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The God Who Is: Everlasting
The effects of the pandemic are longer lasting and deeper than any of us would have hoped, yet we still serve an everlasting God.
Focus: We will come to know the God who is when we know him as the everlasting rock with an everlasting kingdom.
We’ll do this today by reflecting on the words of people who learned to LIVE victoriously for God while dealing with trying times throughout history - including the Israeli prophet Isaiah, the Israeli King Solomon and Jesus Christ himself.
Everlasting Rock
When we worship Jesus, we do so because he is our everlasting rock whose strength and care are without end.
Isaiah 26:1-4
In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah: “We have a strong city; he sets up salvation as walls and bulwarks. Open the gates, that the righteous nation that keeps faith may enter in. You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.
Because God’s nature is unchanging, his attributes are both consistent and inexhaustible.
This includes his care for his people.
It is why famed preacher Charles Spurgeon, who lived and ministered during the Cholera outbreak of 1854 could say,
“I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the Rock of Ages”
Charles H. Spurgeon
It is through trials that we become broken and humble enough for God to save and transform us.
Think of how often in your life it was through some sort of difficulty that you finally turned to the Lord for your salvation.
It is here that God expresses his everlasting care, which is steadfast, even when our circumstances feel shakey.
Isaiah 63:7-9
I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord, the praises of the Lord , according to all that the Lord has granted us, and the great goodness to the house of Israel that he has granted them according to his compassion, according to the abundance of his steadfast love. For he said, “Surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely.” And he became their Savior. In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
So what can we learn from this?
GOD WANTS YOU TO KNOW HIS EVERLASTING CARE.
We see from this Scripture that God’s love is steadfast - it continues on and lasts, not despite trials, but in the midst of them.
We see that his goodness remains when circumstances seem bleak and he is looking for a people who will acknowledge this by not dealing falsely with him because of their discomforts.
God’s care is abundant.
He is not stingy with it.
God is not aloof, callous or unfeeling, but experiences affliction when those that he loves are afflicted.
Think about a parent and a child (my own experience).
In our afflictions, God looks to save us.
He does so by his presence - meaning his nearness and personal involvement in our lives.
He does this not sometimes, but as with Israel, carries us all of our days.
This means that we should run to God, not from him in our sin.
This means that we should turn to him and his ways first to deliver us in our trials.
At the same time, God spoke in the plural of his people Israel, and is a Father intent on creating an everlasting family.
JUST AS GOD’S PRESENCE IS IMPORTANT IN BRINGING SALVATION TO PEOPLE’S LIVES SO YOUR PRESENCE IS IMPORTANT IN GOD DEMONSTRATING HIS CARE FOR OTHERS AS A ROCK.
As the Body of Christ, we are literally the hands and feet of Jesus expressing his everlasting care.
How do we do this?
We are CONSTANTLY praying for you that God would undergird you, strengthen you, comfort you, provide for you, open doors for you, help you create, build, be eternally focused and involved in building his Kingdom.
A family takes care of one another.
Just as God saves through the angel of his presence, God has his people take care of one another through presence.
Yet it has been a challenge to do so during the pandemic.
Some people have gotten so used to isolation that they are now telling themselves that they prefer to be alone.
People have created grooves for themselves where they treat church like a Netflix series that they simply watch and believe the lie that it is too much effort for them to actually relate with the people who are the church.
They’ve been on vacation from active service and participation.
Yet this is not healthy.
We all have a need to know that we are valuable, have purpose and matter to others in this world.
The pandemic has shown us how the devil, the enemy of our souls, loves to exploit times of isolation and separation.
At the same time, too many individuals are disappointed in relationships because they are looking for people to be their rock when God is the only everlasting one.
How many of you wish people called you more?
Checked in on you?
Made effort to see you?
How many of you also know that the other people that you wish would do this for you are feeling the exact same way and were hoping for that from you?
“Center your life on Jesus...Don’t put your hopes in people, sweetheart. If you do, you’ll only add to their burdens and bring grief upon yourself. Love God, and He will enable you to love others, even when they disappoint you.”
-And the Shofar Blew by Francine Rivers
GOD WANTS YOU TO LEARN TO BE A PART OF GIVING HIS EVERLASTING CARE.
How many people have you checked in on?
Who have you been a support to during this time?
Proverbs 11:25
Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.
Matthew 20:28
28 even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
What are we to do?
Ecclesiastes 7:10
Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.
Forget the former things.
We need to rejoice in all the ways that God has been expanding his Kingdom through the virtual spaces with new salvations, baptisms, etc.
At the same time, we need to find the way to engage God and one another now.
God calls us to engage and be an everlasting family through the church, even when we have to get creative with the means.
What does family do?
They check in on one another.
They actively support and encourage one another.
Know your people.
Daily:
Texting or
Reaching out with phone calls
Weekly:
Asking - How are you doing? - even if you think you know
Outdoor walks
Virtual dinners and game nights
God is an everlasting initiator of care.
This is God being our rock.
He calls us to be touched, strengthened and become like him in this way for others.
It is through this and the preaching of his gospel that we participate in his everlasting kingdom.
Everlasting Kingdom
When we build our lives upon the rock of Christ, he empowers us to live for his Everlasting Kingdom.
The fact that God is our everlasting rock means that times and circumstances change, but his purposes do not.
Why?
Because God is building an everlasting kingdom.
Isaiah 9:6-7
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
THE ZEAL OF THE LORD SPOKEN OF HERE CLEARLY DEMONSTRATES THAT GOD IS PASSIONATE AT ALL TIMES ABOUT BUILDING HIS EVERLASTING KNGDOM.
In the midst of the pandemic, we must allow ourselves to wilt.
We must make a return to actually LIVING life in the Kingdom.
“How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
-C.S. Lewis
The point is this:
You must still live life.
You must still be a disciple.
You must still be about Christ’s Kingdom, making disciples.
If you’ve found yourself on the bench in the midst of the pandemic, solely focused on self-preservation, it’s time to get back in the game.
Pray, volunteer with your church, give, make disciples.
This is how Jesus charged his followers to embrace a life of faith:
Luke 9:57-62
As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
This has been an exposing time.
It shows us to whom we’ve been clinging as our rock and of what kingdom we have actually been a part.
Matthew 21:42-44
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: “‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’? 43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. 44 And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.”
What is it that God has told you to let go of so that you might begin building on the rock and for the glory of his everlasting kingdom?
It is our repentance from sin and faith in Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross that reconciles us to God and gives us access to new life.
Because of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, we too are able to live in God’s everlasting care, no matter the external circumstances. By faith, may we truly LIVE as the people of God, always building our days on the everlasting rock with the same zeal for his everlasting Kingdom that the Lord himself displays.
Study
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Second City Church - The God Who Is - Pastor Rollan Fisher 2020