The Joy Of Eternal Life

The Joy of Eternal Life

Excerpted from “Departed Saints Yet Living”

Sermon #1863, October 4, 1885

When we think about eternal life, does it spark in us feelings of joy or of fear? This sermon speaks to the never-ending happiness that awaits us.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

Hebrews 11:13-16

Spurgeon • Here eternal life is implied: God is not the God of the dead, but of the living (Luke 20:38).

Does the eternal God covenant with creatures that shall live only seventy years, then go out like a candle snuff?

When David said in dying, “He has made with me an everlasting covenant” (2 Samuel 23:5), his comfort lay in his belief that he should live in the everlasting age to enjoy the fruit of that covenant. How could there be an everlasting covenant with a creature who would cease to exist?

In very deed the covenant that God made with Abraham was not altogether, or even mainly, concerning temporary things. It was not the land of Canaan alone of which the Lord spoke to Abraham, but the patriarchs declared plainly that they desired “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16).

Even when they were in Canaan, they were still looking for a country, and the city promised to them was not Jerusalem, for according to Paul in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, they still were looking for a “city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (verse 10).

They did not find in their earthly lives the complete fulfillment of the covenant, for they received not the promises but saw them from afar and were persuaded of them. The temporary blessings which God gave to them were not their expected inheritance, but they took hold upon invisible realities and lived in expectation of them. The covenant blessings were of an order and a class that could not be contained within the space of this present mortal life.

Now if the Lord made with them a covenant concerning eternal blessings, these saints must live to enjoy those blessings. God did not promise endless blessings to the creatures of a day.

More especially, beloved, it is to be remembered that for the sake of these eternal things the patriarchs had given up passing or temporary enjoyments. Abraham might have been a quiet prince in his own country living in comfort, but for the sake of the spiritual blessing, he left Chaldea and came to wander in the pastures of Canaan, in the midst of enemies, and to dwell in tents in the midst of discomforts.

[The patriarchs] left friends and family and all the advantages of settled civilized life to be rangers of the desert, exiles from their fatherland. They were the very types and models of those who have no abiding city here. Therefore, for certain, though they died in hope, not having received the promise, we cannot believe that God deceived them. Their God was no mocker of them, and therefore they must live after death.

They had lived in this poor life for something not seen as yet, and if there be no such thing and no future life, they had been duped and deceived into a mistaken self-denial. If there be no life to come, the best philosophy is that which says, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (Isaiah 22:13; 1 Corinthians 15:32).

Do you not see the force of our Savior’s reasoning? God, who has led his people to abandon the present for the future, must justify their choice.

Besides, the Lord had staked his honor and his reputation upon these men’s lives. “If you want to know how I deal with my servants, go and look at the lives of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.”

Does the Lord intend us to judge his goodness to his servants from the written life of Jacob? Or from the career of any one of his servants? The judgment must include the ages of endless happiness. This present life is but the brief introduction to the volume of our history. It is but the rough border. These rippling streams of life come not to an end but flow into the endless, shoreless ocean of bliss.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have long been enjoying happiness and shall enjoy it throughout eternity. He [God] would not have spoken as he did if the visible were all and there were no future to counterbalance the tribulations of this mortal life. God is not the God of the short lived, who are so speedily dead, but he is the living God of an immortal race, whose present is but a dark passage into a bright future which can never end.

Alcorn • Spurgeon’s happiness about Heaven—his joyful anticipation about being with God and his followers in that place—stands in stark contrast to most people’s view of the afterlife.

Many believe this life is all there is. Their philosophy? “You go around only once, so grab for whatever you can.”

If you’re a child of God, you do not just go around once on Earth. This one earthly life is not all there is. You get another—one far better and without end. You’ll inhabit the New Earth! You’ll live with the God you cherish and the people you love as an undying person on an undying Earth. Those who go to Hell are the ones who go around only once here.

We use the term eternal life without thinking what it means. Life is an earthly existence in which we work, rest, play, and relate to one another in ways that include using our creative gifts to enrich culture and then enjoy it. Yet we have redefined eternal life to mean an off-Earth existence stripped of the defining properties of what we know life to be. Eternal life means enjoying forever the finest moments of life on Earth the way they were intended. Since in Heaven we’ll finally experience life at its best, it would be more accurate to call our present existence the beforelife rather than to call what follows the afterlife.

After reading my novel Deadline, which portrays Heaven as a real and exciting place, a woman wrote me, “I’ve been a Christian since I was five. I’m married to a youth pastor. When I was seven, a teacher at my Christian school told me that when I got to Heaven I wouldn’t know anyone or anything from Earth. I was terrified of dying. I was never told any different by anyone. . . . It’s been really hard for me to advance in my Christian walk because of this fear of Heaven and eternal life.”

Let those words sink in: “this fear of Heaven and eternal life.” Referring to her recently transformed perspective, she said, “You don’t know the weight that has been lifted off of me. . . . Now I can’t wait to get to Heaven.”

When an English vicar was asked by a colleague what he expected after death, he replied, “Well, if it comes to that, I suppose I shall enter into eternal bliss, but I really wish you wouldn’t bring up such depressing subjects.”

I believe there’s one central explanation why so many of God’s children have such a vague, negative, and uninspired view of Heaven: the work of Satan.

Some of Satan’s favorite lies are about Heaven. Revelation 13:6 (NIV) tells us the satanic beast “opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven.” Our enemy chooses three main targets to slander: God’s person, God’s people, and God’s place—namely, Heaven.

Satan need not convince us that Heaven doesn’t exist. He need convince us only that Heaven is a boring, unearthlike place. If we believe that lie, we’ll be robbed of our joy and anticipation, we’ll set our minds on this life and not the next, and we won’t be motivated to share our faith. Why should we share the “Good News” that people can spend eternity in a boring, ghostly place that we are not looking forward to ourselves?

Satan hates the New Heaven and the New Earth as much as a deposed dictator hates the new nation and the new government that replace his. Satan cannot keep Christ from defeating him, but he can persuade us that Christ’s victory is only partial, that God will abandon his original plan for mankind and for the Earth.

Because Satan hates us, he’s determined to rob us of the joy we’d have if we believed what God tells us about the magnificent world to come.