I feel like I’ve been in church this week. I’ve been in a lot of churches you know within a few days time when you can go into the church to sometimes stand in the very pulpit of Charles Spurgeon and Wesley and Newton and Kerry and Fuller, Bunyan, Haldane, John Knox, all in one week you feel like you’ve been in church but also encouraged by the think of the great men who have preached the Word of God. In Revelation chapter 1 I ended verse 17 just short of the red letters so we pick up there and notice these three I Am’s and the things that Jesus says to John. Let me read 17 again when I saw him I felt at his feet.
He laid his right hand upon me. This is Jesus now giving comfort to John saying unto me Fear not I am the first and the last. I am he that liveth and was dead and behold I’m alive forever more Amen and have the keys of hell and of death. I want you to hold your place there and go back to the book of 1st Timothy and hang on to a verse in 1st Timothy chapter 1 verse 17 which I think gives us a parallel thought to what we’re reading in Revelation chapter 1. In 1st Timothy 1 verse 17 Paul often does this in his writings he will be writing along and he’ll go into this praise to the Lord. Notice in 1st Timothy 1 17 now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God be honor and glory forever and ever.
Amen. Did you notice that the song that we just sung is from this verse? But I want you to notice that the parallel to our verse especially verse the end of verse 17 and 18 in Revelation 1 gives us this three-fold division.
Jesus Christ is the king and he is eternal, he is immortal, and he is invisible and he tells John those three things as he comforts John. Now if you’re in 1st Timothy 1 keep your place there but look also at chapter 6 and verse 15. You’re in 1st Timothy chapter 6 and verse 15. Speaking again of the Lord which in his times he shall show who is the blessed and only potentate.
It’s an unusual Greek word translated with an unusual English word. The only potentate, the king of kings and Lord of lords. Notice who only hath immortality. That is the Lord Jesus Christ dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto whom no man hath seen nor can see. He’s not only immortal, he’s invisible to whom be honor and power everlasting.
And so the three things I want to speak to you about in our text today is that Jesus is eternal, he is immortal and that he is invisible. When we think of eternal we usually think of time, a beginning and an end, and beyond that being eternal going from one end to the other. When we think of immortal we think of existence. Jesus Christ himself is immortal but you and I die.
Jesus Christ could not die, he could I mean, but he couldn’t stay in the grave. And when we think of invisible we think of space, right? We live in a space-time continuum and so we see one another but there are many things that we do not see.
And so those things are invisible to us. Remember when Paul wrote to the Ephesians that said that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. That you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. It is striking to me that in Revelation 1 Jesus is comforting John. John sees the Lord and describes what he saw and then falls down on his face prostrate before him as we ought to if we ever understood who Jesus really is. And as we do that we are before him like that as we should be.
Maybe every day we should be, shouldn’t we? When we read God’s Word and we see Christ in the pages of Scripture we ought to be on our knees and on our face before him too. But Christ puts his hand on John and says fear not John. A common expression in the Bible when we see these immortal things and we understand these invisible things fear comes to our heart and often the scripture says fear not.
not because I’m taking care of things. And so with that, notice back in Revelation now how that he says to the church in Smyrna, look at chapter 2 verse 8. There are two great churches described in chapters 2 and 3. One of them is Smyrna in chapter 2 verse 8. Under the angel of the church in Smyrna, right, these things sayeth, the first and the last which was dead and is alive, the eternal one and the immortal one.
Let me give you comfort in your struggles as you struggle in this life. Also in chapter 3 verse 7, the other great church is the Philadelphia church. Under the angel of the church in Philadelphia, right, these things sayeth, he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shuteth and shuteth and no man openeth. But these attributes of God and of Christ are a comfort to this good church as they struggle for him. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I have, but unbelievers who disregard the Christian message, who have rejected a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, are betting that these attributes are not true. They are hoping, they are trusting in the fact that when their life is said and done, that Jesus Christ was not eternal, that he was not immortal, that he did not come out of the grave. They are hoping that there are no invisible things over there that then they will see that now they can’t see. The lost person in this world is betting that these things are not true. These facts would be no comfort to them. If John were a lost man and running from Jesus Christ, what good would it have done him for Jesus to say, I am eternal and I am immortal and I am invisible? John would shake in his boots as any sinner ought. But unbelievers find their comfort in materialism and in naturalism and in the things that they can see and in the things that they can feel, in things that excite them now, in the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.
