The Power of Life (2)

IMPORTANCE OF LIFE

1. Your presence here today, your existence in body and spirit as a soul, is a precious gift.
2. Everything about you, internal feelings and thoughts, and effect on others, requires life.
3. Without life, and I speak of your physical body, you instantly corrupt and decay horribly.
4. Life is a gift God gave us in Eden (Gen 2:7), which He never asked for your permission.
5. Without life, you know nothing, can do nothing, and are not known by God or anyone.
6. Think birth: ultrasounds to hear the heartbeat or see movement, and joy at first cry, etc.
7. The prime of life is precious – both before and after, weakness handicaps all functions.
8. God’s inspired philosopher said that a living dog is better than a dead lion (Ec 9:4-10).
9. The fear of death and love of life instincts in men will cause them to fight with their all.
10. What is your life worth? Would you give up your house and/or your 401(k) for it? Yes!
11. Our Lord reasoned that your soul is more important than the whole world (Matt 16:26).
12. Life itself is your greatest asset, but the God who gave it can also take it away. Beware!

 

CURSE OF DEATH

1. Though offered eternal bliss in Eden, father Adam chose death over life against God.
2. Though not our main point here, Adam died three ways (spiritual, physical, and eternal).
3. He could have had of the tree of life to live forever, but God locked it up (Gen 3:22-24).
4. Life expectancy to Moses and today is 73 (Ps 90:10). If you live longer, is it worth it?
5. Every person of age, for children and youth are ignorant, fears and hates certain death.
6. Death is the king of terrors and the firstborn of its kind to fully destroy (Job 18:11-18), but our Jesus is the King of kings, including the king of terrors, for He abolished death.
7. Americans pay $700 billion a year for life and medical insurance premiums against it, and they spend trillions on vitamins, exercise, doctors, and drugs, twice national peers.
8. To eliminate death and judgment, some invented universalism, soul sleep, no hell, etc.
9. Your life is a vapor (Jas 4:14)! You no more than get started to enjoy it … and you die!
10. You are weaker, closer to death, than a moth; you live by nostrils (Job 4:18-21; Is 2:22).
11. Ponce de Leon sought for a Fountain of Youth – don’t laugh – either you do or you will.
12. David by inspiration hopelessly mocked rich men that cannot cure death (Ps 49:6-20).
13. God’s sentence of man to death for sin is an appointment you will keep (Hebrews 9:27).
14. Death is chasing you and corrupting you every day, though it shows mainly in the old.

 

A Few Notes from a Sermon, Eternal Life Is a Gift, preached October 23, 2005

 

1. 1. Death is a happy, lively, firm, and gorgeous girl … as a cold, ashen gray, shriveled old woman!
   2. Death is a strong, virile, energetic, a handsome lad curled up with only yellow skin and bones left.
   3. Death is working throughout you now to choke out your life and leave you a rotting, stinking corpse.
   4. Death is sucking the memory out of your brain, the sight out of your eyes, the hearing out of your ears, the teeth out of your mouth, the taste out of your tongue, the moisture out of your mouth, the elasticity and clarity out of your skin, the firmness out of your flesh, the hormones out of your body, the form out of your shape, the strength out of your bones, the power out of your muscles, the flexibility out of your joints, the color and shine out of your hair, the hair off your head, the brightness out of your eyes, the desire and ability out of your sex, the insulin out of your pancreas, the processing out of your kidneys, the courage out of your mind, the remaining beats out of your heart, and the life out of your soul. See Ecclesiastes 12:1-8 and an expository outline for it … here.
   5. Death is eating you alive while I yet speak, and its conclusive finality is about to take you down.
   6. You will decay until you are a rotting and weak lump unable to eat, swallow, or even get a breath.

 

PLAN FOR LIFE

1. What happened in Eden did not surprise God at all; He had planned it all (Acts 15:18).
2. The whole plan of sin, judgment, redemption, and salvation were by design (Matt 13:35; 25:34; Rom 9:22-24; Eph 1:3-12; 3:8-12; II Thess 2:13-14; II Timothy 1:9; Rev 17:8).
3. In eternity before creation, He promised life and eternal life for His elect children by covenant (II Tim 1:1; Tit 1:2), which is the vain wish of all men, but only true for us!
4. His everlasting covenant assigned them to Jesus and Him to them (Ep 1:3-6; I Pet 1:20).

