Sermon Cloud

Eternity

Colossians 3
1If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. 2Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. 3For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

1 Corinthians 3:9-15
9For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building. 10According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. 11For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, 13each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. 14If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. 15If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

One of the most compelling concepts in the bible is the concept of eternity.

What is Eternity???

In France in a school of learning for young blind children the teacher was addressing biblical truths one particular day and asked the class to try and define eternity. One young lad didn’t speak but stepped forward and took the piece of chalk and wrote on the board: “The lifespan of God.” Than he sat down.

I have heard so many people try and descried the concept of eternity. I have heard illustration after illustration of sincere preachers trying to paint an accurate picture of what eternity is but they all fall far short of the reality.

If God revealed the truth of eternity and the revelation of infinity to you your mind would hardly be able to comprehend it and would probably break. The concepts of:
- A universe without end
- No two fingerprints alike. (at least 6 billion  variation in such a tiny amount of area)
- Death
These notions are baffling to say the least. Yet the concept of eternity is far above all these.

But we must rest assured that comprehension does not equal truth.
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Eternity is both before and after what's now. It’s not just the afterlife like so many assume it is in fact what existed before time began.

- Pre = How you ended up here. Where did you come from? Was your birthday your starting point?
- Post = What happens after.

It could be well assumed that on the earth right now is the only place in any realm spiritual and natural than is controlled by time.

“Who you live for will determine where you spend eternity but how you life will determine how you life in eternity.” J. Bevere
How you choose to live while alive here on Earth dictates how you will spend eternity.

This finite existence of a scanty 70-80 years (If you do well) compared to eternity equals NOTHING!

James in his epistle tells us that life is but a vapour. Job says that life is like a breath.

Concerning duration in the light of eternity our lives equal absolutely nothing.

If you take any finite number and divide it by infinite you get 0 every time.

The best way to illustrate this is if I told you that how you lived in the next 24 hours will effect the next 1000 years of your life. Now think how big a thousand years is. To go back that far we would have to go back past the world wars, back past, Captain Cook, back past The reformation, back past William Wallace, back past King Arthur and the nights of the round table. THAT’S A STINKING LONG TIME!!!!

 So would you live the next 24 hours as if that’s all that existed?
Or

 Would you live with the next 1000 years in mind???

Yet that still falls immensely short of the correlation between this life and eternity…

There are some apostate preachers teaching that as a believer and professor of Christ we will bypass the judgment and all receive an identical reward. But this is absolutely unbiblical according to this scripture in 1 Corinthians 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
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You have just finished your race…

There you are stand with the masses before the throne. Billions are watching and waiting for their turn. You hear their names as each one is called and asked to give an account for the life they lived. You were so sure of yourself while you were still on the earth but now you feel a little uneasy. For some reason looking at Him, the Great I AM your confidence is a little deflated. This is the judgment seat of Christ. You hear people murmuring small comments and you see some literally writhing in pain while trying to keep silent. This is the day that every preacher every bible teacher, every pastor, every author and every scripture has tried to prepare you for. There can never be, and never will exist a more important day than this one. The only thing that brings you any kind of comfort is remembering back to the night when you responded to a call to surrender your life to Christ in a youth group. Still for some reason you don’t feel good at all. You hear some excited voices across from you say in hush tones “I wonder what He’s like? I can’t wait to meet Him.” You paid enough attention as your pastor preached to know they won’t fare good at all. If you haven’t met Him by now than you will be cast out forever.

Names are called but the exact wording is unclear. You can’t make out any sense of what is being said. You hear a name called faintly and the person right next to you shrieks. You look around and there is a man with a look of horror on his face. You can’t work out how he knows it’s him you barely heard any sound at all let alone be able to distinguish a name from it. But none the less he makes his way forward sobbing into his hands.

Than all of a sudden like the loudest shout of an archangel your name is boomed louder than anything else you have ever heard. It was so loud your entire body shakes and you’re just about knocked back by the sound. “Wow,” You think to yourself; “I wonder why my name was called so loud when everyone else’s name was barely audible?” It dawns on you that the voice isn’t appealing to people’s ears but their hearts. As you begin to walk forward you realise you aren’t walking at all but you are actually hovering toward it at a blinding speed. As you draw nearer and nearer to the Great White Throne you are absolutely flabbergasted as the staggering glory around His throne becomes all the more confronting. You realise at this point, that if you had been able to use every tongue in the universe and every endearing word ever uttered you still couldn’t scratch the surface of how Holy and Glorious He really is. You are close enough now and you can see His eyes of fire but just before you can take control of you physical faculties you fall on your knees face down as though you had just been burdened by the heaviest weight in the world. The solar systems themselves pilled on your back couldn’t have felt heavier, and you shout with all you have “Jesus is Lord!”

