95-01 Christmas Questions – The Question of Eternity

This sermon is Part 5 of the series "Christmas Questions" by Dr. Chuck F. Betters.

Christmas evokes numerous emotions, and in 1994, the emotions Dr. Betters experienced were not of warm, fuzzy Christmas scenes, but heart-breaking as he faced his second Christmas without his sixteen-year-old son, Mark. In this series, Dr. Betters acknowledges that not everyone loves Christmas or even looks forward to it. Rather than running from Christmas, though, he encourages us to recognize the opportunity to experience even deeper comfort as we recognize the pain of that first Christmas. Dr. Betters opens up a list of five significant questions that people are longing to ask, not only at Christmas, but throughout the uneasiness of living life in this broken world. We will see five influences that shaped the culture of the Christmas story and continue to shape our culture today. Our culture is hungry for someone or something to trust. In this message, Dr. Betters asks, “What about the question of trust, and what does Christmas have to do with it?”

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Welcome to In His Grip with Dr. Chuck F. Betters, produced by Marking Ministries. Each in his grip message is designed to help turn your hearts toward Jesus and equip you to walk by faith. Let's join Dr. Betters as he preaches today's message.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Three idols that surface, it seems, every Christmas season. Idols that we resurrect at certain holy days of the year that are secular holidays. The idol, for example, of the great human potential of man. Just dig down deep inside of yourself. Find that great divine spark. Let it come out. Learn what self-image is. You know, we have developed some cultural holidays. We've developed some ethnic holidays. It seems like every time I turn around, there's a new holiday that somebody has created that is rooted in this idol of man's human potential. Just dig down deep enough and you'll find inside of you, society, inside of you, man, inside of you, government, inside of you, culture, inside of you, whoever you might be, the answer to the questions of this. We seem to think that we can stop wars by just tapping the great human potential of man, that there can be peace if we just grasp onto the great human potential of man. That we can have satisfaction and fulfillment if we just grab onto the great human potential of man. The sad part is that every year we seek to do that, and every year we end with more war and rumors of war and more disaster and more heartache and more loneliness and fragmentation than we did when we started the year. And so we find that that idol comes crashing down. It doesn't take long for it to happen. It seems to happen almost immediately after Christmas is over. There's the idol of religion, the illusion of religion. That seems to surface its ugly head around Christmas time. Man becomes, quote, more religious, more focused on religious things, more churched, more willing to think about the things of the Bible and the things of Christ and the details of the story of Christmas. And yet that quickly fades as that idol of religion comes crashing down. Because you see, religion is nothing more than man's efforts of reaching God, in sharp contrast to Christianity, which is God's way of reaching man. And then, of course, there's the idol of materialism. We all know what that idol looks like. We'll simply buy our way into happiness. We'll simply spend enough money, run up our credit cards, buy our children the things that they want and the latest fat, and make sure that they have the best gift. Make sure they have what everybody wants, what everybody's asking for. Make sure they want what the suppliers have told you they need. Buy it for them, and you will be able to make up in that short period of time for what you have failed to do the rest of the year. And that materialism god comes crashing down no sooner than the batteries in the toy wear out. And so these idols are resurrected, and the question of what's real and what's illusion, what really is God and what really are no gods or idols. The illusion of conformity when we conduct our personal lives according to what is socially or politically correct over against what is biblically and spiritually correct. The way in which we govern our church and build our church buildings, I gotta tell you, and this is just parenthetical, it has amazed me how the churches, some of them in our own area, have sought to buy into this whole myth of watering down the message of the gospel in order to appeal to the masses. I saw this most evident during Christmas time. It is amazing some of the things that our churches in this area specifically and generally the churches all across the nation have done at Christmas time to try to appeal to the masses. I mean, we have bought into a system of pragmatism where we have said what's most important is that we don't offend anybody. What's least important is that we proclaim the message of Christ. And these churches have watered that message down, especially at Christmas time, somehow thinking that they're going to be able to draw the average Joe