Is He From History or From Eternity - Part 1

Welcome to today's world of disposable products. In short attention span is time to grasp the meaning of the things you can only understand Jesus today. Dr. David Jeremiah begins a new series to help you low-priced intimate. The Jesus you may not listen as David introduces the message, series history from friends. Thank you for joining us here for the first day of the new month month of May as all of the rest of you were working through this environment in which we find ourselves and every day. We believe God is at work in our lives. I'm sure he is in yours as well. We pray for you we care about you and the best thing we can do is to keep communicating God's truth in the midst of each and every broadcast. So today we couldn't be starting a better series for the situation we find ourselves in today were going to talk about the Jesus you may not know, and some of the things you may not know or things you need to know especially right now so were going to begin today with the first two discussions on is he from history or from eternity and I'm going to give you little clue to the study and its titles.

Every title is a question and every title ends with one or two words either both or yes. Is he from history or from eternity yes is he from the Old Testament or the New Testament. Yes, just a little different way of introducing the subject and I hope it will stick in your mind. Now let's open our Bibles open our hearts and let's find out. Is he from history from eternity to talk with you about one word that I want you to repeat the word after me. The word is eternity. We talk about a lot but it's pretty evident to me as I study this again that it's something we don't really know a lot about what to tell you about the eternal Indian who stands on the banks of Rock River overlooking the city of Oregon, Illinois, its creator, Laredo, Taft began working on it in 1908 by creating models and then three years later, when the statue was dedicated people marveled at its size seem to grow out of the ground and tower majestically from the top of the bluff where it is station. It's one of the largest monolithic statutes in the world. The eternal Indian was inspired by the sock leader Blacklock and the statutes folded arms and massive robe and determined dies are designed to convey the unconquerable spirit of Native Americans is a problem, the eternal Indian is crumbling.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised in an effort to restore this 108-year-old image including a grant from the Illinois legislature. Visitors often find the monument covered with tarps or scaffolding. They can't see it because it's being repaired.

Past efforts to restore Illinois crumbling eternal Indian have fallen apart. Recently, the paper quoted a local resident and restoration navigator said it's a funny thing were all hoping for the best but we have no firm guarantees and I think everybody's a little antsy about that. The eternal Indian who is crumbling honey anything's eternal fact I remember I said anything that last 50 years should be celebrated because that's a long time for anything in this world in which we live and eternal things just don't exist in the world in which you and I navigate nothing in this world is eternal and given enough time.

Everything crumbles and returns to dust and that's why you and I live in an antsy world is we see around us, the things that we think were movable in their God method. I go back to a place where you were 50 years ago started church to have that blazoned across your heart. Nothing that was there when I was there hardly anything is there except a few of original buildings and unfortunately for us today. The word eternal, and especially the word eternity has lost its meaning. I discovered that eternity has been the name of at least three different movies to different television series 8 different music albums and eight different songs. Eternity is the name of the perfume. A mobile phone, a puzzle game superhero get eternity. A Christian magazine and newspaper. A science fiction magazine.

It's ironic that a word that means forever has been given as the name for so many things that don't last very long. And eternity is a time thing for us, but eternity is not time eternity is beyond time. We don't understand eternity because we have no precedent Donna and I were talking about it at home and we were talking about how hard it is to wrap our minds around something that never began and never ends, something that has no beginning and no end, but that's what eternity is, we try we try to understand it, we come up with little stories that help us comprehend how long is eternity. Here's one that I remember imagining a little bird taking a grain of sand and flying to a distant planet. It would take him a million years to get to that planet. Then he would drop the grain of sand and the little bird would fly back to the earth, taking another million years to get home. He gets another grain of sand and flies back to the distant planet back and forth, back and forth. He goes and when he will have transplanted every speck of earth to that distant planet, it will only be breakfast time and eternity.

That's how hard it is to comprehend it.

We need crazy little stories like that even get our mind in the middle of it. You live in a world which given enough time. Everything crumbles and nobody remembers us in life is ultimately meaningless and absurd and if you don't understand what God has given to you in his word to give meaning to this life. It's very difficult to make it all the way through because in Jesus Christ alone. Is it possible for us to discover the meaning of eternity and I want to explore that meeting with you for a few moments in three areas of life. I want to talk about eternity in history eternity in your heart and eternity in heaven. First of all, eternity in history. Let's begin. In many respects the idea of associating history with eternity is absurd. Eternity is you see one of the great mysteries of the universe. One of the great mysteries of God. Eternity is the attribute of infinity in relationship to time and means that the triune God father son and Holy Spirit have always existed. The past, present and future as we know it are eternally present in the mind of God. God the father and his son Jesus Christ live in the eternal present, we see life through three different lenses. I just went back and reviewed something from my past. I look forward to some things were going to do this year. That's future. And here we are today in the present.

