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“Eternal
Life”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: John 17: 1-11
“And this is eternal life, that
they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have
sent.”
DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS this may seem absolutely fabulous to us, and
it is God’s very reality; we may very well experience eternal life
this morning and at many other times.
When speaking about eternal life here, I do not mean something
about the second coming of Christ or some kind of death to happen first.
That is not what I am talking about.
God may surprisingly ambush us at any time in our lives, right
here, and anywhere, with an experience of our eternal life.
What I suppose is that when we think of eternal life, we think in terms
of living without any temporary end to our life.
And we may have many imaginary pictures of what heaven is, along
with how we are let in. To
us, usually, eternal life is simply about living forever in heaven.
With all this being said, it is very interesting, that within an hour,
our two, of when Jesus is going to be taken captive, He expresses His
definition of eternal life by looking up into heaven and praying, to God
the Father, “And this is eternal
life, that they may know you, the only God, and Jesus Christ whom you
have sent.”
Next Sunday is the Day of Pentecost, where we bring back to memory, and
celebrate a remarkable coming of the Holy Spirit into the church. In our reading from the book of Acts, this morning, before
Jesus was lifted up into the sky, and was covered over by a cloud,
returning to our heavenly Father, He told his disciples that when they
receive the Holy Spirit, they will have the power to share the truth of
Jesus with all kinds of people in the world.
His disciples, his Mother, and even brothers of his got together
and prayed every night.
The presence of the Holy Spirit, in the context of Pentecost, is often
described in terms of speaking in tongues, and the faithful power of
healing.
I have a dear friend named Jack Plain.
He lives in Pennsylvania, and when I was in the hospital, after
Christmas, he flew down to Dallas, rented a car and a hotel room, and
came and stayed with me, every day, for about a week.
Jack has a beautiful testimony. He
was brought into faith, while he was in prison about 30 years ago.
He has Diabetes and takes Insulin every day.
While in prison, part of the medical department came by every
night to give him Insulin. According to his testimony, one night they forgot to come by
with his medicine. He got
down on his knees, next to his bead, and started to pray. Within a
little while he started praying in sounds he never heard before; he was
praying in tongues. And
early the next morning, when the medical department realized they had
overlooked Jack, they came to his cell, and when they tested his
circumstances, they found out that he had in his blood all the Insulin
he needed. Jack was not
healed of Diabetes, but he prayed in tongues and was miraculously filled
with Insulin for that night.
When Jack came to see me, last December, in the hospital, we did not
speak in tongues, and I am not sure about any miraculous healings or
not, but what I truly believe, in Christ’s faith, is that we
experienced some aspect of our eternal life.
We experienced very meaningful love.
Our love was not just human; it did not just start with us.
We were gifted by God the Holy Spirit to participate in the love
between Jesus and our Father.
According to the Word of God, our gift from the Holy Spirit is knowledge
of our heavenly Father, knowledge of Jesus Christ and knowledge of their
love. Obviously, an
important concept in these words is knowing.
My friends, the reason this is so important for us to understand, is
because the knowledge of God cannot start with us.
If we were as intellectual as Albert Einstein, or Steven Hawking,
we could not bring ourselves to know God.
The knowledge of God is only in God.
The knowledge of God is self knowledge.
Within God are the subject and the object.
The Son knows the Father, and the Father knows the Son. And one of the greatest gifts the Holy Spirit gives us is our
knowing our place in these relationships, and knowing our experiencing
them here and now.
Therefore, a very important prayer in our lives, continually should be
that the Holy Spirit would lay down in us the very knowing in God, and
that through the faith of Christ, we may be aware when we are
experiencing our eternal lives here and now.
Let us pray…
Amen.
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