That’s where they find their comfort. I was reminded, I don’t know how many times this week, all you have to do is walk in the large cities of this world and the cities that we live in and you see sinners drowning themselves in their old nature, in drunkenness, in carousing, in language, in noise constantly, in language constantly, in attention to themselves and their own life. And they are drowning themselves in these things, hoping not to have to face the things that are eternal and immortal and invisible.
So in London, you go through that city and they still have these beautiful old churches that at one time, Charles Spurgeon preached in this church, John Gill preached here, John Newton who wrote Amazing Grace, a church both in London and up in Olney, churches where these men, John and Charles, Wesley preached and you see these churches but you don’t see anyone interested in them anymore. They don’t even know what they are anymore. You may be standing in front of such a place taking a picture and they kind of stop and look at you and wonder, what are you taking a picture of?
Is this something important? And that’s the way it is. I thought if you have an aquarium and you have fish swimming around the aquarium and you put one of those little castle looking buildings into the aquarium at the bottom and the fish run around it, I’m sure the fish aren’t swimming around that thing. Isn’t this a nice looking castle? Don’t you notice how it’s put together?
I wonder who lived in this castle. No, they’re just swimming around it. They’re not noticing anything. If you put a model of a church down on an ant hill and the ants just crawled all over it and in it and around it and everything else, I’m sure the ants aren’t saying, isn’t this a nice church? You know, great men used to preach in this church or like a beehive, you know, where you see the bees just crawling and covering something. And that’s the feeling you get sometimes in our cities where great things have happened and God has done great things. And good men have left us good memories of those things.
And yet now thousands upon thousands of people swarming all around in a city like London is still one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world and one of the largest and people just shoulder to shoulder in the subways and on the sidewalks going past these things and never thinking about them. And you know why? Because these things are no comfort to them. They find their joy and they find their pleasures in the things of this world and they don’t want to think about the next life and they don’t want to think about the claims that Jesus Christ may have on them.
them. Believers like to think of the things of God. We think of what God has made.
We think of His handy work in the stars, the sun, moon and stars. We look at the beautiful earth that God has made and we realize it is a creation. It is done by our maker. And yet we still remember as Paul did standing on Mars Hill when he said, God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. Neither is worshiped with men’s hands as if he needed anything, seeing he give it to all life and breath and all things. And the believer finds comfort in that and joy in that. That we understand who God is, but the unbeliever does not. Paul described him to the Philippians in chapter three for many walk of whom I have told you often and now tell you weeping.
They are the enemies of the cross of Christ whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, whose glory is in their shame and who mind earthly things. And sadly that’s where many people are today. We were standing in St. Giles church in Edinburgh where John Knox was the pastor. John Knox started the Reformation in Scotland like Luther did in Germany and Calvin did in Switzerland and Knox did this in Scotland. And there’s a statue of him there still in that church. We were standing by a statue and this little Scottish fellow happened to be standing there the same time actually Aaron was standing there and my sister Deborah and they were looking at the statue and this little Scottish man said, oh this was a terrible man.
And they kind of look back and said, really? Yes, he was one of those men that preached on sin and hell and brimstone, you know, and that kind of guy. I don’t think that the understanding of heaven and hell would be much comfort to a man like that, do you?
