A Glimpse of Eternity

Welly, spit it. Just touch her as you have been

doing through the preparation, and just help her release Lord,

oh when you want us to be touched today in

the name of Jesus, we praise Amen, Thank.

You, Good morning. So we have a new theme this month,

from here to eternity, and the title of this morning's

message is a Glimpse of Eternity. There's a good quote

on the wall where I work which says, we often

hear life is short, make the most of it, but

we often forget eternity is long. Prepare for it. So

let's turn to our first scripture today, Ecclesiasts three, verse eleven.

That's Ecclesiasts three, verse eleven. He has set eternity in

the human heart. God has set eternity in the human heart.

It's something intrinsic to each one of us, whether we

know it or not, whether we recognize its source or not.

It's easy to see it in the world, for example,

with cryonics, the deep freezing of the bodies of people

who have just died in the hope that scientific advances

may allow them to be revived at some point in

the future. It's arguably about a desire to live forever.

But it's an example of the world trying to figure

it out without God. That's inherently futile. Since it's God

who put eternity into man's heart, because he designed us

to live forever with him. It's worth remembering that it

was only from the Tree of Knowledge, of the knowledge

of good and evil, that Adam and Eve were instructed

not to eat, as recorded in Genesis two seventeen. We

were supposed to be able to eat freely from the

Tree of Life, as as any other tree in the

garden of Eden. It's only because Adam and Eve sinned

that God sent them out of the garden, so that,

as it says in Genesis three twenty two, they would

not eat from the Tree of Life as well and

live forever in a fallen, sinful state. But we were

designed to live forever. God has set eternity in the heart,

in the human heart. There's a great book which was

first published in two thousand and eight from which I

got the title of this message, A Glimpse of Eternity.

It's the true story of a guy from New Zealand

called Ian McCormack. He was dead for fifteen to twenty

minutes and experienced both hell and Heaven. I know a

guy who knows Ian and can tell you that the

book has literally just been reprinted and we're taking delivery

of it anytime now at Canaan, your local friendly Christian

shop in Staines. But that's not the reason I'm mentioning it.

I promise you it's a slim book and very readable.

Though Ian was brought up a Christian, raised as an

Anglican and went to Sunday School and youth group, but

never really had a personal experience with God, he says

he didn't feel as though he knew him. In nineteen eighty,

aged twenty four, he left New Zealand for adventure to

travel the world with his surfboard. He started in Australia

before traveling through various countries in Asia and ending up

in Mauritius, which is where he learned to go night

diving in the sea. He says, at times I considered

myself an atheist and at other times a free thinker.

He'd been traveling for nearly two years when one evening

a friend invited him to go night diving. Ian was

stung by five box jellyfish. The box jellyfish is one

of the most venomous creatures in the world, and normally

a person dies within fifteen minutes of just one sting.

How he got to hospital still alive is part of

the miracle of his story, which I won't go into.

As he was dying, his life started flashing before him,

he says. I lay there wondering what would happen if

I'd died? Is there anything after I die? Where would

I go if I died? Then I saw a clear

vision of my mother. It was as though she was

speaking out those words she had spoken so long ago. Ian.

No matter how far from God you are, no matter

what you've done wrong, if you cry out to God

from your heart, he will hear you and forgive you.

Little did I know that my mother had been woken

in the early hours of the morning in New Zealand

at the same time as I was dying. God had

shown her my bloodshot eyes and said to her, your

eldest son, Ian is nearly dead. Pray for him now.

So she had been praying for me. At that very

moment that I lay dying in the ambulance, I wondered

what I should pray. I hadn't prayed for years. Then

I remembered that as a child, my mother taught us

the Lord's prayer, our Father who is in heaven, hallowed

be your name, and so on. I started to pray,

but I couldn't remember it. It was as though the

poison had rushed to my head and inhibited my thinking ability.

Then I remembered my mother saying that you don't pray

from your head, you pray from your heart. So I

asked God to help me to pray. Immediately, this prayer

came up from deep inside me, from my spirit. I

prayed forgive us our sins. Then I went on, God,

I ask you to forgive my sins, and so on.

I'm obviously just sharing excerpts from the story. He goes

on to say, I didn't understand it at the time,

but that my prayer for salvation not from my head

but from my heart. An incredible peace came over my heart.

It seemed as though fear fell off me. Ian got

to this dirty old World War II army hospital, paralysis

was setting in from the poison, and then he says,

all of a sudden, I sighed like a sigh of relief,

and I knew something had happened. I knew I'd gone somewhere.

It wasn't like closing your eyes and going to sleep,

And yet I didn't know I was dead. I seemed

to arrive in a huge, cavernous hall of pitch black darkness.

It was so dark that I couldn't see my hand

in front of my face, and it was bitterly cold.