 

GOD OF LIFE

1. The Creator God, our Father in heaven, is the only God by any measure or all measures.
2. The most incredible and fabulous living existence in the universe is our GOD Jehovah.
3. His greatest name and His memorial forever is … Jehovah – I AM THAT I AM … which is the most transcendent way to describe eternal independence and life within Himself.
4. He alone lifts His hand to heaven to confidently declare, I live forever (Deut 32:39-42).
5. He is God from everlasting to everlasting (Ps 90:2); He inhabits eternity (Isaiah 57:15).
6. His breath turned a handful of dust into a living soul and a rib from Adam into another.
7. His giving or taking it is absolute, unhindered, unquestioned (I Sam 2:6; Dan 4:34-35).
8. He created men with life in Eden, and He took life away in the Flood (Gen 6:17; 7:22).
9. Evolution is absurd many ways, but a chief one is presumption of creating life from death or nonlife, and then beyond that fantasy, it claims to create life reproducing life.
10. David beautifully declared the glory of Jehovah as the Fountain of Life (Psalm 36:5-9).

 

GIFT OF LIFE

1. You are doomed to die; it is coming quickly to destroy all you are, have, and have done.
2. We chose this death and earned it as wages, but God destroyed it by the gift of His Son’s life, which is clearly superior in various ways to Adam’s death (Romans 6:23; 5:15-19).
3. Eternal life is a gift of God’s love for His elect, known by believing (John 3:16), which is not an offer to regenerate, but rather His divine intervention for all kinds of believers.
4. It is called the Book of Life, for all the names in it get eternal life (Rev 20:11-15; 21:27).
5. It is called the Tree of Life, which we lost in Eden, but Jesus won it (Rev 2:7; 22:2,14).
6. It is called the Crown of Life, for it is the reward by Jesus’ death (James 1:12; Rev 2:10).
7. It is called the Water of Life, for believing on Jesus (Jn 4:14; Rev 21:6; 22:17; Is 12:3).
8. It is called the Grace of Life, for only the grace of God saves from death (I Peter 3:7).
9. It is called the Light of Life, for without His life you wander in darkness (Jn 1:4; 8:12).
10. It is called the Ways of Life, for it is what Jesus foresaw for dying (Ps 16:11; Acts 2:28).
11. The gift of life by Jesus’ death is unspeakable and unsearchable (II Cor 9:15; Eph 3:8).
12. You can and should enjoy today the abundant life Jesus intends for us (John 10:10-11).

 

PRINCE OF LIFE

1. God sent His Son to this world by His power of life in the womb of a virgin (Luke 1:35)!
2. Jehovah gave His Son the power of life that He Himself has (John 5:21-29), so Jesus can speak spiritual and physical life to dead men, and we get in the resurrection of life.
3. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No man gets to the Father without Him, and no man has eternal life without Him, for the Father put that gift in His hands (John 14:6).
4. Jesus the Son of God (He is Lord of all!) had full power of His own life (Jn 10:14-18).
5. Jesus declared that He is the resurrection and the life for immortality (John 11:21-27).
6. He proved power of life by raising Lazarus to life after four days (Jn 11:11-15,43-44).
7. This gift of life to His Son included power to give eternal life to His brethren (Jn 17:2).
8. So great is Jesus’ power of life that His death opened cemeteries and His resurrection sent many dead believers into Jerusalem to appear to many (Matt 27:50-53). Hallelujah!
9. The first Adam was merely made a living soul; Jesus is a quickening spirit (I Cor 15:45).
10. God purposed from eternity that Jesus would save us by abolishing death (II Tim 1:10).
11. This is the record – God has given us eternal life through life in His Son (I Jn 5:11-12).
12. Enemies, Satan and Jews, thought they killed Him, but He rose from death (Rev 1:18).
13. There is no other One to consider, for Jesus has the words of eternal life (John 6:67-69).
14. He is called the Word of Life, for the Man Jesus is eternal life (I John 1:1-4; Jn 1:1-4).
15. He is called the Bread of Life, far better than Moses’ manna (Jn 6:31-35,47-51,56-58).
16. He is called the Prince of Life, ruling authority of eternal life (Acts 3:15; 5:31; Rev 1:5).
17. He is called the Spirit of Life, for the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ (Rom 8:2,9; Rev 11:11).
18. Jesus destroyed the devil’s work of death to end fear of death (Heb 2:14-15; I John 3:8).