If he believed what Knox was preaching, maybe it would be, but it wasn’t. Fire and brimstone, yes, Saturday, Friday night we were in Edinburgh and they’re having a rugby match Saturday. Yesterday they had this huge rugby match and so people were pouring into Edinburgh and we went all the places in the daytime we saw many of these type of, I saw where Moody came to Scotland and preached to 10,000 and they turned thousands away and Iris Sankie saying the 90 and 90 composed the song there and all of those wonderful places but as nighttime came on and the Peterson’s came to see us Cindy and Phil and their kids and they were with us and so we ate dinner together and then we were walking around and some of those places that we had seen earlier that day and as nighttime came on folks the darkness literally set in and not just the darkness from the sun but the darkness from the human nature and the drinking began and the cursing and the fighting in the streets and those places that a few hours ago were bright and cheery were now looking even dangerous and here we were walking with a pastor and his wife and their four children and there were places I felt a little afraid that hours ago were beautiful to look at and here is man’s nature setting in hiding himself doing his evil in the nighttime and all night long Friday night knowing that we were going to get up leave early and be on an airplane for 24 hours or whatever they’re screaming in the streets and fighting going on and all of that what a terrible thing is it a comfort for people like that to say hey Jesus Christ is eternal no comfort to them they’re hoping by all measures that he is not eternal to say that Jesus Christ is immortal he rose from the dead they are hoping with all their life and all their being Jesus Christ didn’t rise from the dead they’re banking their life on that very fact but Jesus Christ still folks throughout history rises like one of those spires above the city and remains throughout history as the pinnacle of God’s story and his redemption he is like the sun that drives away the stars and the moon at night and shines in the daytime and someday Jesus Christ in the day of the Lord will shine forever on this earth now back to our text in Revelation 1 and let me tell you three things then about Jesus Christ quickly first of all Jesus is eternal notice again I am the first and the last he is eternal look back at verse 8 we’ve seen it already I am alpha and omega the first letter of the alphabet the last letter the beginning and the ending sayeth the Lord which is which was which is to come the almighty look at verse 11 he is saying I am alpha and omega the first and the last and he says it again in verse 8 of chapter 2 we’ve read already these things say it the first and the last which was dead excuse me and is alive we understand that Jesus Christ is pre-existent that is that he existed before and before the first light was spoken into existence and before the first molecule created by God out of nothing Jesus Christ He’s pre-existent. He’s pre-existent. But he’s not just pre-existent without being eternal, as the cults might teach us today. Rather, he is pre-existent because he is eternal. Because his going forth is of old from everlasting Micah says. And so he has always been and always will be. We think of time and space usually as, here’s the beginning point and here’s the end point.
And that’s right. I mean, he was there in the beginning of this world. He’ll be there at the very last second of this world.
But we ought to think of it beyond that. Eternity, time and space, from the beginning of time to the end of time, from the beginning of the creation to the end of the creation is but one day in the life of Jesus Christ. It’s one second within the life of Jesus Christ.
One nanosecond. How can you measure within something that is eternal? All of time and space is just but a moment in the perspective of Jesus Christ. But even more than that, he is the first and the last. He is the first of all knowledge. Everything there is to be known, every fact, every thing that could be gathered, he is the originator of. He is the first thing in knowledge.
He is the first of all moral attributes. Is there love in this world? Then he loved first. Is there beauty in this world? Then he was beautiful first. Is there mercy and grace? Then he was merciful and graceful first.
All that is beauty, all that is design came from the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, now into the King eternal, immortal and invisible. In Timothy and chapter 6 verse 15, we picked up these two things, who only hath immortality. That’s our second point, that no man hath seen nor can see.
That’s our third point. But in the first, he says this, in his time he will show who is the blessed and only potentate the King of kings and Lord of lords. You know what it is to be eternal is to be king of kings.
When you are eternal, you are Lord of lords. A king is only king as long as he lives. I’m reminded in a place like England and Scotland, basically when you go there, it’s the study of kings and queens.
I mean, it’s the study of who is king at that time or who is queen at that time. They reigned from the time that their father or mother died until the time that they died. That’s when they had power. That’s when they had control over things. When they died, they had no control.
