|
Sermon
by Dr. Jeffrey Jeremiah “Where
Will You Spend Eternity?”
One
of the privileges of being a pastor is conducting the funeral or
memorial service of a believer in Jesus Christ.
I don’t always say it in the service for a Christian, but the
words of Psalm 115:16 are always on my mind: “Precious in the sight
of the Lord is the death of His saints.”
How can death be “precious”?
It’s precious because that believer, that saint has left this
earth and has gone to be with the Lord in glory!
Those services are a great opportunity to share the hope, the
future that is found only in Jesus Christ!
Having said that, one of the hardest things about being a
pastor is doing the service of someone who gave no evidence that Jesus
was their personal Savior and Lord.
About that person there is no encouragement, no hope I can
offer. Our
passage today addresses eternity and where you will spend it. When life is over on this earth, God will give to everyone
either eternal life or eternal wrath and punishment.
Simply put, heaven or hell awaits you when you die.
And both will last forever.
Please don’t miss this.
What could be more important or more relevant or more urgent
than your happiness or misery for all eternity?
Children, this is very important for you.
Someday you are going to die.
I hope it will be when you are very old and have lived many
years. But you might be
much younger when you die. And
when you die, you will either enter eternal life with God or go away
under His eternal anger and misery forever.
You don’t have to be afraid about this!
God has given His Son Jesus to die for sinners so that everyone
who trusts in Him will not go to hell, but have eternal life (John
3:16). One of the hardest
deaths I was a part of was the death of a five-year-old girl.
But I’ve never forgotten what she said to me in the last week
of her life: “I love Jesus and I want to go to heaven and be with
Him.” Megan was not
afraid to die. Junior and
senior highers: so much of your life right now is about promise and
preparation. The promise
of your future and all you’re doing to prepare for it: in academics,
in vocation, in relationships. What
often gets crowded out is spiritual preparation.
Don’t assume you’ll live a long time and be able to deal
with heaven and hell when you’re old.
Every day there’s news of young people dying suddenly and
unexpectedly. For the rest of us: Your life here is preparation,
preparation for eternity. One
definition of a fool is that he’s someone who doesn’t prepare for
what he knows is coming. You’re
wise to prepare for what you know is coming when your life here on
earth is done. Our
passage says there are two roads you can follow into eternity.
One
is the road of the person who does good.
Verses seven and ten say, “To those who by persistence in
doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, He (God) will give
eternal life…There will be glory, honor and peace for everyone who
does good; first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.”
God gives to those who do good the eternal life that is glory,
honor, and peace. That’s
our text’s description of heaven.
Elsewhere we know that heaven is the place where “We will be
with the Lord forever” (I Thessalonians 4:17), where “There will
be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4).
It’s the place where “You will receive the crown of glory
that will never fade away” (I Peter 5:4).
That’s the road of the person who does good.
The
second road, the road of the person who does what is evil, is
addressed in verses eight and nine: “For those who are self-seeking
and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and
anger. There will be
trouble and distress for every human being who does evil; first for
the Jew, then for the Gentile.”
The road to hell is simply defined as the spirit of hatred, of
antagonism against God and His Son.
The unsaved person is by nature selfish, selfishly ambitious,
and his hostility against God leads him to reject God and His truth
and follow evil. On such
people God will pour out His wrath and anger.
Those who reject Him will experience “trouble and distress,”
words used frequently in the Bible to describe the suffering of the
wicked in the life to come (Isaiah 8:22; Zephaniah 1:15, 17).
Other descriptions of hell include II Thessalonians 1:9: “They
will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the
presence of the Lord.” Jesus
spoke of those “who are cursed,” who will be cast “into the
eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).
Many people find this section of Romans extremely difficult for a couple of reasons. First, it unambiguously states that there is only one of two roads into eternity, and one of them is not nice. Second, this passage is hard because it seems to be saying that where you spend eternity is based on your works, what you do. If you do good works, you will be saved. If you do evil works, you will be lost and damned. Romans 2 isn’t the only place we read this. Paul wrote in II Corinthians 5:10: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” Even Jesus said, “For the Son of Man is going to come in His Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done” (Matthew 16:27; also John 5:28-29; Revelation 20:12-13). Question:
Does this mean that you are saved by your works?
That where you spend eternity is based on what you do?
As you look across the whole spectrum of God’s truth, you
know our passage is not saying this. God has never promised eternal life on the basis of
our good works. No one is
saved other than by the work of Jesus Christ and by faith in Him. As Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For it is by grace you have been
saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift
of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Eternal life is always based on Jesus Christ and through our
faith. But if salvation
is wholly by faith, then how do works enter the picture?
And it’s obvious they are important.
Paul answers that question as he continues his great statement
in Ephesians 2 with these words: “For we are God’s workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in
advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).
The tie between saving faith and works is this: the person
whose life is saved by faith gives evidence of that salvation by doing
God’s work, by obeying Him, by doing good. Outward, visible God-honoring acts are the evidence, the
proof of inward, saving faith. Here’s
an important point: the gospel does not come into your life, save you,
and then leave you under the power of selfishness, under the control
of sin. The good news of
God is not weak, it’s not feeble.
It’s power, “the power of God for the salvation of everyone
who believes.” By that
power there will be a way of life that God can put on display to
demonstrate to the world that your faith if real, that you are on the
road to eternal life. Another
way to put it is that God gives eternal life to those who do good not
because what they do earns them salvation and eternal life, but
because saving faith always changes lives in the power of God so that
true believers will always pursue, always persevere in doing good. I
have three conclusions today. One,
in light of the fact that the short years of life here are preparation
for a life that will last forever, do you really believe that those
without Christ will spend eternity in the torment, tribulation, and
distress that is hell? It’s
charged that if Bible-believing Christians really believed what God’s
Word says about hell, we’d never hesitate to share with unbelievers
the good news of Jesus Christ. Do
you really believe in hell? Two,
if you claim to be a Christian, do your life, your words and actions
give convincing proof to other people that you’re a believer in
Jesus Christ? That the
power of God that saves is alive and active and working in your life?
Are you actively involved in doing good in your home, your
school, your church, your community? Three, at this Table, we celebrate and rejoice in the
salvation that is ours in our Savior and Lord.
We celebrate the future that awaits us in eternity – no pain,
no tears, no suffering; just joy and peace and love and glory! And we come to this Table to receive a specific ministry of
the Spirit of Jesus Christ: a ministry that touches and transforms and
encourages our inner being. That
from “in here” will flow a life (words and actions, deeds and
works) that prove and declare to the world there is a God who saves,
saves in His Son Jesus, our Savior and Lord! |