unchurched man or Jane unchurched woman into their church to hear the gospel of Christ. Bait them and then switch. I'm sorry, that is not the message of the Bible. I drove past some churches. And as I drove by some of the places, I had to stop and think to myself, is this what Christ is all about? Is this the incarnation? Is this what we're supposed to be? Is this what the church is supposed to do? You see, this whole mindset of conformity has made its way even into our church structures. Even good, sound, evangelical, Bible-believing, Christ-honoring churches are taking a dive into pragmatism so that they can, in a non-offensive way, present the gospel to a culture that says, make it relevant to me, and then maybe I'll believe it. In contrast to that, the Bible's message is one of revolution. We are not to be a culturally adept people. We are to be a counterculture. We are to be a revolutionary people who present the message of Christ in stark contrast to what the people are seeing out there in the world. The message of Christ is offensive. It is not peace on earth and goodwill to all men. It is a message that Christ has brought a sword to divide even mother from daughter and father from son. Why? Because there is no loyalty that is higher than the loyalty of God's people to their God. And everything else has to come and fall by the wayside. So the way in which we conduct our personal lives and our church life and our home life, oftentimes is we live in illusionary worlds. We live in a world in which the question of what is real and what is unreal never really gets answered. The only real hope that we have is embracing the cross of Jesus Christ, the only real Savior that this world has ever seen or ever will see. It's interesting to me, even to hear Christian people who have interfaced with non-Christian people who are devout in their religious beliefs. I mean, I know Christian people, God-fearing, Christ-honoring Christian people who have close friends who are perhaps, and I'll just pick a few, Moslem friends, or Hindu friends, or Mormon friends. And they get to know these people and they find out these people are good people. They're family people. In fact, in the practice of their religion, they put a lot of us to shame. They make us look bad as Christians because of the discipline they have in their lives and the commitment they have to their religions. And it's interesting to me to hear Christian people somehow or another back off from their conviction of the uniqueness of the Christian faith and say, well, now wait a minute, maybe there is truth in all religions. I mean, these people are sincere. Do you mean to tell me that a God of love is going to condemn them and send them into a Christless hell? They are sincere in the practice of their faith. And even evangelical people back off for a moment and say, wait a minute, I'm not sure I really understand how you can say that the message of Christ is unique. That there is no other way to heaven but by him. Now, these people may be sincere, but they are sincerely wrong, following sincere error. And they will one day face a sincere God who has sincerely sent us his Son Jesus Christ as the provision for man's sin. And sincerely raised him from the dead, and has sincerely given to us the Holy Spirit to intercede, and has sincerely promised that he will come again to judge the quick and the dead. And the message of the gospel is a sincere message called in Scripture, the sincere milk of the Word. And that sincere message is the only way in which you can ever find a sincere salvation. And I don't care how sincere you are in your religious convictions about other faiths, the only way in which you will ever see God is through the provision that God has made, and that's his son Jesus Christ. But it's amazing to me how we're pragmatically backing off and saying, well, that message is offensive. I told you some time ago, and in fact I'm trying to review some of the precepts and principles I've taught you over the past year, but I told you some time ago that I believe this church is going to come under severe persecution. Now I said that before our son died. And I gotta tell you, the scripture speaks of the attacks that Satan launches against all people. All people live in a fallen world. So there's common snow, rain, and sleet and hail that's common to all men. All of us experience the heartaches of life. But there is a targeted lightning, and I believe that targeted lightning strikes those who are involved in Bible believing and Bible teaching churches, and specifically those who are involved in leadership in those churches. And I warned you then, and I warn you again as we approach a new year. I warn you from the bottom of my heart, if you are going to be sincere in your commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and your commitment to the vision of this church, you better duck. And some of you will not be able to stand the heat, and you will get out of this place. You will say, I can't take that kind of message. It will be too much for you to bear, and you will walk away. And you may go down the block to the first liberal church of the Pharisees, and you may find yourself comfort there, and you