Now it goes to someone else. The Aaronic priesthood of the Old Testament is that way, isn’t it? Those priests were priests as long as they lived. And until the day they died, and then when they died, their son became the priest and he was in control.
Listen to Hebrews 7. They truly were many priests because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death, but this man, meaning Jesus Christ, because he continues ever, that is, he is eternal, hath an unchangeable priesthood, wherefore he is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. And the reason why if you know Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are saved eternally. Regardless of whether people like that doctrine or not, you are saved eternally because Jesus Christ is eternal. And he could do nothing else in his act of saving you.
What a wonderful thing that is. And he is Lord of lords, not only king of kings then, and by the way then he is king of all kings that have ever lived. And any king who is mortal and not eternal, who will die one day if he’s worth his salt, understood that he has a king. If I am the king of England, or if I’m the president of the United States, I do well to remember I have a king who lives forever. If I am Lord over something in this life, I do well to remember I have a Lord of lords who lives forever. And it’s when kings and lords forget those things that even the people are in trouble and in trouble in our lifetime too.
So he is the Lord because he has that eternal perspective. Who’s first in your life? Who is the king of kings in your life?
Who is the Lord of lords in your life? God has set you over something. God has given you authority and power over something in this world. Who is it then that controls you?
What is your controlling factor? What do you look at and say, I cannot go beyond this because my king does not allow me to do this. I cannot do this because my Lord says no, or says yes.
Who is first and preeminent in your life? We used to play a game when we were kids king of the hill. Remember, at least boys did it all the time. And remember, you had some place to stand and you’d fight and you’d push each other off this little hill and the last guy standing is the guy who wins the game, you know, because he’s king of the hill. He finally is standing there last. Well, someday Jesus Christ will reign on this earth and the last thousand years of earth’s history will be with Jesus Christ as king of kings and Lord of lords. He will be the first and the last.
last. Jesus is eternal. Secondly in our text he is immortal. So verse 18 says, I am he that liveth and was dead. Behold I am alive for evermore a men. I lived, I was dead, I am alive. He is the only one who has ever lived, who has ever walked on this earth that can say it this way. He stands on the other side of death, on the earth.
I lived, I died, and I rose again and no one else yet can say that. He is the firstfruits of all of our resurrection. He not just a reviving like Lazarus who died and revived and then died again later. Here is resurrection truly because he is immortal.
In 2 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 9 he says, who saved us and called us with the holy calling not according to our works but listen, who hath abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. Now we understand what immortality is. Now we understand how we can have life after death because the one who is immortal went into death for us and went beyond the death in resurrection that we might know these things.
Therefore we both labor and suffer reproach because we trust in the living God who is the savior of all men especially to those who believe. He is a living savior, he is immortal. Now you and I are eternal. Every human being is eternal. Every soul that was ever been created from Adam and Eve to now is alive somewhere at this moment on this earth in heaven or in hell.
There’s no avoiding it. But only Jesus Christ is immortal. Only Jesus Christ could not be held of death. He is the sinless perfect Son of God. In Hebrews 2 there’s an interesting verse by the way that speaks about our death and speaks about Satan.
Listen to this, for as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, you and I have to live in flesh and blood. He also himself, Jesus Christ, took part of the same. He became a human being that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death. That is the devil. Jesus Christ became a man so that he would die for our sins and in doing that because he is immortal he would conquer death because there is someone who has a hold on death and a hold on us and that is the devil himself.
And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Every human being says oh no I’m gonna die. Every human being has to look forward to that time. Every human being wonders how and when and how death will come to me. And Satan has that hold on you and you know what that is?
That power of death that Satan has? It is sin. Because you look into your own heart and you know you have, you deserve to die. You look at your own heart and you realize all of sin comes short of the glory of God. I deserve this. When Satan tempted Adam and Eve and they disobeyed God they knew from that moment that they were uncovered before God and they deserved whatever death was coming to them. And you and I know that and we know we deserve it but not the Lord Jesus Christ. The sinless perfect Son of God immortal in his very person.