You don’t really know how long you stayed there for, but you knew that ever fibre of your being was first and foremost created to pay Him the highest homage.

Suddenly you feel a hand on your shoulder and you feel the strength to rise and stand before the greatest entity EVER! He addresses you in a peculiar way. He looks you in the eyes and says Evangelist Anderson you have been called here to give an account of the life I gave to you before the beginning of time. You take the moment pause and try to speak but all you can say is; “Jesus is Lord!” “Jesus is Lord!” “Jesus is Lord!” “Jesus is Lord!” “Jesus is Lord!” “Jesus is Lord!” “Ah, um, oh, Jeeesssusss… I think you have the, the, the, wrong p p p ppersonn? I was in fact an accountant. Yea yea yea yea th th tha that’s right my name is accountant Anderson I was an accountant.” You look up and His eyes catch you dead in their tracks. He ignores you and continues what He was saying. “Evangelist Anderson you were assigned, called and appointed to win 4000 souls for my kingdom, on the continent of Asia, where are they?” Your body begins to have a mind of its own and starts to shudder, you begin utter something as He keeps His fiery gaze fixed on you. Had you been presented with an option of wether you could cease to exist at that very moment you would choose it without any hesitation. He doesn’t look angry or irritated but if truth and precision had an expression they were completely embodied in His look. Again you stutter like babbling child and you say; “Lord I was an accountant and I tithed and I served you as best as I knew how please Lord understand, I had a family to consider and a life to live, missionaries don’t live very comfortable lives. I rarely missed a day at church and I helped out at evangelistic events.”

As you were speaking surrounding you appeared everything you had ever owned and worked for. All your money and possessions were laid our before you. You could see everything you had worked your entire life to achieve and than like a flash of lightening a fire engulfed it all. The fire burned for a moment or two and than was gone and al that was left was ash and cinders. The Lord looked at you again and said take up your inheritance and enter into the rest of the Lord. You bend down and try your best to gather up what you could with your bare hands tears ran down your face as you saw all you had invested your life into reduced in a second to ash.

You walk toward the gate of heaven hardly noticing the magnitude of its splendour trying to keep in your arms what you could but it was hard to walk and carry a pile of ash while you were quivering with shame and despair. You notice as you are about to enter into the great gate of the heavenly realm a chasm of nothingness separating you from the most horrible sight your eyes were ever unfortunate enough to observe. The appearance of which looked so hideous that the pile of ash you were carrying now looked as beautiful as a big bouquet of flowers. You knew immediately it was the pits of hell prepared for the devil and his angels. All of a sudden you could see faces in the lake of fire thrashing about trying to escape the burning liquid they were forever trapped in. and you had the most horrible feeling of all. A feeling that made your stomach just about turn inside your belly as you realised that the 4000 souls you were appointed to save would be forever trapped in those pits because you preferred a life of comfort and opulence to a life spent in obedience.
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This scripture here in 1st Corinthians is more real than ever now seeing the realities of this judgment.

1 Corinthians 3:9-15
9For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building. 10According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. 11For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, 13each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. 14If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. 15If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. 
Henry David Thoreau.

The question I want to ask you is what do you live for???
Do you live as though this life was all there was than you succumb to the grave and remain no more?

I heard one young person who was so once convinced of the truth one day and say: “Life’s about ‘just having fun’ you can’t take all that stuff too seriously”

There are others who defiantly reject any thought of an after life in the hope of feeling peace here and now. But this will never be the case. Peace will never be obtained through a denial of truth. For as crippling as the thought of forever is, the thought of your existence simply ceasing at one point is far more incomprehensible.

As the book of Ecclesiastes tells us that God has put eternity in all our hearts; do you live as one who doesn’t expect to escape the judgment and enter heaven based on your merit, but rather seek His will for your life and walk in it?