.
You know, we all have hopes, don't we? What is the difference between "hope" and "faith"? I had to look that up, actually, in the dictionary. I had to grab two sources. I wanted to grab the Bible and I wanted to grab the dictionary. And I looked up "hope" in the dictionary. I looked it up in Webster's Dictionary, and this is what it says: "Hope is a desire for some good . . ." Let me repeat that: "It's a desire for some good accompanied with at least a slight expectation of attaining it." Plenty of people had high hopes that day for Jesus, but they had no assurance--nothing to assure them as to what was going to happen next. They really didn't even know what was going to happen next.
And then, I'd like to remind us of the definition of "faith." And for that, I go right to Scripture itself, to Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things yet to be seen." There is a large difference between hope and faith. Faith has assurance, and hope does not. Now, hope is important to every one of us, friends, in life. Hope keeps us alive. Way back when Elizabeth Kubler Ross first began to do her work on grief and loss, one of the things that she realized was that if a person no longer had hope, that person no longer had life. As she began to deal with people who were dying, the one thing that she saw was that as soon as hope began to leave them, she could see it physically in their bodies, and it wouldn't be much longer until they passed away.
And so, hope is important to us. Hope cries out, "There must be a way." But then faith comes in and says this--where hope says, "There must be a way," faith says, "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life." Where hope says, "I hope something's going to happen," faith says, "That has been promised to me and I will stake my life on it, that it is true, and I have assurance."
Now, I'd like to remind you of the fact that we are not just hopeful people in this life--that we are faithful people. And the difference is in the cross and in the resurrection. As we have been impacted by the movie The Passion of the Christ, one of the things that's important for us is to understand what is the premise. The premise for the movie, of course, was for Mel Gibson--in his own way and because he could afford to do so and was talented enough to do so--to put together his own understanding of the passion of the Christ. And that "passion" literally means "suffering." And so he chose to focus on that suffering time of Jesus Christ, which is, I think, good for us, especially for us Protestants. I don't think the Protestant Church has enough of an understanding of what Jesus went through. I think Catholics and even some Lutherans are raised on that, but Presbyterians and other Protestants have an opportunity to jump to the empty cross before they see the cross filled with the passion of Christ. And so it's been good for us, for those who have been able to see the movie, to see exactly what Christ went through for us.
Now, a lot of us came out of the movie saying we barely saw anything about the resurrection. Now, the reason for that, of course, is because that wasn't Mel Gibson's focus. His focus was on what Jesus did in terms of His suffering. But even he couldn't leave out the resurrection, and he put about thirty seconds in right at the end. Without blowing the whole story for you (because I think you know what happens in the end!) there's a period of silence after the crucifixion, and you almost think, "Well, this must be the end of the movie." It's a period of maybe only a few seconds, but it seems like a very long time because movies never leave you without some kind of movement very quickly. So just as I was thinking, "Maybe it's time for me to get up," all of a sudden there is a scene of the resurrection, and Jesus is coming out of the tomb. And in an interview, Mel Gibson said this: The reason he put the resurrection in is because without the resurrection, there is no faith.
And I was so struck by what he said. He said, "Without the resurrection, there is no faith." He didn't say, "Without the resurrection, there is no hope." And I don't know if he knows the difference between "hope" and "faith" in terms of having to look it up in the dictionary as I did today, but I was struck by that reality. That is a major difference for us, friends. Once again, we have the faith--not just the hope, but hope that has said its prayers. Hope that has moved beyond "a way" to "the Way." Hope that has the assurance that Jesus is the risen Lord and will come back again for all of us, and receive every believer to Himself, not only those of us who are here now, but many of those who have gone on before us--to many that we have said, "Good-bye."