Isn’t that a great thing? In Deuteronomy 30 there’s a question that Moses asks who shall go up to heaven for us and that we may hear it and do it. That is who can go up to heaven and say here’s what heaven is like. Or who shall go over the sea and bring it onto us that we may hear it and do it.
Who’s going to tell us what death is like? And so in Romans chapter 10 in the middle of the Romans road Paul uses that passage and says this, the righteousness which is a faith speaketh on this why. Say not in thine heart who shall ascend into heaven and then he puts this parenthesis, this New Testament parenthesis that is to bring Christ down from above. No longer do we have to say I wonder what heaven is like. You know why because the King of heaven has been on this earth and told us what it’s like.
That’s why. Or who shall descend into the deep parenthesis again. That is to bring Christ up again from the dead. No longer do you and I have to say I wonder how we can conquer death. I wonder how we can do away with the fear of death because the one who is immortal has been there and come out of death. To give us the hope and then he says in the very next verse that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thine heart that God raised him from the dead thou shalt be saved.
How do you conquer then death you attach yourself to him that is immortal and you attach yourself to him by faith. You ever have one of those birthday cakes where they put those candles on there and they light them and you can’t blow them You know what that is? You know, and so they all laugh as you try to blow out your birthday candles and they won’t go out. And that’s because some of you, your candles have never gone out and there’s too many on there, but those candles can’t blow out because they are made in a different way.
They’re of a different substance, so even when you blow the flame out, they start again. Maybe a better picture is if you’ve gone fishing and you have a bobber and you have this thing out there on the line and it’s floating on the water, it is made in a different way than the water is made. And that’s so that you may be able to pull it under the water, but as soon as it’s coming back to the surface. You can’t keep that thing under water.
Or picture a life jacket is made the same way and rightfully so. A life jacket, you can pull it under the water, but it’s going to come back up. So what’s the best thing for you to do? The best thing for you to do then is to put that life jacket around yourself, isn’t it? It’s not you who is made of a different substance, but it’s what you have put on that is made of a different substance. And though you may be pulled down under for a moment, you will come back up because that thing that is of a different substance than you are cannot be held under. Jesus Christ folks is immortal and he can’t be held of death and he must live forever. And the way you will come out of death and the way you will conquer death is by wrapping yourself in him and by faith receiving him as Savior so that death can’t hold you. Now one other point, Jesus is eternal and is immortal and lastly he’s invisible whom no man has seen nor can see the scripture says. Colossians 1 by him were all things created that are in heaven that are in earth, visible and invisible whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created by him and for him and he is before all things and by him all things consist. Jesus Christ is invisible. Interesting isn’t it that Paul would say that to Timothy that he is immortal or eternal and immortal and invisible though he became a man for a while. Can you see Jesus now?
No, he’s returned to this state that he has lived in eternally, taken a body with him but you cannot see, you know as you think about it there are three levels you might say, three categories of invisible things. First of all there is the Godhead, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. You cannot see them but are you going to tell me that God does not exist because you can’t see him or that the Holy Spirit does not exist because you can’t see him or that Jesus Christ now doesn’t exist because he went back to heaven? No, they are invisible but they are real. It’s you and I who are limited, you and I who are in the fishbowl and they are outside the fishbowl, they can look into it at any time.
We have a hard time looking outside of it. The second category of invisible things are angels and demons. There are those creatures that God created, he created them all good, he created them all as angels and then under the rebellion of Lucifer he took a third of the angels with him and they became demons and now you have angels who remained in God’s will and you have demons who live in that invisible world and will one day be punished forever as a matter of fact hell was made for Satan and his angels. You can’t see them, it’s interesting to me that people are more fascinated with the demons than with God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit or heaven or hell but they want to know about those invisible demons. Yes, they exist, not ghosts, demons and angels and there’s a third category of invisible things and that’s heaven and hell. You can’t see heaven but it is real, you can’t see hell but it is real and every person that’s ever lived is in one of those two places or waiting to be in one of those two places, that is he’s still alive on this earth and yet that’s where they are and so Jesus tells of the story of the rich man who died and instantly lifted up his eyes in torments and the poor man who died and immediately he was in Abraham’s bosom because when you leave this fishbowl of a life where you can’t see outside it you will see everything.