may find yourself involvement there that is easy and that placates the very desires and wishes of your heart. But if you are going to be sincere in your commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, you better expect that the heat of hell is going to be turned up in your personal life, in your church life, in your oikost circle of influence in which you live, because then and only then are you a threat to the kingdom of hell. And some of you are not going to be able to take that, and you will leave this church. I know that. I expect that. Because we're living in an illusory world. We don't know what's real and what's unreal. The third question was the question of suffering and pain. And we looked at Job in that particular case, seeing that the root cause of our doubt rests in the alleged sovereignty of man. Job had some problems. His problem was not with Satan, his problem was with God. It was not his relationship to the devil, it was his relationship to God that was being brought into question. He could not understand how to approach a holy God. He could not understand why he deserves so much pain. He could not understand God's system of justice. He could not understand the very fatherhood of God. He was tempted even to a fatalism that said, It doesn't really matter what I do. You find it the book of Job ends with him begging God for an arbitrator, begging God for a mediator, saying, If only somebody could grab a hold of your hand and my hand at the same time, if only someone could tell me who you are, could show me who you are, and the book ends without that question ever being answered. We know it's answered, of course, as believers, when we come to the 14th chapter of John, where Jesus stands and declares, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by me. There is only one mediator between God and man, that's the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who has captured the essence of the Fatherhood of God. He is the one who has been tempted in every point like unto us. He has taken God the Father by one hand, and you and me by the other hand, and he has arbitrated between us, showing us that our God is a sovereign God, and even though we don't understand what the tapestry looks like from the underneath, we will one day be able to rise above it and see the mosaic that God has painted for us. The question of suffering. And then we talked last time about the question of love and the deficiency of Eros love or sexual love, the deficiency of Philaos love, that is intimacy with another, the love of marriage, the love of friendship, the love of commitment, and the priority of agape love in Scripture, the love that comes only from the Father. And we began to shape what I think is a biblical understanding of the concept of biblical love, the ever-widening circle of God's love. We saw how God the Father in eternity past chose us in an act of love to be his people. And God the Father in eternity future will glorify us and everything that happens in between, including our regeneration and our calling and our adoption and our justification and our sanctification and our conversion and all of those wonderful things that we call the Ordo Salutis or the birth line. All of that process of love in which God has held us safely within his hands, kept us within his grip, is guaranteed because of what he did in the past and of what he's going to do in the future. That whole wonderful, marvelous plan of salvation is nothing short of agape love. He has loved me, he has loved you with an everlasting love. All other forms of love are building blocks for you to understand and comprehend the deep, deep love of Christ. But I want you to turn now to 1 Corinthians chapter 13. I want you to follow along. We're going to kind of bridge now between the fourth question, which is the question of love, and the fifth question, which is the final question that I'm asking today, and that's the question of eternity. The question of eternity. 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Now, what do you normally call this chapter? The what chapter? The love chapter. It's read at weddings, right? Same man, same woman who stand there and say, I love you. I'll spend the rest of my life with you. They write these wonderful, marvelous vows. They stand there, she looks so beautiful, and he looks so handsome. Sadly, so many of those marriages end in divorce. So many of those very same people rest their hopes in eros love or phalaos love. And they don't understand the very chapter that was read to them at their own wedding. Look at what it says. 1 Corinthians 13, 11. When I was a child, I talked like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put away or put childish things behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection, as in a mirror. Then we shall see face to face. Now underlying two words there: the word now and the word then. Now I see but a reflection. Then I will see face to face. Now I know in part. Then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. Now these three remain faith, hope, and love. Now underscore this. But the greatest of these is love. Two points I want to make very quickly as we begin a survey of this