Eternity Pt 1 – Living with an Eternal Perspective

Eternity Pt 1 – Living with an Eternal Perspective

Text: Psalm 139:16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

• Your life is a story written out before you were born. Jesus Christ planned each page and each chapter. The story is the glory, and the glory of your story is the Lord’s. 

Hebrews 12:2 Jesus Christ, the Author and the finisher of our faith. 

• If Jesus is an author, your faith journey is already written, every chapter, every page. 

Ephesians 2:10 We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God has prepared in advance to do. 

• Unfortunately, many believe in Christ but are not living God’s story for their lives; the pages stopped turning a long time ago. They have begun to chart their own course and write their own pages and chapters, defining who they want to be and what they want to become. They are the author and desire God to play a part in telling their version of their story. 

Point of the Message: You will be judged not for what you have done. You will be judged for what you were called and assigned to do! 

• Doing or not doing what the Lord calls you to do now will affect eternity.
• Your eternity is affected by your living now, not later. 
• Who you will be, what you will do, and what you will have is decided by your living now. 
• Unfortunately, a majority of believers are not driven by eternity; they are driven by the immediate. Who they want to be, what they want to have, where they want to be now.  

When you get to heaven, there will be a judgment on whether you lived out your story or his story. Only his story will be history and tempered. What you did for your story will burn up. 

The books will be opened and everything will be made known, including the motives of men’s hearts (see 1 Corinthians 4:5).

• There will be many Christians who will go to heaven but spend eternity with little to no rewards. 
• Therefore, this life is a test to reveal the order and hierarchy. 

1 Corinthians 3:10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled[b] master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

• It’s important to understand that this is not the Great White Throne Judgment (see Revelation 20:11), before which unbelievers will stand and give account to God for their lack of faith. 
• The former is the full reward, the latter is no reward, and everything in between is a partial reward.

The word “judgment seat” is a translation of the Greek word bema, a word that described an official place where judgments and rewards were rendered to those who stood before an official judge.

Hebrews 6:1 tells us that the judgments made at the judgment seat of Christ are called eternal judgments. 

6:1 Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death,[a] and of faith in God, 2 instruction about cleansing rites,[b] the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. 3 And God permitting, we will do so.

• This means that the eternal perspective is ELEMENTARY AND BABY TEACHING!
• ETERNAL? This means the decisions will never be changed, amended, or revised—they stand forever. 
• What this tells me is that what we do with the cross—whether we trust in Jesus—determines where we spend eternity. 
• However, the way we live as believers determines how we will spend eternity.

In the parable of the talents, the man who took the five talents that the master gave him and produced 10 had something remarkable happen to him in eternity. 

Luke 19:17 The king replied, ‘Excellent! You are a good servant. Because you have been faithful in a small matter, you will have authority over ten cities.’

• This was to reflect eternity in the new heavens and new earth to come.  
• Question: If you knew as a Christian that you would be eternally accountable for how you lived your life today, would you do things differently? 

C.S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity.” Have you ever heard of C.S. Lewis? He said, “If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were precisely those who fought most for the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one.”

Life is all about an eternal perspective. 

• There is an eternal perspective 
• And then there is an 80-90-year Western Culture perspective. 
  • When you see things through an eternal perspective, you will see things differently, and you will do things differently 
    • You will endure things and preserve things, 
    • You will give your time, talent, and treasure to things differently because you are driven by eternity, not by an 80-90 year perspective. 

Most of the preaching in the American church has the wrong perspective: 

• There is little to no preaching about Eternity anymore. 
  • All preaching is pragmatic for the present. 
    • There is no preaching about Eternal Rewards 
    • There is no Preaching on Judgment 

I researched a popular sermon on a church growth site and found 8 of the most downloaded: 

• • • “The Seven Habits of Highly Happy Christians.”
    • You Are Enough: Living Your Truth
    • Unleash Your Inner Champion
    • The Secret to Your Success
    • “Pokémon Go” (Encouragement for those wandering through life – Should be called Pokémon No! – If you are still wandering, you are probably lost!)
    • All You Need is Love – Satan was perfectly loved by God, and He still rebelled, so did Adam and Eve. 
    • How to Get What You Want Out of Your Faith – Your faith is for what God wants! 
    • “Victorious Secrets to a Better Marriage.” No comment!

Juxtaposition of True Gospel and Man-Centered Gospel:

1. One is Driven by Eternity, the other is Driven by the Immmediacy of this life.
2. One is Self-centered, the other  is God-Centered
3. One says Build your own Kingdom, the true Gospel is building God’s Kingdom 
4. One, you die in sin; the other, you die to sin. 

Eternal Perspective: Living Sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2) 

• 80-90 Perspective: Not a Living Sacrifice but Half-hearted. 
• Q. How can I make it to heaven without too much persecution, pain, or sacrifice here on Earth? 

Eternal Mindset: For me to live is Christ to die is gain. (Philippians 1:21)

• 80-90 year mindset: Man and Me Centered – 
• Q. How can God benefit and bless me to get where I need to be in life?