Do you want to know something? When you finally see these things it is too late to believe in these things. You say well no when I see them I’ll believe in them, no you’ll know they’re true but you won’t believe in them. The only way to believe in them is to believe by faith not by sight. We walk by faith not by sight.
The only way to have assurance of these things and assurance of heaven rather than hell, of angels rather than demons is for you to understand and believe those things now. When you see them it’s too late. When you see them time for choices is over. Time for accepting is done.
You will remain as you are the moment you died for eternity. Interesting thing about the invisible world. You know what’s better is to know the person that has the keys. I have the keys of death and hell Jesus said. Now hell, as you look at it in the passage here, I have the keys of hell and of death is Hades. It is that place of torment. It is that place, a temporary jail if you will, that when people die their souls go to that place called Hades and they are in torments in fire and limestone only waiting until God pronounces final judgment on them and they were cast into the lake of fire.
Not that there is a second chance at all, but you’re in jail and then you be cast into prison in Hades and then you will be cast into the lake of fire and there is death and death is a place your body goes. Death is a place where the body goes back to the dust and back to the earth and is a place of decay and waiting until God says body come out be resurrected and you know what everyone believer and unbeliever will go through this process. Now Jesus said to believers if you believe on me you shall never die because you may get to the point of death and your body may maybe it’s in pain I don’t know maybe you’ll die suddenly I don’t know maybe it’ll be a long prolonged thing but you’ll be alive and your spirit and soul will be in this body until the moment of death and when that moment happens Jesus Christ has the keys to one of two places and he’ll open the door for you in heaven and you will immediately walk in there be no death or he has the keys of hell and he will open that place for the sinner who has rejected him and he will immediately be in that place and not be able to change it. I’m glad that there’s coming a resurrection the first and the second resurrection and the first resurrection is for believers and when that resurrection happens those who have believed in Jesus Christ their bodies all of a sudden will come up out of that grave again made in a body that now can live forever and that soul immediately will be put back in that body and we will ascend in the heaven to meet the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord in heaven for ever body and soul but not so with the lost. There is coming a resurrection day for the lost and death and hell will be brought before God at the white throne judgment as a matter of fact let me read it to you in Revelation chapter 20 verse 13 the sea gave up the dead which were in it this is at the end of all time and space death and hell were delivered up the dead which were in them and they were judged every man according to their works because their works are worthless and death and hell were cast into the lake of fire you see in hell right now death isn’t there only Hades is there only your soul is there your body’s in the grave but God is going to put a lost person soul and body back together and then take that death and hell soul and body and put it into a lake of fire where they will be forever tormented in body and soul and this is the second death and whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire everybody is waiting for that oh it’s good to know the one that has the keys it’s good to know the one who’s been there the one who has the keys in his hand and can unlock the right door for you I was standing in a place called Bunhill Fields last week and as we went there it is that that graveyard where all of those Christians had to be buried in England if you’re not member of the Church of England and if you were a dissenter or you were one of those rabble rousers who who preached salvation by faith and not by the church then you had to be buried over there you couldn’t be buried in the churchyard and so in that old place now no one’s been buried there for a long time but in that old place now are great names like John Bunyan and John Gill and Isaac Watts and many wonderful men some of them even died for their faith and as a matter of fact in the book on the on Isaac Watts the author said this no place possesses such a congregation of sainted sleepers and such consecrated dust is in that place and our bodies are consecrated dust folks and we are sainted sleepers until the day that we arise and that is when we will rise to be like him but oh if you don’t know Christ if the eternal immortal invisible son of God is no comfort to you then you only have torment to look forward to to Agrippa Festus was explaining about Paul’s condition you remember and he’s saying this this Christian this preacher was left here and he says but against whom when the accuser stood up they brought no accusations of things that I suppose but had certain questions against him of their own superstition of one Jesus which was dead and Paul affirmed to be alive doesn’t that sound like a lost person you know those Christians they talk about Jesus and they say that he died and that he rose again that’s all I know know about that. That’s about what people would say about Christianity now. You know what? Every lost person goes through that stage.