But when God looks at life. He doesn't see them that way.

He sees everything in the eternal now everything is now the God everything is now to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a mystery, and it is difficult to get our minds around it, it stretches us, does it not reminds me of that powerful thought that if the God you worship is small enough for you to understand he's not big enough for you to worship. I don't understand all of this I learned everything I can from the revelation of the Scripture.

But what I've learned all I can learn about God are still so much more about God that I cannot know one day I will know but I don't know now. So what that means for you and for me is that since Jesus is God and since he has no beginning and no end and he has existed ages before he came into the world to be our Savior. When the prophet Micah predicted that Jesus would come to be our Savior. Did you listen to his words. Listen to how he described. He said out of you shall come forth to be the one who is to be ruler in Israel who is that Jesus Christ whose goings forth are from a mold from everlasting. In other words, Jesus Christ is coming to be the ruler of Israel, but he's been around forever. He's never had a beginning. One day Jesus was talking to some of his friends and he stunned them. They never did get over this.

They were talking about Abraham and David and all of that and Jesus said, before Abraham was, I am in other words, here's Jesus 30 years old saying that he knew Abraham almost like Abraham and I were buddies. Jesus didn't say before Abraham was, I was he said, before Abraham was, I in other words, Abraham had a history Jesus doesn't have any.

He is forever in the Bible tells us, men and women that Jesus and his eternity is the creator of this world. I know you know that the Bible says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. But God tells us in his word that yes it was God who did it, but was the second person of the Trinity, who was the executor of creation.

Here's what the Bible says all things were made by Jim by Jesus and without Jesus. Nothing was made that was made. That's what the Scripture me. Colossians 116 says by Jesus. All things were created that are in heaven and that are there and Hebrews makes it very clear God has in these last days spoken to us by his son, who is that Jesus, by whom he has appointed heir of all things and through whom he made all the worlds stop and think about this the baby born in Bethlehem was here when the world was created and actually created the world as we see it today, Jesus Christ, the creator of the world. We say how does that affect me will listen up. The Bible says that you and I were chosen in Christ before the world began.

Ephesians 14 says he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

What that means, men and women is since we are in Christ before the foundation of the world. We have been loved by Christ for a lot longer than you may think we have been loved by Christ throughout eternity. Jeremiah 31 three says it this way.

Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love.

Sometimes we think Jesus only loves us if we do good things.

You know, we sometimes pick up on the leg. Our culture if you be good God, Olivia, if you be bad you won't, that's nothing to do with God's love for us.

The Scripture tells us that long before the world was long before there was a creation long before Abraham. Jesus loved us that he loves you. I remember reading that Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury was asked what he believed to be the greatest challenge we face as a Christ follower and without a moments hesitation he said every Christian I meet cannot quite believe that they are loved by God. One of the great problems people have is accepting the fact that Almighty God loves them a beer like that. Maybe you don't believe Jesus loves you at all.

Or maybe you only know a Jesus who loves you in varying degrees or maybe you're on the performance track where you think he loves you on the basis of what you do but hear me and if you don't get anything else get this God through Jesus Christ has loved you before the foundation of the world before you could do anything good or bad. You are loved by God. That means he doesn't love us because of who we are, doesn't love us because of what we've done.

He loves us because of who he is.

When we succeed. He says I love you when we fail. He says I love you because he is love, there is nothing you can ever do to make him stop loving you, and there's not anything you can ever do to make him love you more than he already does because his love is eternal. It's a part of who he is, is God and it's always been true everything you have ever done or thought whether it be good bad or indifferent was in the future when God set his love upon you he loves you. My friends like you cannot imagine what you say I don't feel love.

Let me tell you with authority that is not God's problem. We cannot blame God for our feeling God has told us the truth.

He loves us. Believe it eternity in history, God loves you. Here's the second thought eternity in your heart is really amazing, thought.

Hold this because it's important that this these love this forever.

Then he set about creating us and he created us men and women with eternity in our hearts. He created us literally so that all of us were made for him, it should say on us. Made for God because everyone of us have been created for his pleasure and the Bible tells us that when God created us, he left a space within us a space that only he can occupy in Ecclesiastes 311 we read these words, God has put eternity in our hearts.

That means that everyone of us has a hunger and a longing for God even if we don't know it, but even when we might be rebelling against God saying I won't have him to rule over me there.

