Imaging a family get together. There is a table, loaded with your favorite foods. Your entire family is there. Your children are running around. Your best friends are there too. The conversation is brilliant. There is laughter, maybe even singing. You are surrounded by the people and things that you love the most in the entire world. The table is in a room that is warm, beautifully decorated for the holidays. Life couldn’t get any better.
Now……imagine that the room, the table, your family, and all of your friends……….are sitting on a railroad track……..and a freight train is barreling down the track in the dark………and you are right in its path.
This is, in fact, the case. The dinner is a metaphor for the human condition. We are all attending a great big party. The natural man, left to his own devices, will eat the food, enjoy the company, ignore the reality outside of the door, and then be completely destroyed. We don’t talk about it very much. But, the simple truth is that in 80 years….or less……we are all going to die. But that’s not even the big problem. For the natural man, death is the best possible case scenario. The alternative to simple uncomplicated death……..is that a part of us, our soul, will live on……..forever. What that forever will look like it this week’s topic.
For the natural man there are several possibilities:
Everything will end….dead black nothing
Life will go on as it is…….but we will be different.
We will spend eternity in an unspeakably horrible place.
We will spend eternity in a very nice place.
We must govern our lives without knowing for certain what lies behind the door. Science offers us nothing…….literally…….dead black nothing. New age thinking offers us many flavors of life going on as it is. We pretty much create an afterlife that suits us. This is great…….as long as we are God. And then we are left with the Bible…….the most widely published and accepted moral code in existence. The Bible offers us heaven and hell……Heaven for those who recognize and honor God…….Hell for everyone else.
As we sit at the table, enjoying good food and good company, this is what lies outside of the room in a few short years:
Nothing
No change
Hell
Heaven
We have very little power or control over what happens when we die. Dead black nothing……..more of the same…….Hell….are all beyond our control.
We can only control one of the variables…….Heaven.
We have an open invitation……..an extraordinarily valuable gift from our creator. Accept it and spend eternity in paradise with a creator who loves you……..in a world governed by love.
Or
You can toss the invitation into the trash. You can take charge. You can take your chances with: Nothing……..No change……..Hell.
In effect, you can enjoy the meal, the conversation, the company……..and ignore the reality that is behind the door…….ignore the reality that will be the entirety of your existence…….in a few short years.
“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul”
Deuteronomy 10:12, ESV