That’s okay. They have to hear about it. They have to know that that’s the claim of Christ. He died and he rose again. When Paul was on Mars Hill, they had a more violent reaction to it. They knew the teaching of the resurrection and they said this does not happen. People do not come out of the grave. So in Acts 17 when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, they mocked and said, we’ll hear you again of this matter. And you’ve gone to people who you’ve tried to explain your faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ and some of them have said, well that’s curious. And others have said, I do not believe people come out of the grave.
I do not believe this happens. Well, people have to come through that too folks. But you know what? There comes a time in a sinner’s life when all of a sudden the reality of their own sin sets in and they begin to realize how mortal they are and their mortality is because of their sin for all of sin and come short of the glory of God. And the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
And then that person begins to be convicted. And so Paul would later say, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. That’s the cry of a sinner. When you realize first of all, hell is for sinners. And then you realize, secondly, I’m a sinner.
I deserve to be there. When that same sinner begins to say, I need a way out. I need to be saved from this place.
I deserve to be in that place called hell. This is the repentance process, folks. This is the part that tells you I am a sinner and I must be saved and I can’t save myself. And then finally he hears the message of Jesus Christ and he says, I will accept him. I will put him around me. I will embrace him as my savior. And that is called faith.
That’s when a person comes and accepts Christ as faith. We sang a song earlier today. I was sinking deep in sin. Far from the peaceful shore, the middle of the sinful ocean, very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more. That’s where the sinner finds himself and every one of us have.
And I remember the day as a 11 year old boy sitting in a church pew way back in the auditorium and it dawned on me as an 11 year old boy. I’m sinking deep in sin. I’m far from the peaceful shore, very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more. And if you die without Jesus Christ, you will rise no more. But the master of the sea heard my despairing cry.
The one who can say peace, be still who can put his hand on you and say fear not. I am eternal. I am immortal.
I am invisible. The master of the sea heard my despairing cry and from the waters lifted me. Now safe am I as Peter tried to walk on that water and took his eyes off Jesus and sank and said help Lord.
And he reached out his hand and he said, I’ve got you. That’s what Jesus Christ can do for you today. If you don’t know him as savior, you ought to come to him because he is the eternal one, the immortal one, the invisible one and you will face this one day. Face it by faith now and not by sight when faith cannot be exercised. I want you to stand with me then if you will this morning and let’s stand with our heads bowed for a few minutes and let’s go to the Lord in prayer and let’s ask him to speak to our hearts and we’ll sing a song of invitation and you can respond in the way that God has moved you to respond.
Let’s pray first. Now Lord in heaven, we have read your words and we have read these wonderful statements of our Lord Jesus Christ once again and Father our hearts have been encouraged because we walk in this sinful world and it grieves our soul to see things happening that happen. Father we know that in the end you will be king of kings and Lord of lords. We thank you that Jesus Christ died but he rose again that he ascended into heaven and evermore makes intercession for us and Father we thank you for those things.
So thank you for the wonderful attributes of the Son of God. They are a comfort to us. Father if there is one here today that finds no comfort in these things finds no comfort because his or her soul is hoping is trusting that these things would not be true hoping and trusting that there will be nothing after death Father enlighten their heart today. May your Holy Spirit do that work that only he can do in that heart and draw that person to yourself today. Father maybe we need to be on our knees as your children and confess sins that grieve you today. Maybe we need to take steps in our walk of faith that you have led us to take. Father whatever it is speak to our hearts today as we sing this song and may Jesus Christ be glorified in this time. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Page 297 only trust him we sing this song often but what a great