question. First of all, is the point now and then. Now we see one way, then we will see another way. Now we know in one form, then we will know in another form. What do you think he's trying to say to us? That what you possess now in form and structure in terms of love is but a reflection of the real thing. And the real thing will not be known until God brings to pass eternity, until he brings the end of the world, until he brings you into glory. You will never ever fully comprehend in this lifetime the love of God. You can only begin to understand it. You can only begin to comprehend it in very minuscule sorts of ways. You only have a taste of truth now. You only have a taste of love now. God is preparing us for a much larger picture. We don't get that message. The reason we don't get that message is because we are so fixed on this world. For example, in my marriage with my wife, if I miss the essential purpose of that marriage, then I will never ever comprehend in this lifetime a very real perspective of what God is preparing me for in that lifetime. You say, what do you mean? Do you know what the primary purpose of marriage is? If somebody were to walk into your house at 3 o'clock in the morning, come into your bedroom, shake you and wake you up, and put you through the 3 a.m. test and say, what is the purpose of your marriage? What would you say? Would you be able to answer that question? What is the purpose of marriage? Is it to have children? That's a part of it. Is it to develop a good friendship? That's a part of it. Is it to establish a witness among the lost people of the world? That's a part of it. What is the purpose of marriage? And if we really comprehend the purpose of marriage, we will begin to comprehend the purpose of eternity. Isn't it amazing that out of all the institutions that God could have chosen to illustrate for us eternity, he chose marriage? Say what do you mean? You ever read Ephesians chapter 5? Do you ever read that passage that says that the husband is to model the person and the work of Jesus Christ? The wife in her relationship to her husband is to model the church of Jesus Christ. That in their relationship together, I and my wife are representing in microcosmic form the relationship that Jesus has with the bride, which is the church. He is the bridegroom. We are the bride, and he has chosen that human institution to model for us, to demonstrate for us, a taste of what heaven is going to be like. I am to get ready for eternity by working in that concept of agape love within the context of my marriage. My marriage primarily exists for the purpose of modeling in a microcosmic way the relationship that Jesus has with his church. So I ought to be willing to die to self for my wife. Are you men willing to die to your needs, for your wife's needs? My wife ought to be willing to live with me as her priority. Not anything else or anybody else. Are you wives willing to live for the priority of your husband? Are you men willing to die for her? Are you willing to live for him? Do you have a relationship that basically says, this is the seed of agape love? This is the incubator in which God has placed me for the purpose of shaping and modeling me and teaching me how to begin to experience the blessings of what eternity will be like. Because you see, agape love is an ever widening circle. It is an ever increasing ripple effect as I learn how to love within the context of my marriage. I am learning essentially the love of Christ for his church. You know what too many people live for? They're jobs. Money. It's amazing to me how we plan out our lives. I hear a lot of people in their 20s and their 30s. No offense to you, 20s or 30s, unless the shoe fits. If it fits, then put it on. But I hear a lot of you talking about how you got your life all planned out. We're going to spend 2.3 years earning this much money, and then we're going to have our 1.4 children. And then we're going to buy our house, and then we're going to do this, and then we're going to do that. You have it all mapped out. You have it all strategically planned. And I don't hear anything about, in the context of your marriage, I don't hear anything about how you are going to seek to glorify God, even if he brings you through poverty. Children become another accomplishment. Another accomplishment. It's something else I'm going to do. Rather than, as the Bible calls them, the heritage of the Lord. How are you going to learn the love of God when you can't even learn how to agape love within the context of that part of marriage, that part of life that is to model our relationship of Christ to the church? Well, there are two building blocks. Now look at 1 Corinthians 13. I told you one point is now and then. Now is the imperfect, then is the perfect. But now look at that last phrase, verse 13. But the greatest of these is love. Now answer a question for me. Why is love greater than faith and hope? Well, one clear answer is faith and hope are temporal. Love is eternal. So clearly, from the perspective of eternity, love never ends. Love never ceases. Faith and hope are the building blocks upon which we comprehend the love of God. Over in Proverbs chapter 14 and verse 13, we are told