 

GUARANTEE OF LIFE

1. When you are God’s, like David you can be bound up in the bundle of life (I Sam 25:29).
2. He guarantees life by having His own eternal life for us (Heb 7:23-28; Rom 5:10; 8:34), which is why He was made after the order of Melchisedec – no end of life (Heb 7:3)!
3. He told the Jews of His life-giving power and guaranteed loss of none (John 6:38-40).
4. It is impossible to pluck any of His elect out of His hand or God’s hand (Jn 10:26-29).
5. He told frightened apostles before His death, Because I live, ye shall live also (Jn 14:19).
6. Jesus Christ the Son of God is the Yea and Amen of all God’s promises (II Cor 1:20).
7. With such certain victory over death, we may truly mock it like Paul (I Cor 15:51-57).
8. Eternal life and immortality are so certain as to create great confidence (II Cor 5:1-9), for we eagerly await God’s great work, when mortality will be swallowed up of life!
9. Life, even of the body, the corrupt part of you, merely sleeps in the grave (Matt 9:24; John 11:11; Deuteronomy 31:16; Acts 7:60; I Cor 15:18,51; I Thess 4:14-15; 5:10).

 

PROOF OF LIFE

1. First, there is proof of our Lord’s life, though born of a virgin, He did live (Acts 1:1-2).
2. Second, there is proof of our Lord’s death, in order to know He had power of life, for the Roman soldiers did their work to confirm to Pilate Jesus’ death (John 19:31-37).
3. Third, He was then wrapped meticulously head and body by Joseph and Nicodemus and laid in a tomb (John 19:38-42). They worked closely with His body. He was very dead.
4. Fourth, there is the proof of His life after His resurrection (Acts 1:1-4; I Cor 15:3-8).
5. Fifth, all apostles were eyewitnesses of the resurrected Christ (Acts 1:21-22; 10:39-41).
6. Sixth, proof of your life is by gospel faith (John 5:24; 6:47; I John 5:13; II Cor 2:16).
7. Seventh, you prove your eternal life by a changed life (I Thess 1:2-4; II Peter 1:5-11).
8. Other gods, like Baal, required your son’s life by fire, but our God sacrificed His Son!
9. Religions today, like Islam, ask you to die for eternal life, but our Jesus died for our life.

 

CELEBRATION OF LIFE

1. Given the hopeless facts of certain death in three ways, eternal life should be celebrated!
2. Since we have eternal life … how can that adjective be applied to life? … no more death!
3. The apostles were eyewitnesses of Jesus’ resurrection, for in a guarded sense, any man can die, but only a divine miracle can raise a man from the dead and out of his grave.
4. If Jesus is not risen, His death is in vain for its purpose of sinless life (I Cor 15:12-19).
5. First, life is celebrated in the gospel – the glorious news of death abolished, the free gift of eternal life, immortality (II Tim 1:8-11; I Cor 15:1-8; Acts 5:20; John 6:68; Phil 2:16).
6. Second, life is celebrated in baptism – the symbolic act of burial and resurrection of the life – of Jesus, of Christian discipleship, of bodily resurrection – for Baptist baptism (all other baptisms are heresy) is life from the dead cubed (Col 2:12; Rom 6:4; I Cor 15:29).
7. Third, life is celebrated by meeting the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day, when Jesus revealed Himself to His apostles and sent the Spirit (Jn 20:19; Acts 2:1; 20:7; Rev 1:10).
8. Fourth, life is celebrated in the Lord’s Supper to remember Him losing His life for us until He comes for us (I Cor 11:26), but He rose from death to guarantee eternal life.
9. Fifth, we celebrate the gift of life by a heavenly and joyful consciousness of what He has done for us and what He has in store for us (Col 3:1-4; I Pet 1:3-9; II Cor 5:14-15).
10. If death is half as bad as it is, and eternal life half as good as the Bible, we owe Him all!
11. By Jesus Christ’s power of life, you can have an abundant life now in Him and eternal life to come with Him (John 10:10; Matt 10:39; 16:25; Mark 10:29-30; John 12:25).