And I think there is a very pastoral message in that for us today, the reality that we can, with assurance, believe that we will be united with those who have left us recently. "Good-bye" is something that's hard for us to do. It's not easy. And sometimes we wonder what happens to our relatives and our friends. Will we be reunited with them again? How do we cope when we try to say good-bye to someone we love? How do we deal with these final good-byes? The good news is that we do not just cope by hope. We cope by faith and assurance. We have confidence because Jesus proved to be who He said He was, and that gives us more than just hope itself.
Some people cope by thinking, "Well, perhaps we'll see them again in this life." I'm amazed at how many people in America hope in things like returning to this life--"reincarnation" is what it's called in Eastern circles. I'm surprised that Christians believe it, but I have continued to find that some Christians believe it because they haven't yet received the full assurance of Jesus Christ's lordship. And even though they believe in Jesus, they wonder whether or not we come back to this earth.
It reminds me of a story--and I shared this, in fact, last Sunday with our Women Together ministry as I shared the worship service with them last weekend. I thought I'd run this by them and see what they thought about it. Here is a story of a woman who didn't quite understand what was being offered to her by two young men who, at the same time, probably didn't understand how to proceed correctly. This is about two ministerial students from Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Some years ago they were doing summer evangelistic work in a rural area near Montgomery. One hot day they stopped their car in front of a farm house and proceeded up the path through a gauntlet of screaming children and barking dogs. When they knocked on the screen door, the woman of the house stopped scrubbing over a washtub. She brushed back her hair and wiped the perspiration from her brow after working so hard, and she asked the two young men what they wanted. One student answered, "We would like to tell you how to obtain eternal life." The tired homemaker hesitated for a moment and then replied, "No, thanks. I don't think I could handle it."
She was being offered eternal life beyond this life. She didn't want anything of what she was receiving now for eternity--and that is what the doctrine of reincarnation offers, the opportunity, if you'd like, to come back again. If you study Eastern religions, and especially what's called "rebirth," or "reincarnation," that is completely dependent upon your own works. If you've done well enough in this life, you'll come back once again as a human--perhaps one that is more successful. In the Indian caste system, you get to move up a caste. It's a justification for that system. Again, that's all dependent upon what you do. If you don't do well, then you'll come back as a lesser being, perhaps a lesser caste, and if you continue not to do perfectly, then you will come back as a different animal. You can repeat this process, as I've studied it, all the way down from being an animal, to certain types of animal, to a bush, and to a rock. Now, I don't know about you, but I could not keep up in good works enough to even be the human being I am today. And so I'm very thankful that when the offer of eternal life comes to us, it is something well beyond this life. It is release from this life. For those who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, this is the closest we will ever get to hell. It's important for us to have the assurance that when we say "good-bye" to this world, we have a place to go. And that gives us hope and assurance for those to whom we say "good-bye."
I would like for us, as we approach this week of Holy Week, and as we approach the sufferings of Jesus Christ, as we approach His triumphal entry, as we think about what He did for us on the cross on Friday, as we, with assurance, approach Sunday morning, I would like us to understand that wonderful vision that John gave to all of us, because Jesus wants us to understand that He is the risen Lord and He is the victor, and He holds the keys of death and of hades. When you and I face the end of our lives, we have more than a hope. We don't have "a way." We have "the Way." When we face the end of those we care about and their lives--the ones that we have lost recently--we face that end as well, with assurance.
It's important for us to understand this. I would like to read from Philippians chapter 3, verse 20: "But our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ." I would like for our perspective to be one that is eternal and begins at the empty cross, the resurrection, and I want us to be thinking about the end itself as we face this week. It's important for us to see life a little differently. Perhaps you faced some great disappointments in your life. Perhaps you were hoping for things to turn out a little differently than they have lately. Perhaps the reason for you disappointment is that you expected things from this perspective, from an earthly perspective. But I would advise you to think about life from an eternal perspective, from the fact that you're not a citizen of this planet. You are a citizen of heaven. Basically, friends, you and I are expatriates. We're here for a time. And we're here to do the Kingdom business of God here and now on this planet, to bring grace from heaven, to bring forgiveness, to bring hope that has a purpose, which is called "assurance" and "faith." And I think some of those disappointments will begin to fade away--perhaps even the disappointments of saying "good-bye," for those are hard to do.