that even in laughter the heart may ache, and joy may end in grief. And then in the 15th chapter, the 13th verse of Proverbs, it says, A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit. Can I talk to you for a moment about faith? One of the building blocks of understanding and comprehending the love of God? May I talk to you about faith in the midst of suffering? There is no pain greater than heartache. There is no pain greater than heartache. I gotta tell you, I have faced physical pain to the point where I could not even walk. I know what it's like to go through physical pain. My wife has gone through physical pain. She has experienced cancer and chemotherapy and all the junk that goes with it. We know what it's like to walk through physical pain. Now, many of you have experienced much greater physical pain than us, but physical pain is not the worst kind of pain there is. I've gone through vocational pain. And I'm gonna tell you honestly, there were times and still continue to be times where I wonder about the call that I have into the ministry. You say, what do you mean? Do you doubt your calling into the ministry? There are times. There are times when I have laid in bed beside my wife in the middle of the night and I have said, I can't do this anymore. I'm going to quit. I'm going to give up. I'm going to quit. I want to get out of the ministry. I can't take it anymore. There have been times I've done that. Now I have comfort in knowing that some of the great men of God who have preached the word have gone through the same kind of experience and they have suffered the same kind of vocational pain. I have wondered about my calling many, many times as I have examined my heart before the Lord, as I have walked through the pain of others, and that's another kind of pain that we experience. Vicarious suffering, where we suffer with others. There's been the pain of conflict. I have experienced in my lifetime conflict. Conflict in some cases that I did not deserve. Trial that I did not feel was dooming. Disrespect and dishonor that I feel was not properly done me. I've experienced conflict. I've experienced the wound that comes from broken relationships. Physical pain, mental pain, vocational pain, conflict pain, even vicarious pain for others. But I've got to tell you, there is a pain that the enemy uses to destroy our essential union with Christ, and that is the pain of a broken heart. That is a wound that only heaven can heal. That is a pain that I would not wish on my worst enemy. It is that kind of pain that seeks to crush the spirit, as the Proverbs says. That is the kind of pain that even in laughter causes the heart to ache, as the writer of Proverbs says, where joy ends in grief. It is the kind of pain that crushes a man or a woman's spirit, wounds the soul as no other can. A pain that makes all other forms of pain take on a new perspective. And all of the other pains are not as important as they used to be. It is to that kind of pain that the Apostle Paul says, I am persecuted, but I'm not destroyed. I am struck down, but I am not destroyed. Why? You see, to be dealt a blow apart from faith would otherwise destroy everything that we say we believe. If faith is absent, if God's grace is absent, there is a form of persecution, there is a form of suffering, there is a form of satanic attack that seeks to destroy a man's spirit, a man's union with Christ. You know, in the book of Job, we are told, and I know I'm going to differ with scholars on this. In fact, I'm probably wrong. But I'm going to tell you that I think there's truth to what I'm about to say. Remember the story of Job when the scene takes place in heaven between Satan and God? Satan approaches God and says, Now, if you just took down that hedge, he would curse you. Remember that story? And God gives these instructions to Satan. I'm taking down the hedge. You now have, this is my paraphrase, access to him, but do not touch the man. Now most scholars agree that that directive means that Satan could not kill him. That Satan could not physically kill Job. And they're probably right, but I think there's even a greater implication in those instructions. Because I think fundamentally what God was saying to Satan is, I am giving you access to every area, every piece of the pie in his life, but there's one piece of the pie I am not going to allow you to destroy. And that is Job's relationship to me. And I think that's what he meant when he said, touch not the man. Because then, friends, the spirit could be crushed. And when a man's spirit is crushed, he loses faith and he loses perspective, and from his own internal struggle and conflict, he eventually gets to the point where he says, There is no God, because I cannot sense him in my life. That's a crushed spirit. That's a wound that only heaven can heal. And I suggest to you this morning that apart from the building block of faith, that foundation in our lives, apart from that building block of faith, suffering in any form would chew us up and spit us out. And certainly suffering that causes a man's spirit to be crushed, the greatest of all forms of suffering, would destroy his intimacy with Christ, apart from faith. Let's revisit our friend