He describes the sensation of having a body but not

being able to touch it. He was a spiritual being.

I began to sense evil encroaching on me in the darkness.

Ian describes it as a terrifying experience with no relationship

to time. He also tells how he found out that

he was in hell. I had no idea how to

get out of that place? How do you ever get

out of hell? But I had already prayed and asked

God to forgive me of my sins. I was weeping

now and cried out to God, Why am I here?

I have asked you for forgiveness, I've turned my heart

to you. Why am I here? Then a brilliant light

shone upon me and literally drew me out of the darkness.

As Ian looked up, he could see that he was

being drawn into a tunnel and that the source of

light was emanating from the end of the tunnel. He says,

it looked unspeakably bright, more brilliant than the sun, yet

you could look right into it. I was being pulled

through the air at an amazing speed towards the source

of the light. Successive waves of light then started towards him.

The first one gave amazing warmth and comfort and filled

him with a sense of love and acceptance. Another one

gave off total and complete peace. He says, I had

looked for peace of mind for many years and had

only found fleeting moments of it. I had read poetry

from Keats to Shakespeare. I had tried alcohol, I had

tried education. I had tried sport. I had tried relationships

with women. I had tried drugs. I tried everything I

could think of to find peace and contentment, and I

never found it. Now, from the top of my head

to the soles of my feet, I found myself totally

at peace. Ian also experienced being washed with pure, unconditional love.

He also saw Jesus. Directly behind Jesus was a circular

shaped opening. I could see a whole new world opening

up before me. I felt like I was standing on

the edge of paradise, having a glimpse of eternity, which

he then describes. Jesus gave Ian a choice about coming

to earth, and despite his initial reaction to stay because

it was just so awesome, he explains why he came back.

Before I go on, I think it's important to say

that I'm convinced that Ian's experience and this book are authentic, because,

in my opinion, there's nothing in Ian's experience which is unscriptural.

Although there are parts which are not included in scripture,

there's nothing that contradicts scripture. In fact, he says that

when he read the Bible, which he subsequently did in

six weeks, he says, everything I had seen in heaven

was described in that book. He also includes Bible references

at the back of the book, connecting his experience with

the Word of God. As Jesus says in Matthew seven,

verses seventeen to eighteen, you can know a tree by

its fruit, and Ian says that since that time in

nineteen eighty two, he's been following Jesus Christ as his

Lord and savior. So I'm not concerned about and quoting

from or recommending this book. The point of sharing all

of that was to give us a stark reminder of

the reality of heaven and hell and the choice that

we all have to make regarding our eternal destination. As

Jesus said in what is probably the most famous verse

in the Bible, John three p. Sixteen A's John three

point sixteen, for God so loved the world that he

gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in

him shall not perish or face everlasting destruction, as it

says in one translation, but have eternal life. For God

so loved the world that he gave his one and

only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish

or face everlasting destruction, but have eternal life. It's made

clear elsewhere in the Bible that this means more than

just believing that Jesus is the son of God. Even

the devil believes that, as is made clear for example

in Mark one twenty four, where an unclean spirit or

demons says to Jesus, I know who you are, the

Holy One of God. Whoever believes in Jesus shall not perish,

but have eternal life. What it means is to acknowledge

the price that Jesus, the sinless son of God, paid

for our sins when he died on the cross. Repent

of our sins and surrender our lives to him, our

risen savior. That's the most important decision we'll ever make.

If you've just made that decision, then I speak o

you the all powerful word of God, which says in

Ephesians three nineteen in the New Living Translation Ephesian three nineteen,

may you experience the love of Christ, though it is

too great to understand fully, Then you will be made

complete with all the fullness of life and power that

comes from God. In fact, that's something that we all

need to repeatedly experience afresh and ever more deeply, no

matter how long we've been walking with the Lord. So

I'll say that again over us all, may you, May

we experience the love of Christ, though it is too

great to understand fully, Then we will be made complete

with all the fullness of life and power that comes

from God. So what I've shared experience gives us a

foretaste of our eternal destination. But how do we prepare

for eternity? Let's start by thinking about what in this

life is of eternal value, What priority do we give

it in our lives. I'm sure we could take a

long time delving into that, but I'm going to keep

it simple and start with the obvious, which is the

scripture that Letty opened up with in Isaiah forty verse eight.

The grass with us, the flower fades, but the word

of our God will stand forever. Jesus said in Matthew

twenty four, verse thirty five. Heaven and earth will pass away,

but my words will never pass away. It's no great

surprise that this planet won't last forever, given the environmental

issues that we have, but we don't at least I

don't really think much about the fact that heaven will

pass away too. The apostle John was given amazing revelation

about the future as recorded in the last book of

the Bible, which is helpfully called Revelation. I'm just going

to touch on it here, as it's not something we

give much thought to due to the demands of life,

but it's important. The revelation is there as part of

the Word of God to prepare us so we know

the end of Revelation. Verse twenty talks about judgment Day,

which will come. Then in Revelation twenty one, verse one,

it says, then I saw a new heaven and a

new Earth. For the first heaven and the first earth

had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.

