Tag: live forever

Alive

The LORD’s people are alive forever

Read: Deuteronomy 32

On that same day the LORD told Moses, … “There on the mountain that you have climbed you will die and be gathered to your people, just as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people.” (Deuteronomy 32:48, 50)

Reflect:

What did the LORD mean when he said, “You will die and be gathered to your people”? How was Moses to be “gathered”? Surely in death he would be separated from his people, the Israelites who would enter the Promised Land without him. So how can I understand this prophetic speech by the LORD to Moses?

It is necessary first to understand that Moses’ people were not only the Israelites who travelled with him. They were also the Israelites who had gone before. The patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their wives Sarah, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel, together with Jacob’s concubines, Zilpah and Bilhah. The twelve sons of Jacob and Dinah, their sister. The 70-odd descendants who went down to Egypt and the tens or hundreds of thousands who left Egypt when the LORD opened the sea before them. These were Moses’ people.

And when the LORD gathered Moses to them, he did so to a living people; people who had died yet were (and are) still alive. As Jesus said (Matthew 22:31b-32), “Have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.” God’s people are alive forever, because Jesus paid the price for our eternal life with his blood.

crux:

The LORD’s people are alive forever.

Respond:

LORD God Almighty,

You are immortal, the Alpha and Omega, beginning and the end, who was and is and is to come. LORD, you live forever.

Thank you for the gift of eternal life in perfect relationship with you, which you have given to me through your Son Jesus Christ. Thank you for your promise that I shall spend my eternity with you, in the radiant splendour of your Son, with all my Christian brothers and sisters, through faith in Christ.

Thank you for Peggy and Daryl, who share this flight with me and will also be alive forever in your presence.

Amen.

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Life

Eternal life is found in God’s Son, not in science

Read: 1 John 5:1-12

And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. (1 John 5:11-12)

Reflect:

I once heard pop-culture science journalist Karl Kruszelnicki speak to a cohort of Australian school students. It was the year 2000, the new millennium, a year of hopes, dreams and new starts, the year the Olympics came to Australia and I met and married my husband. Then a high school science and maths teacher, I was keen to hear what Kruszelnicki had to say, but I remember only one thing from his talk.

Kruszelnicki told the students that, given the speed of scientific discovery and development, he thought their generation would either be the last generation to die or the first generation to live forever.

Such a bold claim. It seemed far fetched to me then, and more so now, but it has stuck with me for 18 years. We may have discovered quarks and found evidence for bosons, identified telomeres and perfected gene splicing techniques, but still, doctors can’t bring someone back from the dead when they are even three days in the grave, like Jesus did.

I am certain that I know a far better, more reliably guaranteed route to eternal life than any scientific, medical and technological advancement. I know this method works because it has been proven, and the historical evidence for its successful occurrence is overwhelming. God has given me eternal life, and this gift of eternal life is found in his Son, Jesus Christ – the first to be raised from the dead by the Father.

If I relied on Kruszelnicki’s science to keep me alive I’d either be devastated when I die despite all science can do, or I’d be disappointed by an elongated life stretched thin at the edges, lacking the abundance and fullness of life in Jesus Christ. I put my faith in Jesus Christ and God’s gift, not in the alluring false promises of Kruszelnicki or any other scientific prophet.

Crux:

Eternal life is found in God’s Son, not in science.

Respond:

LORD God Almighty,

You have the words of eternal life.
You are Source and Sustainer, Sacrifice and Saviour.
You are the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End,
the everlasting One who was and is and is to come, the I AM.

I bow my head in reverential awe before you.

Science, medicine and mathematics are great, but they can’t measure you, they can’t describe you, they can’t explain you, they can’t reveal you. Only your Son, your Spirit, your Scripture can do that.

In Scripture, I see your generosity to me in sharing your life with me in your Son.

In the testimony of your Spirit, I know the truth that Jesus is the Son of God.

In your Son, I have eternal life, abundant life, that does not rely upon medicine or technology, but upon the Creator of the Universe, who does not fail.

Thank you.

Amen.