Jacob again. Remember we talked about God's purpose in that wrestling match with Jacob, where God struggled all night with Jacob to root out the real man, to get him to the point where he would elicit a repentant heart, to get Jacob to the point where he would say, This is my name, trickster, liar, hoax, imposter. And you see, God wrestled with him until he declared that spirit, until he said, This is the man that I am. And until he admitted what his name was, God would not let him go. But then Jacob would not let God go until God blessed him. You see, he repented. He admitted who he was, he declared who he was. Then and only then could God bless him to become Israel, that is the prince of God. Now, you remember we talked about that wrestling match? I want you to go back 20 years in Job's life, or in Jacob's life. Go back to Genesis chapter 28. He's 20 years younger in this passage we're now going to read. 20 years later, he would have this wrestling match, but let's go back 20 years. Genesis chapter 28. Look with me beginning at verse 10. I want you to imagine what your life would be like if this happened to you. Genesis 28, verse 10. He's 20 years younger now. He does not know he's going to have that wrestling match. Jacob left Beersheba, verse 10, set out for Haran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and laid down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven. The angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord, and he said, I am the Lord, the God of your father, Abraham, the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth. You will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it. He was afraid and said, How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven. Early the next morning, Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Laz. Then Jacob made a vow, saying, If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking, and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear, so that I return safely to my father's house, then the Lord will be my God, and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God's house. And of all that you give me, I will give you a tenth. Now can you imagine what your life would be like if you had that kind of a vision? There you are at the gate of heaven. God opens the gate of heaven and shows you his glory. Well, I can tell you, we'd have a book tour today. Preachers would go on tour. We'd go and sign autographs for everybody. I've been to heaven and back. I've seen a stairway come down from heaven. We'd go on the circuit. But isn't it interesting that 20 years later, Jacob is still the old Jacob. He's still the same old, deceptive, rotten man. Still in need of a wrestling match with God. But this time the encounter would be different. He would not be at the gate of heaven, he would be at the gate of hell. He would not be seeing the glory of God. It would be frightening and painful. And from this encounter, he would walk away with his dip out of joint. But out of this pain, he would emerge a prince. I want to give you a principle. I want you to listen very, very carefully. Because I think in this passage, and the passage 20 years later, we have a principle. The key to spiritual victory is losing the right battles. The key to spiritual victory is losing the right battles. Jacob was set up. He was alone. There was no one to rescue him. The attack would come from an unknown assailant. It was quick and it was painful. Was the attacker Satan? Was the attacker Esau? Was the attacker his own flesh? No, the attacker was God. God pursued him there. And Jacob would lose that battle, and it became the turning point in his life. The morning after that battle, he would emerge. Can you picture him? Can you picture his wife what she must have thought when she saw him coming out of that battle? He looked like anything but a victorious man. He's limping, he's hurting, his face is sweaty, perhaps even bloody. His clothes were ripped, he had rolled in the dirt all night. He was beaten, he was battered, he was bloodied. And yet God was taking the trash of his past life and transforming it into the treasures of his future. And that is one of the great essential strands of enduring faith. Faith that builds our understanding of the love of God, finds meaning and purpose in suffering. Provided the suffering is unavoidable. Do you get that? If it's avoidable, the meaningful thing to do is to remove the suffering and its cause. God doesn't call us to some sort of masochism. Unnecessary suffering is masochistic, it's not heroic. But unavoidable suffering brings to the very forefront of my life the issue of faith and hope. Two building blocks that will teach me the love of God. We can either escape or we can endure. For here I saw God face to face and wrestled with him. I've had spiritual victory. Now he didn't look spiritually victorious. He looked beat up. But he says, I've seen God face to face. I've wrestled with him. I've lost the battle, but it was the right battle to lose. And here's a second principle. The greatest, listen, and I know this to be true, the greatest works that God has done in my life. The greatest works that God has done in my life, He has done them