Eternal Focus: Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all of its glory, and all these things will be added unto you. (Matthew 6:33)

• 80-90 year Focus: How can I achieve my goals and dreams, and use prayer and faith to achieve my desires on Earth? 

Eternal Heart: Not my will but thine be done! (Matthew 26:39) 

• John 3:30 He must increase, but I must decrease. 31 He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all.

The Bible teaches us that the “kingdom of heaven,” not worldly riches, is like a treasure hidden in a field—so valuable that one should be willing to sell everything to obtain it (Matthew 13:44). 

• C.S. Lewis said, “Why aim at Earth and miss the eternity of heaven when you can aim at heaven and get the Erth thrown in!” 

If we look at the example of Jesus and the apostles, we see that the popular “best and blessed life now” message doesn’t align with reality. 

• Jesus Himself was without earthly wealth and did not even have a place to lay His head (Luke 9:58). 

The apostle Paul’s life also hardly fits the definition of “best and blessed life now” according to world standards. 

• He endured beatings, stoning, shipwrecks, hunger, thirst, cold, and countless hardships (2 Corinthians 11:24-27). 
• Paul was not enjoying his best and blessed life on earth, but he eagerly awaited his ultimate hope—an incorruptible inheritance reserved for believers in heaven. 

How can we expect a world marred by sin to offer us our best life now? 

• How can we overlook such scriptures as “Man is born to trouble, as sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7), 
• “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12), and 
• “Count it all joy when you face various trials” (James 1:2),
•  Yet tell people they can have their best and blessed lives here and now? 

How can we minimize the sacrifices of the early Christian martyrs?

• Who were hanged, burned, beheaded, and tortured for their faithfulness to Christ? 
• Did they suffer and die because no one told them that if they pursued their best and blessed life now, they could have enjoyed life better?
• The Lord never promised health, wealth, or earthly success. 

James 4:14 says, “This life is a vapor.” 

• • If James had lived today, maybe he’d say life is zero. 
  • Why? Because any finite number divided by infinity equals exactly zero. 
  • If you live to be 80 years old, you divide that by eternity, and you get zero. 
  • Even the oldest man on earth, say 146 years, divided by eternity is still zero.

That means what we do in this ‘zero time’ determines how we’ll spend eternity.

Illustration: To help understand that, imagine that how you spend the next 24 hours will determine how you spend the next 1,000 years. 

• Consider how different a thousand years is: no United States, no Columbus, no Pilgrims, not even King Louis XIV. 
• If 24 hours determined all that, you’d live those 24 hours with great purpose. 
• And yet, even that, compared to eternity, is still small—because one day divided by (1000 years) or 365,000 days is (0.00000273972), 
• But what we do with this “zero” time determines eternity.

God calls us “builders” when talking about life in light of eternity. 

• Scriptures say things like, “Unless the Lord builds the house, the laborers work in vain.” Psalms 127:1 
• Jesus is the stone the builders rejected; Matthew 21:42, Psalms 118:22
• A wise man builds his house upon the rock, Matthew 7:24

We’ll be judged in two areas: 

1. Our involvement in building God’s kingdom—using our gifts, cooperating with our calling; 
2. On how we treat people with God’s gifts —how we influence our spouse, children, coworkers, and strangers. 

…We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. — Romans 14:10

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
— 2 Corinthians 5:10

• For example, John Lennon: Though raised Anglican, John Lennon famously rejected Christ and instead sang Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you can, no hell below us, a brotherhood of man, Imagine all the people living for today! 
• Lennon had a tremendous gift—he could have led millions into God’s presence, but he used it for other things. 

On Judgment Day, “fire”—God’s word—will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. 

• Fire shows if a person’s work has any value. 
• Works for eternity (gold, silver, precious stones) survive; works for self or the temporary (wood, hay, straw) are burned away.

If your work is burned up, you still get to heaven, but “like someone barely escaping through the flames.” 

• • That’s strong language. 
  • Imagine retiring, losing all your bank money, your home burns down, and all insurance goes bankrupt—

• That’s what Paul says some believers will experience spiritually.
• Paul insists, “Run your race to win the prize.” 

Not just pastors or missionaries—every believer has a calling. 

• God wrote a “book” about each of us (Psalm 139). 
  • All our days are written in that book—the blueprint for our lives. 
  • At the judgment, books will be opened, and our lives will be compared to what God wrote for us.

God gives gifts to match our calling—a tractor for a farm, an 18-wheeler for hauling—so that we can build effectively. 

Remember: We’re not judged by what we did; we’re judged by what we were called to do.

• Imagine someone called to be an evangelist, but instead is an accountant,
• But a mother who faithfully raises three children as God called her—God will show how those children impacted millions. 

You will not be judged according to what you did, but according to what you were called to do.

It’s better to know your calling now rather than at the judgment. 

• Many miss their calling due to pride, self-centered living, self-pity, wrong relationships, or love of money. 
• But it’s not too late. 
• Smith Wigglesworth didn’t start his ministry until his fifties. 
• Others have set off into mission fields late in life and found deep fulfillment.