Today we finish our series on the Apostle’s Creed. We need to ensure our faith is built on the Rock - Jesus, the Word of God, otherwise we will be tossed by every wind of doctrine that sweeps across the Earth in these dangerous times we live in. We finish with our belief in eternal life. Feel free to join in...
1. I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.
2. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
3. who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.
4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
5. He descended into Hell. On the third day he rose again from the dead.
6. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
7. From there He will come to judge the living and the dead.
8. I believe in the Holy Spirit,
9. the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints,
10. the forgiveness of sins,
11. the resurrection of the body,
12. and life everlasting.
Amen
Ever since the Lord banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, Mankind has been searching for the key to eternal life. We thirst for it. In many cultures there are stories of the Fountain of Youth, where anyone who drinks or bathes in it will remain eternally young.
In the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana and his father Henry go searching for the Holy Grail - the cup from the Last Supper. If anyone uses the cup to drink the holy water in the cave where it is kept, they will gain eternal life, something which the knight guarding the Holy Grail has already done and been alive for 700 years.
After having watched the Nazi collaborator Walter Donovan disintegrate before his eyes for having “chosen poorly”, Indiana must select the correct Holy Grail from amongst many other more ornate ones to save his father who has been shot. He takes a drink from the holy water fountain.
We are all relieved when the Knight tells Indiana he has chosen wisely.
Arizona-based company Alcor offers cryonic preservation to its members - the option to freeze their bodies after death, with the intention of being revived when future technology makes this possible.
“A fulfilling life doesn’t have to end. When todays medicines give up, cryonics takes over”. Only USD $200k for the body and USD $80k for the brain. But is it that good value for money for such a brain?
Thankfully, scientists have never been able to discover the key to eternal life. In our sinful state, this would doom mankind to hell on Earth. We can barely live in peace for 70 years, let alone eternity.
But yet, we thirst for it. Water is essential to life and the Bible uses water as a symbol of divinity and eternal life from Genesis to Revelation.
Genesis tells us the situation on Earth in the beginning.
Genesis 2:7-17
then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.
Notice the garden is in the east, ie east of Israel. And the first river is the Pishon, a river that does not exist today.
And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Where is the Garden of Eden?
Many people have tried to locate the Garden of Eden but no-one will be able to of course because God has banished us from it and put an Angel to guard the entrance. So you Indiana’s out there, don’t waste your time !
Jesus will surely be the one to reveal and re-establish the Garden when he returns and if I was a betting man, my guess is Jerusalem is the centre of the Garden of Eden.
It is thought that the Garden of Eden had a mountain. In Ezekiel the Lord talks to Satan saying;
Ezekiel 28:13-14
You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle; and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared. You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.
And that’s interesting as many of the jewels I’ve highlighted in green are in the description of the Heavenly City in Revelation as is the tree of life.
Revelation 21:19-20
The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst.
Everything must come from something. The jewels in the Heavenly City are the same we find on Earth. The Earth is a recent construction. But the elements it was made from are ancient from eternity.
The Bible wraps up the story with a beautiful picture that as it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end. Paradise returned.
Revelation 22:1-2
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
The vision of the heavenly city and the elements including water and precious stones link eternity to the creation at the beginning and the new Earth at the end. Missing is the Tree of Knowledge.
The Creation is another reason to believe in eternal life. We know the beginning (from eternity) and we know the end (into eternity) But what about now in this life? Where do we find eternity in this corrupted, fading world, where as Bob Dylan sung « Everthing is Broken ».
When I started preparing this message a few weeks back, I thought of the woman at the well how she indeed found eternal life in the present. Even though the World is broken and our bodies are dying, we can have eternal life now. The Fountain of Youth has already been discovered and you do not have to pay USD 280k for it. Last week Len Buttner referred to this very passage so it is very timely !
John 4:1-29
Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
If we want to find eternal life, we need to keep the welcome mat at the door. Many people have shut the door to Jesus because they think he’s their enemy.
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
If we want to find eternal life, we need to have our mind and heart open to the possibility that there is more to this life than what we can see.
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
Not all our traditions may be helpful to finding Jesus. Is there anything in our traditions that are distracting us from making room for Christ this Christmas ?
But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”
The woman had found Jesus, she had discovered eternal life and her first reaction was to go tell everyone. That is how every new believer reacts, some of us older ones need to drink from the well again !
Recall from the Creed message on the Virgin Birth that Water is a symbol of of the Holy Spirit, of Divinity - and further John noted that at the Cross, blood and water came out which prove Jesus’s divinity and the 3 together prove Jesus is the Son of God.
For there are three that testify, the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three are in agreement
1 John 5:7-8
Revelation 16:12
The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, to prepare the way for the kings from the east.
When that great river Euphrates created in the beginning begins to dry up it is a sign of the Earth dying, the very end time described in Revelation. And did you know that the River Euphrates is indeed drying up today which is ringing alarm bells for those who are paying attention.
This world is dying and this is the time to « choose wisely » The cup is not the Holy Grail. Jesus is the Holy Grail.
The World is alluring and many choose the World’s Cup to try to satisfy their thirst.
But Jesus is the source of life and he offers living water to us all as to the woman at the well.
Why would we settle for ashes in our mouths?
Choose Life. Amen.