against my will and against my own pleasure. The greatest works that God has done in my life, He has done against my will. And against my pleasure. You know, we wrestle against the very things that God sends to bless us. As long as we want to be different from what God wants us to be at the time, we are tormenting ourselves with no purpose. What are you wrestling against? Is it possible that the very thing you are seeking to escape is the very means God is using to bless you? Oh no, Lord, we want a vision of heaven. We want a vision of heaven. We want to stand at the gate of heaven. We want to see the stairs coming down, the stairs going up. We want to see angels ascending and descending. We want to feel good about ourselves. We want to feel good about you. And then suddenly we're attacked in the dark when we least expect it, and we're in the ground and we're struggling to get up and we don't even know who our attacker is. And God says, What's your name? And roots out the Jacob. Yet we wrestle against the very things that God sends to bless us because we don't want to be any more different. We don't want to change. And we end up tormenting ourselves with no purpose. It is amazing how much we think we have to bear when there is so much more we will have to carry later on. We think we're in pain now. And yet it's only the beginning of pain that is to come later. It is through that pain that we mature in our understanding of God's love through faith and hope. You know, I've thought about it this way. It's like we go in our lives from pimples to tumors. You know what I mean by that? From pimples to tumors. I remember as a child, the biggest problem I had was whether or not I would get the latest gift at Christmas time, the latest craze. As a teenager, the crisis of all crises was pimples in my first heartbreak, my first love. As a young adult, the questions become who to marry, where to work, final exams. As a 30-year-old, raising a family, buying a home, scratching out a decent living, dealing with the crises in our children's lives, who cannot see that most of what they are being asked to endure are mere pimples. And then there are the ministerial crises, the cancers, the loss of my father, the trauma of major surgery, the care of the church where many of my good friends lose a loved one or watch a wayward child thumb their noses at the God of their parents. And then the ultimate price, at least for us, the loss of our child. And it seems like all the rest of those things are mere pimples compared to these tumors. And that brings me to this principle. As we grow older, as we grow older, the battles with God grow more fierce and more painful. The issues are more critical and the outcomes are more profound. Isn't it amazing how we tend to put our lives on hold and wait until the bad passes? You hear people say, Well, I'm going to do this for God after I graduate from school, or after I get the promotion, or wait until the kids are grown, or wait until I complete this apprenticeship. We have our lives so neatly compartmentalized only to miss the essence of life's valuable lessons when pain or divine interruption strikes. Someone has said life is what happens while we are sitting around waiting for life to start. Amen. Faith and hope, those two building blocks, call for the courage to face things the way they are and not the way we want them to be. To do otherwise, listen, is to miss the love of God. Faith calls for the courage to face things the way they are, not the way we want them to be, and to do otherwise is to miss the love of God. We avoid death. We deny death. We avoid suffering. We deny suffering. Even the church is fascinated with end times teaching. It's amazing, the dispensationalists, of which I am not one, are now looking at world politics and saying the coming of Christ has to be near. Look at how the God Governments are aligning. In the Reformed camp, we have a great emphasis upon the second coming of Jesus Christ, even with men like Harold Camping setting dates and then changing those dates because he proves to be wrong. We have this emphasis upon the return of Jesus Christ coming from the dispensationalists, coming from the reformed camp. Even the Roman Catholic Pope recently declared that the world has to be coming to a gigantic climax. Things cannot go on the way they are. And even in our error, whether we be dispensationalists or people who follow the date setters or even Roman Catholic theology, it seems to me that what God is saying to the church collectively is something is happening, the eschaton is near, Christ is coming very soon. I believe that with all of my heart. Regardless of the errors that are there, there is a general sense of the need for reformation and revival in the church as the church gets ready for the bridegroom to return. There is great apostasy in the church, great falling away. Yet we hear rumblings of revival, rumblings of renewal, rumblings of the outpouring of God's Spirit. Now we know in part. Then we shall be known as we are fully known. We shall know Him as we are known. Then now, then now, then now. It seems to be like the church is pulsating with that message. We now know, we will then know. We now know we will then know. The question of eternity. Martha heard that Jesus was coming. She went out to meet him. Mary stayed at home. Lord, Martha said to Jesus, If you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask. Jesus said to her, Your brother will rise again. Martha answered, I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, even though he dies. And whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? Do you believe this? Now, if you were standing at the tomb of your brother who has been dead for four days, what would you say? What would you say? Do you believe this? You know what she said? She gave the typical Christian answer. She quoted the apostles' creed, which hadn't been written yet. Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world. I've got to tell you something. That's a profound statement. Especially coming from a woman who criticized her sister just a short time before for going and sitting at the feet of Jesus while she prepared the dinner. Something had changed in her life. What? Her brother died. And now she's face to face with the living God. And he says, Do you believe this? It's the question of eternity. And after she said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. The teacher's here, and he's asking for you. When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there. When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. You notice how short-lived their faith is, how short-sighted it is. If you had been here, he wouldn't have died, but now you're powerless. When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled and said, Where have you laid him? Come and see, Lord, they replied. Jesus wept. I haven't a clue as to why Jesus wept. All kinds of theories as to why Jesus wept. Some say, well, he wept at the unbelief of the people around him. Well, he saw unbelief in other places he never wept. Some say he wept because he saw the pain of death. That was on the faces of Mary and Martha. That could be. But he saw pain and death in others. Some conjecture that Jesus wept because he was going to have to bring Lazarus back from heaven. You know, I am so glad for their sakes that when Jesus stood at that tomb, what did he say? Lazarus, who is in heaven. Lazarus, who is in eternity. Lazarus, even in eternity, is still Lazarus. Lazarus, come forth. You know, for their sakes, I'm glad he put the name Lazarus there. Because had he just said, come forth, everyone would have come out of the grave. Heaven would have emptied. You know what the wonderful blessing of our faith is? That's exactly what our faith and hope is pointing to. There is coming a day when he is going to say, Come forth. I can't even comprehend how we're going to feel when that happens. But I gotta tell you, without that looming out there, and without us being able to hold on to that hope of the eschaton, I don't believe we could ever believe in the love of God. Faith and hope are the building blocks that teach us to comprehend the love of God. Faith in suffering. Hope in suffering. Faith in death. Hope in death. Come forth. You know he's gonna say that one day. And all of the graves are going to empty. And every man, woman, and child will appear before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account for what they did with God's provision for man's sin. The graves will empty, the dead in Christ will rise first, the spirits of those who have gone on before will come and those bodies will merge with those spirits and be glorified in the air with the Lord Jesus Christ, who will then bring judgment upon the earth. To all who have failed to embrace the gospel of peace. We who are alive and remain, we will be caught up in the air, translated, transformed, metamorphosized, just like Christ was at the Mount of Transfiguration, brought into the presence of a holy God, joined together with the likes of Moses and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and for us our son. There we will gather around the bridegroom who will prepare for us the feast. The bridegroom and the bride will sit down together. And all of our faith and all of our hope will dissipate into the reality of being in the presence of an eternal God. Faith and hope will be no more, for there will be no more need of it. Instead, we will rest in the agape love of our God. Would you stand and join hands with those around you as we close together in prayer? Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory. For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear. Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints. Then the angel said to me, Write, blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb, and he added, These are the true words of God.

SPEAKER_00 52:53

Now may the grace of God, the love of our Lord and our Savior, Jesus the Christ, the very presence, person, and power of his Holy Spirit abide with each of you now until Christ comes again and forevermore. And all God's people said.

SPEAKER_03 53:15

You have been scriptures featuring the preaching and teaching ministry of Dr. Chuck S. Betters and produced by Mark Ministry. Mark Ministry of Health to hurt people by promises and the comfort of resources. And help us provide three resources.