Rejoicing in eternal life…

Last night we attended a birthday party for a friend who turns 100. Once she told me not to talk to her about God, but not long ago she shared she had made her peace with Him. She has changed. Now, instead of hoping people are in heaven, she knows and says that those who believe in Christ are with are with Him.

Job once asked, “If a man dies, shall he live again?” (Job 14:14) For believers, this is a rhetorical question because the Bible gives great hope:

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep… And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18)

Our friend at her age knows the death of many and now may think, “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19) The author of today’s devotional reading gives three reasons for our hope:

One. We have been resurrected representatively: “Even when we were dead in our trespasses, (God) made us alive together with Christ—by grace we have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:5–6) It is the will of God that all who believe in Christ should have eternal life. See John 6:37–40. To Him, it is a done-deal.

Two. We have already experienced resurrection in regeneration because for those who are alive in Him, the second death has no power — “Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.” (Revelation 20:6)

Three. God has described our bodily resurrection:

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:51–58)

Again, we do not grieve as others who have no hope. We know that Christ died and rose again and that God promises to bring with Him all who died. Jesus will “descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.” (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18)

PRAY: Jesus, You are the reason that those who believe, including my 100-year-old friend, can say with Job: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.” (Job 19:25–26) With her, the older I get, the more I rejoice in all that is ours because of what You have done.

How does anyone know about God . . .

 

In many Bible classes and sermons the leader or speaker says that the OT people of God did not have the same knowledge as we now have with the NT. For them, the promised salvation was not as clear.

Something in me disagrees. I read the Bible for years and didn’t ‘get it’ so understand how people cannot ‘get it’ but when Jesus Christ came into my life, everything changed. This is not because I moved from the OT to the New but because the things of God are not fully understood by more information but because God reveals truth through the Holy Spirit who illuminates minds.

How else could Job say in 19:25–26, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God” or else could the psalmists and the prophets write about His role as REDEEMER?

Some uses of that term is about redemption from slavery in Egypt, exile in Babylon, enemies and sickness, but some of it is clearly redemption from slavery to sin as He proclaims through Isaiah: “Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your salvation comes; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.’ And they shall be called the Holy People, the Redeemed of the LORD.”

In Psalms and Isaiah, the Redeemer helps His people in need, but also frees them from sin. This verse is an example of pleading for such a redemption:

Psalm 19:14. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

Isaiah speaks often for the Redeemer who reveals Himself as the Holy One of Israel, their Creator and King. He says, “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god” and “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go. Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea; your offspring would have been like the sand, and your descendants like its grains; their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me.”

They knew about sin and obedience. They knew that their peace depended on God as well as their prosperity. Not only that, the pagans around them knew this also, all without a full Bible:

Isaiah 49:7 and 26. “Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers: ‘Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you . . . I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine. Then all flesh shall know that I am the Lord your Savior, and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.’”

While many references are about redemption from troubles in this life, others clearly point to redemption from sin and the need for repentance:

Isaiah 59:20. “And a Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression,” declares the Lord.

GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. How many times did I read through the Bible and miss the fact that Jesus died for my sin? At least a dozen and maybe more. But the day came when He came into my life and I knew without a doubt that Christ is God the Son who came to redeem me — a sinner enslaved and under the curse of the law. He did it by suffering the death I deserved. That is, the sinless, uncursed Christ suffered an accursed death so that He could remove God’s curse from me!

Without reading 1 Peter 1:18–19 again, I knew I was “ransomed from the futile ways inherited from my forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”’

I also knew the truth of Titus 2:13–14, that my “great God and Savior Jesus Christ, gave himself for me to redeem me from all lawlessness and to purify me for himself . . . for his own possession.” The words were there for me but I didn’t ‘get it’ until the truth was put into my heart, just as Zechariah praised God because He “made redemption for his people” when John the Baptist was born and Anna “gave thanks to God, and spoke about him to all the Jews who were looking for redemption when she saw baby Jesus. This was revealed to them.

All this does not mean we can get truth without the Word of God. It does mean that God reveals truth so we can understand it and then use it to verify anything that comes to us as “God told me” apart from reading it. He is the truth-Revealer — and our Redeemer, Savior and Friend.