So both heaven and earth as they are now will

be replaced by a new heaven and a new earth.

But the Word of God will stand forever. Jesus' words

will never pass away. God's word has eternal value. So

what priority do we give that which has eternal value?

What priority do we give the word of God? Josh

gave a great word last week, including the value and

the practicalities of prioritizing the Word of God, but I

still felt that it was right to mention it here today.

I was reading the autobiography of Johnny Cash recently, and

I know it sounds like I've gone off on a

bunny trail, as Simon would say, but stay with me

for those who haven't heard of him. Johnny Cash was

a very successful American country and Western singer. Although I

can't actually name one of his songs. I read it

because I was I wanted a reasonably thick book to

take on holiday with me that I thought should be edifying.

As he did become a Christian What I found interested

me though, was what he said about his dissent into

alcohol and drug addiction. I found it interesting to help

my understanding about how it occurs as well as how

it affects the people around the person who's addicted. I

read about why he did it, as well as the

negative impact on his family, including his children. Then I

started to think, what would my life look like if

I was addicted to the Word of God, by which

I mean both the written word of God as well

as the real or spoken word of God. In the

New Testament, there are two different Greek words used to

identify words from God, logos and reema. I found this

simplified explanation of the difference between them helpful. Logos is

used to refer to the Bible or some portion of

the Bible. Logos can also be used to refer to Jesus.

For example, in John one fourteen, it says, so the

word became human and made his home among us. Logos

became human and made his home among us. The Greek

word reema simply means any spoken word. In the description

of the armor of God in Ephesian six seventeen, it says,

take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit,

which is the word of God. It actually says God's reama.

In other words, the spoken word of God is the

sword of the Spirit. When Jesus was tempted by Satan

in the wilderness, he counted each temptation by speaking a

reama word. In Matthew four, verse four, Jesus said, it

is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but

on every reama or every word spoken that comes from

the mouth of God. Jesus spoke the written word he

needed for the situation, so reama word can be the

written word of God logos, that is spoken. We need

the written word as our foundation, but we also need

the spoken word or raema for direction. We have the

written word to stand on, we have reema, the spoken word,

so we know what to do and where to go.

When the Holy Spirit speaks to you, he quickens a scripture,

verse or specific direction to you, a specific word for

a specific time and purpose. If you're reading the Bible,

it's like a verse or versus leap off the page

at you. That's the best way I know to describe it.

Many of you will know how much I enjoy watching tennis,

so being in the middle of Wimbledon Fortnite is a

happy time for me right now, and one that Simon

tolerates very graciously. I was watching a match the other

day where things weren't going well for one player and

their coaching team was heard saying something to her about

her serf. The commentator said something along the lines that

it's not about overloading a player in the middle of

match with what they need to change, but just giving

them one thing to focus on that will help as

well as to help to distract them from the disappointment

of how things are going. It made me think how

one verse from Scripture can help us to do just that.

Sometimes that's as much as we can handle us a

particular at a particular time. God may give us a

verse or a thought directly, or he may give it

to us through someone else. It doesn't matter. But what

matters is if we focus on that when we're dealing

with a lot of things which aren't go well going well,

it can help distract us from the disappointment or deal

with the emotional challenges and keep us calm so we

can deal more effectively with the next step, whatever that is.

So with all that in mind, what would my life

look like. If I was addicted to the word of God,

both his written word the Bible as well as the

reama all spoken word of God, how would that dependency

shape who I am and my relationships? What would look different.

I'm not saying that I don't depend on God or

his word, but I don't know that I could describe

myself as addicted. This isn't about going on a guilt trip.

If we're not there. We're all on a journey and

need to be honest about where we are and start

from there. It may be helpful to consider the miracle

question that's used in solution focused therapy that I learned

about in my social work training. If everything was suddenly

okay tomorrow, for example, in a marriage or a relationship,

or whatever is the current difficulty, what's the first thing

that you would notice that would tell you that everything

had changed. Similarly, if I woke up tomorrow completely addicted

to the Word of God, what's the first thing I

would notice that would tell me that that was so.

What's the first difference that would take place in how

I think, what I do or say, or how I

prioritize my time that would tell me that now I

am addicted to the word of God, addicted to the

source of life itself. What's the first thing that Simon

would notice. The point of the question is to identify

one thing, just one thing, that we can start to

do differently with God's help, just to start somewhere. That's

a question and a challenge to us, all including me.