We have been blessed by having this Lenten Devotional that began for us on Ash Wednesday, with every day a devotional written by our own members here. This was put together by our Small Group Resource Team. What we did was asked people in small groups, representatives of the many small groups we have here at Faith Church, to write out a devotional based on a particular passage. And it has been wonderful to read these and wonderful as a leader in the church to see how the faith is developing with regard to discipleship, and I have been so blessed.
One of my favorites is the one that was written on Monday, March 22. Now, I have permission to mention Marcy Smetana's name. I try my best to make sure that I don't embarrass you without your permission. And so I was so blessed by Marcy's devotional because it's a perfect example of a person who is an expatriate, who understands with assurance what she believes about the future, and especially as it has to do with saying "good-bye" to those who leave us today. This is her devotional. Again, it was on Monday, March 22nd. It's based on John 11:26, "Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die." And here's what Marcy wrote:
We don't like to say good-bye to those whom we love, whether it be at school or at a cemetery. Separation is tough. It is right for us to weep, but there is no need for despair. They had pain here. They have no pain there. You and I might wonder why God took them home, but they don't. They understand. They are at this very moment at peace in the presence of God. When it is cold on earth, we can take comfort in knowing that our loved ones are in the warm arms of God. And when Christ comes, we will hold them.
And her prayer is this: "Dear God, we can find peace even in our sorrow and pain knowing that you, Eternal God, are our refuge, upholding us with your everlasting arms. Amen."
Thank you, Marcy, for writing that. And thank God for the fact that those of us in life, and especially ones like Marcy who have been around this planet for a while and have seen life at its good and its bad, can be an expatriate, can be a disciple, can be a witness for us of what it means to live life from heaven on down to the Kingdom, and to see in that way. That gives us assurance to experience everlasting life. And everlasting life is something that can be experienced right now. It's not something we wait for. As we receive from the Holy Spirit the assurance that God is with us and for us in Jesus Christ, that indeed He is Lord and Savior, risen Lord and King who will return. When we have that assurance, the new life in Christ begins. Our eternal life begins even before we die on this planet.
Once again, to have the assurance of what faith is: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." In Romans chapter 10, verse 9, it says this: "If we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, we shall be saved." The Bible says it. We believe it. And that settles it.
And if you've been looking for assurance in your own life, for assurance in the ones that you've left behind because the Lord has taken them and you have wondered--friends, assurance is the reality of believing in what God says for you and for me. Your experience of eternal life begins today. As you keep an eternal perspective, it will change how you see things in this life. It will change how you act in this life. And it will be a gift for you to be able to hope and cope, and have faith, because there is a way, and He is that Way.
Let us pray together. Heavenly Lord, I think of those followers of Jesus who, on that day, walked with Him for the first triumphal entry, the original one. And all the clamor that was going on around Him. And some were remembering the passages of Scripture that put Jesus as something very important, perhaps a new prophet, or perhaps a new ruler. But again, Lord God, He was not just a way. He was the Way. He was the King. And He is the King. Lord, as those people had high hopes for what Jesus could be, perhaps we have high hopes as well. But, Lord, let us understand instead to have faith--assurance of the things we may hope for. To understand that Jesus may even be much more than we've ever thought Him to be--the full Power of this universe, who promises to be with us in the Holy Spirit, to comfort us when we need it, to be the place where we lift our families and friends up who have left this world, and who will receive us when we leave this world as well. Lord, help us to have a perspective from heaven. Help us to have an expatriate understanding of this faith. In Christ's name we pray. And all God's people said, "Amen."
The Rev. Dr. John Ward Associate Pastor for Discipleship Faith Presbyterian Church Minnetonka, Minnesota
[Transcribed from an audiotape of the 9:00 a.m. worship service on April 4, 2004.] |
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