Still, this empty place in our hearts and God is the only one who can fill that one of the challenges we have in our culture as we try to fill that with everything else don't we try to find meaning through riches or relationships or pride or money or sex or drugs or whatever everything we stuff into that space doesn't fit because that space was made for God he created eternity in our hearts reviewed a book that had read many years ago by Don Richardson in the title of the book is eternity in their hearts, and this book is about missions and how missionaries would go to these foreign lands like Papua New Guinea where no one had ever been before and yet without any witness from any person they would discover in the minds and hearts of these people that they had some kind of lingering hunger after God and they were trying to find out who he was, they would search they would go they would build their own idols. Somehow, even in the pagans who did not ever have a witness from God. There was the evidence that God had put eternity in their hearts, and that a missionary would come connect the dots between God's love that person and oftentimes whole civilizations would be changed and churches would grow. God has put every one of us in a place of knowing God. If we want to.

He's built this place in us that specifically for him. And if you do not know that if you do not accept it. It doesn't go away. It will continue to be there and you know that even after we become Christians there still a bit of that within us.

The Bible says that all creation is groaning, waiting for the day of redemption. What that means is that in this world and what you and I live we can have the joy of knowing Jesus Christ in a personal way, but we were not built for this world and this world was not built for us.

We were built for eternity.

Until we get there when I can.

I have that wonderful feeling that everything is right I we get to heaven first thing you going to do is say and this is what I've been looking for.

Because even as Christians. Romans tells us that we have a hunger in our heart for something more of your notice that when you start out in life and you have these goals and you get there and you realize it's not enough. I remember we started our church. My goal was someday maybe to have a church that had a thousand people in it. When I got to a thousand. I just knew so many people that have 5000, and I don't care what you do, there's always somebody bigger and I finally settled once and for all. I went to India where there was 200,000 people in church.

I've given up that game. I'm here to do what God wants me to do. However, many people he sends me a man what is natural. I was storied by guys who won Super Bowl ring from the time they were in grade school I wanted to play in college when they got in college they wanted to play in the NFL and when they ring they wanted to win the super bowl.

You know that about 15 years after the Super Bowl is the study showed that almost all those rings were gone. They had been sold.

They been given the way they'd been hocked. They were what they were looking for. And I've heard over and over again people have accomplish great things. They get to the place they hope they could get to and it didn't fill the emptiness in their heart you know why Jesus is the only one who can fill the emptiness in your heart, you keep trying.

If you want to. It'll be a frustrating existence. If that's what you do. So eternity is in our hearts.

In fact, St. Augustine once wrote it this way. He said you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they learn to rest. So what is eternal life.

John 17 three says it this way, this is Jesus definition of eternal life. Listen carefully. This is eternal life, that they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. What did Jesus mean by eternal life. Let me tell you a story. I don't how I got fixed on this, but as a young pastor. When I would ever go to do a funeral and go to the cemetery I started cutting get an early walk around and looking at people put on her tombstone turned out to be sort of a little gathering of humor for me over the years, and then people found out about it and they started sending me all these really crazy epitaphs. I had a whole book full of them. Like here lies the body will man please varied me for flowers and trees, but pleasing here just the pod piece yelled out and went to God gives them someplace. This one here lies the body of Marianne Brown that she weighed 400 pounds, but now in sweet repose. She rest in peace and rest on Abram's breast little boy came along and saw thought in the need another stanza, so we added it may be sweet for Marianne but it's really tough on Abraham. So I got all these epitaphs chiller folks. The strangest epitaph you'll ever see, and you will see it over and over. You can get almost any cemetery you will see it more than once.

Here's what it says born August 1, 1930, entered into eternal life. And then there's a date.

The only thing wrong with that is that it's not true.

You do not enter into eternal life.

When you die you enter into eternal life.

When you receive Jesus Christ as your Savior. Jesus said, and I give them eternal life, and they shall never bear so eternal life is described by one Scottish minister as the life of God in the soul of man. When I accept Jesus Christ and he comes to live in that vacuum that God created in my heart. Eternal life begins and when I die, it just takes a step forward. So I am living today. I have eternal life.

We say that on occasion, but we don't really stop to think what it means you don't get eternal life through death. You get eternal life through faith. When you see Jesus Christ and you receive them as your Savior and you become a Christian.

The Bible says you have eternal life. Amen, amen. Well, we're talking about the Jesus you may not know this brand-new series which starts today and I want to introduce you to the man who's rescued me from death and filled me with hope and directed me in the decisions that have shaped my life employed me in his work and is currently preparing a new home for me in heaven where I'm going to spend eternity and of the 10 questions that were going to talk about during this series are 10 things that we all need to know and I'll be honest with you I've studied the Bible now for half a century, and I learned some things about Jesus during this study that I did not really understand before. I can't wait to share them with you will be back here on Monday to conclude our discussion is he from history or from eternity will see you then. The message you have just originated at Shadow Mountain Community Church with senior pastor Dr. David Jeremiah and she with us the difference tuning point is making the like to tuning point PO Box 383.

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