As Jesus said in Matthew four, verse four, it is written,

man shall not live on bread alone, but on every

reama or every word spoken that comes from the mouth

of God. The meaning of the Greek word live includes

to enjoy real life, to have true life. Jesus is

not denying our need for food to feed our bodies.

He said, man shall not live on bread alone, but

to have true life. To really live, we need the reama,

every word spoken by God. God's word is eternal and

will shape us. It will help us to prepare for

eternity in as much as we learn to submit to it.

So back to the question of preparing for eternity, What

in this life is of eternal value? What priority do

we give it in our lives? My second point is

God is eternal, of course, so knowing him, getting to

know him better is of eternal value. There are a

number of verses in the Bible that tell us that

God is eternal. Psalm ninety verse two in the Christian

Standard Bible that Psalm ninety verse two says, before the

mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth

and the world, from eternity to eternity, you are God.

I love that, so I'm going to read it again.

Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to

the earth and the world, from eternity to eternity, you

are God. For me, there's something calming about that truth,

something that anchors my innermost being to the one who

never changes. It brings an inner sense of security. Deuteronomy

thirty three, verse twenty seven says, the eternal God is

your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. This means

God is a really safe place for us, because He

is forever. When we submit our lives to Him and

his word, we live in him and He lives in us.

As it says in John fifteen, when you get to

know someone, you get to know that character. God is love,

as it says in one John four, verse eight, That's

a simple description of his character that will take more

than a lifetime to unpack. So I'm going to touch

on just one aspect of God's character, his faithfulness. Let's

read Hebrews ten twenty and I'm going to read it

from the Passion translation. That's Hebrews ten twenty three. So

now we must cling tightly to the hope that lives

within us, knowing that God always keeps his promises. Holding

on to hope is intentional. It's a decision that we

need to make continually. Sometimes. I went to Israel a

number of years ago, and I remember going up to Masada,

an ancient fortress on a high plateau, with some friends

to watch the sunrise. It was spectacular. Imagine though this

meant going up in the dark with our torches. It

was before sunrise, and at times it was a narrow

path with a steep drop next to us, and I

don't love heights. Where we had to walk in single file.

A friend very kindly let me hold his hand whilst

he went in front. I'm not sure how much blood

was left in his hand, but the time we got

to the top, I was holding on that tightly. If

I hold on that tightly to the hope that lives

within me, I would have no idea what it means

to doubt. We have a good reason to hold on

that tightly, to hope, knowing that God always keeps his promises.

That's his nature and his character. God, the one who

makes the promises, is eternal. His promises are his word,

which is eternal. Lamentations is not something I regularly dip into.

It's a book in the Old Testament that focuses on

suffering and loss and acknowledges the reality of pain, so

much so that in Lamentations three seventeen, the writer says,

I have forgotten happiness. Then in Lamentations three twenty one

to twenty three, in the amplified, he says, but this

I call to mind. Therefore I have hope. It is

because of the Lord's loving kindnesses that we are not consumed,

because his tender compassions never fail. They are new every morning.

Great and beyond measure is your faithfulness, Lamentations three twenty one.

But this I call to mind, Therefore I have hope.

But is a small but significant word that signifies a

one hundred and eighty degree shift in mental position. Who

does the calling to mind? I do. It's not something

that others can do for me. Although they might encourage me,

I still need to make the choice to do so.

We can always ask the Lord for help. He doesn't

expect us to do it in our own strength. What

do we call to mind when we feel overwhelmed with

life's challenges. It's important that we think about what we're

thinking about and create good habits. The writer of Lamentations

gives us a great example of what to call to mind,

what to think on that will give us hope Verses

twenty two to twenty three. It is because of the

Lord's loving kindnesses that we are not consumed, because his

tender compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great

and beyond measure is your faithfulness. The root cause of

the reason to hope is eternal. It's God's character, It's

his faithfulness. I'm going to close with this. Charles Spurgeon

was an English pastor and preacher in the nineteenth century

and a prolific writer. He was both loved and hated

for his ministry and struggled with fear and depression. But

through all the challenges, he said, I have learned to

kiss the wave that throws me against the rock of ages.

I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me

against the rock of Ages. Spurgeon learned to embrace the

challenges that caused him to lean into the eternal One,

the solid rock. I think it's something that needs to

be learned because it's not instinctive, but it's a lesson

that's worth learning. The more we learn to do that,

the more we will become unshakable, regardless of our circumstances,

because the Rock of Ages, our God, the eternal One,

never changes. Let's pray, Father, God, thank you so much

that you are eternal and your word is eternal. Thank

you that you are faithful, and because of your faithfulness

we have hope. Help us to learn to call to

mind your promises, your love and faithfulness, whether we're facing

challenges or not. Because you are eternal and this is

what will remain when everything else has passed. We ask

it in Jesus' mighty name, knowing that you've heard us,

and we thank you for it. Amen, thank you, thank you.

Jas