"TIME AND ETERNITY"
New Year's Eve (Eve of the Name of Jesus)
December 31, 2016
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner, but My salvation will be forever, and My righteousness will never be dismayed.
Isaiah 51:6 (ESV)
When I first came here to Bethel about twenty and a half years ago, I drove up to Buffalo to attend an orientation meeting for pastors who were new to the Eastern District. In one of our sessions during that day-and-a-half long meeting our district president at the time, Dr. David Belasic, tried to impress upon us the fact that we as pastors don't own the congregations that we serve. He put it to us very bluntly: "Your congregation was there long before you showed up," he told us, "and it will still be there long after you're gone. You are really just one small and relatively insignificant ingredient when you consider the entire history of that congregation." Those words still strike me as being very profound and also applicable to all of us as we consider the minimal impact that we are likely to have on the whole of human history.
Isaiah the prophet takes this idea a big step further in the sermon text for this evening when he contrasts the temporal with the eternal--the material with the spiritual. He speaks of the temporal as being something that will ultimately be destroyed, while he speaks of the eternal as something that will endure. It's strange, isn't it? The things that we can see will not last forever. The day will come when they won't exist anymore. And yet the things that we cannot see are everlasting and will be here long after everything else (including us) is gone and forgotten. In the secular world New Year's Eve is a celebration of the marking of time, but perhaps we as Christians ought to use this occasion to center our thoughts on what is not bound by time. Listening to what the Lord says through Isaiah, let's compare time and eternity, considering the relative importance of each.
What is temporal is everything that is confined by time. For one thing, the earth is temporal. I know that may be hard to believe. We place so much importance on the earth that, if you didn't know better, you'd think that it was going to be around forever. Obviously most of us don't really look at the earth as being temporal. We might perhaps look at the homes that we live in as being temporary (especially if we've moved a number of times during our lives). Most of us, however, think that the earth is more permanent. But is it in fact? It may last longer than our man-made homes, but it too will pass away. There will come a time when it won't matter in the least, no matter how important it may seem to be right now. In our more philosophical moments we might gaze upon the heavens and be overwhelmed by the vastness of it all and by our smallness by comparison. At such times we get the same message that Doctor Belasic was trying to impress on us pastors at that orientation meeting, that message being that we shouldn't exaggerate our own importance. Certainly the earth and its inhabitants are a minute portion of "the big picture" when we consider the whole universe. But the reality that God confronts us with in Isaiah's words is that even what we call "the heavens" is limited and temporary. All of those magnificent celestial bodies that you see when you look up into the sky are finite. Their size and age and distance from us may be so great as to astound us, but those characteristics are nevertheless determined, and the time will come when they will no longer exist. If we want to look for something infinite and eternal, we have to look far beyond anything that can be seen with the human eye and understood with human faculties.
What about our own life in this world? It's been said that the difference between us and the animals is that we know that we're going to die, but how many of us really appreciate the fact that we're not going to live forever in our present state? Not many, I'm afraid, because if we did, I doubt that we would be making all of those grand and glorious plans that we make with such certainty. We too are finite. The day will come when we will die. And before that day comes, many other things will happen in our lives that will "throw us for a loop," so to speak, and force us to change our best-laid plans. We need to remember that even life as we know it falls into the category of things that Isaiah describes as eventually coming to an end.
What is really eternal is the salvation and righteousness that God has given to lost sinners in His Son Jesus Christ. We, the unrighteous, have been declared righteous in the sight of God because of the perfect righteousness of Christ, who was righteous in our place and who also in our place suffered the consequences of our unrighteousness. This is something that cannot be seen with the eye or understood with the mind; it can be grasped only through faith--something that lies not in the heart of man but in the Holy Spirit of God. It is He who teaches us the infinite and eternal grace of God, revealed in the Son of God who made Himself finite for a time to bring us this salvation. This Spirit bends to our limitations by bringing us this salvation in things that we can experience: the Word of God, spoken and written in countless languages; Baptism, in which simple words and water and the simple act of washing bring the grace of God to us; the Lord's Supper, in which He uses simple bread and wine and the simple acts of eating and drinking to feed us with the true body and blood of our Savior for the strengthening of our faith.
This salvation of God is not temporary or limited in the least. He doesn't merely forgive us once and then leave us to our own devices to do better in the future. He doesn't forgive us just twice or three times (or as the apostle Peter put it, "seven times") until His patience with us reaches its limit. He doesn't even stop at the proverbial "seventy times seven" (Matthew 18:22 KJV). There is no sin too great for Him to forgive--no sin that is not covered by the blood of Christ. There is no sinner so terrible that he is beyond forgiveness and hope. If there is a limit to our capacity for being forgiven, that limitation lies not in God's grace but in our lack of repentance. We may give up on others or even on ourselves, but God doesn't give up on anyone. Any sinner who is still breathing is a candidate for salvation. God's grace in Christ reaches out to all who are in need of it, and those who find themselves facing judgment without it do so for no other reason than they have chosen to reject it.
The New Year is considered by many to be a time that represents hope. But does it really? Each year we make our resolutions, and each year, even as we make them, we know that they'll be broken within a week. Each year we hail the new, knowing that it will be aged and finished in twelve short months. If we're looking for real hope, we have look far beyond anything that lies in our world or on our calendar. We need to look instead to the God who became Man for us and accomplished our salvation. This Child of hope gives you not blessings that are limited or temporary, but the blessing of being a child of God forever--redeemed, loved, saved, and eventually glorified--all because of His grace.
Amen.
May the true Light which enlightens everyone, which has come into the world, shining brightly in the darkness, be your very life. And may the Word become flesh, Jesus Christ Himself, continue to make known to you His redeeming grace and truth now and always. He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it. Amen.