06/21/2015
What I Believe About
Eternal Life
1 Corinthians 15: 12-24
PRAY
In my sermons these past several weeks I have been talking about what we
believe as Christians. Together we have been looking at the Apostles’ Creed as a
means of expressing our faith. Today I will bring this series to a close as we focus
on the last phrase in the creed: “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the
life everlasting.” That final statement, the closing line of the creed, is actually the
beginning point for our Christian faith. Everything we believe about Jesus Christ is
grounded in our firm belief in the resurrection and in the promise of eternal life.
Let me tell you a story about Natalie Sleeth. You’ve probably never heard of
Natalie Sleeth, but many of you are familiar with a song she wrote. The song is
“Hymn of Promise.” It’s one of the most popular hymns written in the last 25
years. It was written in 1986 and it was included in our hymnal when it was
published just three years later in 1989. That’s pretty remarkable – for a song to
be written, gain wide-spread acceptance, and be approved for inclusion in a new
hymnal – all within three short years.
The message of the hymn is summarized in its last two lines:
In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory,
unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.
Natalie Sleeth wrote that hymn for her husband, the late Ronald Sleeth.
Ron was a professor of preaching at Iliff School of Theology in Denver. In 1986
Ron was diagnosed with a malignancy and within three weeks he was dead. In
those few short days before his death, Natalie Sleeth wrote “Hymn of Promise.”
But there is more to the story. When she wrote this hymn she was fighting
her own battle with multiple sclerosis, a disease that ultimately took her life.
Before her own death she wrote a beautiful story for her grandchildren – a story
about her life and her faith. She told them how she began to realize that she was
growing older and that her body was beginning to wear out. She talked to God
about the situation and asked God to help her. Listen to the words she gave her
grandchildren about her conversation with God. God spoke to Natalie and said,
“My child, when I made the world and filled it with people, I had a plan. I wanted
my people to have life for as long as they could, but not forever because then my
world would be too full with no room for anybody. I planned it so that when it was
time to leave the earth, my people would come and live with me in heaven where
there is no pain or sadness or sickness or anything bad.”
Natalie said softly to God, “Is my time to come and live with you getting
closer?” And God said, “Yes, but be not afraid for I will always be with you and I
will always take care of you.” Natalie said to God, “But I will miss my family and
my friends, and they will miss me!” And God said, “Yes, but I will comfort them
and turn their tears into joy and they will remember you with happiness and be
glad of your life among them.”
06/21/2015
2
Slowly Natalie began the journey to heaven and day by day she drew nearer
to God. In the distance she could see light and hear beautiful music and feel
happiness she had never known before, and as she moved toward the gates and
into the house of God, she said to herself with great joy in her heart, “That’s good!
That’s good!”
Natalie Sleeth claimed one of the central truths of the Christian faith – the
promise that death is not the end. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we
know that we too will be raised. Jesus said, “Because I live, you also will live”
(John 14:19). The heartbeat of the Gospel is the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. Natalie Sleeth experienced the meaning and hope of this powerful reality.
Yes, Jesus died but that was not the end. Three days later, on Easter Sunday,
God raised Jesus from the dead and God offers us the same glorious promise.
The driving power behind the Christian faith is the resurrection of Jesus.
The first Christians were eyewitnesses to that Resurrection. The four Gospels
(Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) provide a picture of Jesus that could have been
written only by those who had experienced him as the risen Lord.
The Resurrection was the theme of every Christian sermon. It was the
driving force that compelled the early Christians to share the Good News
everywhere they went. It was the fact that gave them the courage to speak the
truth even at the risk of their own lives. Not one line of the New Testament was
06/21/2015
3
written, not one sentence was penned apart from the conviction that Jesus had
conquered death and that Jesus is alive forevermore.
In the passage we read earlier from 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul said that
our faith, our hope, and our preaching are all in vain if there is no Resurrection (1
Corinthians 15:14). The Resurrection is central to the Gospel we preach and
teach.
As the renowned preacher Samuel Shoemaker once said:
The Church and the Bible do not explain the resurrection: They are
explained by it, and they start with it. There would have been no
Church and no Bible unless there had first been the fact of the
resurrection. On Good Friday, Jesus died, an apparent failure. His
friends scattered, and His movement stopped; but on Easter He rose
again from the dead, His friends re-assembled, and His movement
started up again, never to stop. The resurrection explains these
things. (Dunnam, That’s What the Man Said, p.105).
The Christian gospel is more than the proclamation of an event; it is an
invitation to an encounter – an encounter with Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is not
dead! Jesus Christ is alive. He rose from the dead, he ascended into heaven,
and he is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. As Christians we
claim the promise he gave us, “Because I live, you shall live also” (John 14:19).
When we say we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life
everlasting, we affirm our faith in the life-changing words of Jesus who said: “I am
06/21/2015
4
the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will
live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11: 25-26).
The promise of resurrection and life is not lodged in some future event. It is
grounded in the reality of a historical event nearly 2000 years ago, when God
entered our time and space to deliver Jesus from the grave. And the promise of
resurrection and life is available to us right now through faith in Jesus. By
announcing that he is both the resurrection and the life, Jesus declares that he is
Lord of the present and Lord of the future. Jesus doesn’t say I can provide
resurrection. Jesus doesn’t say I will bring about a resurrection. Jesus says, “I
am the resurrection and the life” – present tense – here and now. When Jesus
says, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he declares that he shares completely
and fully in the power of God – he is one with God. For Jesus to be the
resurrection means that physical death has no power over him and over us who
believe. Our future is determined by our faith in Jesus, not by our physical death.
For Jesus to be the life means that even our present experience of life is shaped
by Jesus’ power for living. Eternal life is not something out there in the future. We
enter into eternal life the moment we place our faith in Jesus Christ, invite him to
be our Lord, and allow him to guide the way we live each day.
If Jesus is life, then everyone who believes in him should enjoy the
confidence and power over death that Jesus holds. This does not mean that we
will not experience physical death. All of us will die some day. Our physical
06/21/2015
5
bodies will cease to function. But physical death does not mean that we stop
living. The promise of resurrection and life is that our life continues in God for
eternity.
It is a promise! It is a promise of God! And God is always faithful!
That is why with absolute confidence we can boldly proclaim: "I believe in
the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting!"
AMEN!
06/21/2015
6