ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE FUTURE?
FATHER JIM FOSDICK
ST. MARY OF THE SNOWS ANGLICAN CHURCH
NOV. 18, 2007
How many of you are afraid of the future? Put that way you probably are thinking well I’m not afraid of the future. But if we’re honest with ourselves we all have things we’re concerned about. Maybe it’s having enough to live on through retirement. Maybe you’re afraid of becoming sick as you get older and ending your days in a nursing home being fed with a tube. Maybe your fear is just growing older, losing your good looks or not being able to do all the things you used to do. OK have I at least got you thinking maybe there are some things I’m afraid of?
Our gospel this morning is about the end times. Jesus is trying to tell his disciples and all of us what it’s going to be like when the current world ends and His new kingdom is ushered in. Our reading ends abruptly in the middle, but in verses 34 to 36 he says that the end will come to all of us and we will stand before Jesus as judge. He says pray that you may have the strength to escape all these things that are going to take place.
This week I dealt with 3 different situations in the lives of members of the parish and the common thread in all of them was fear. I don’t think Jesus is saying we should fear the future. What he is saying is we should be ready. How do we do that? I want to spend our time together this morning looking at how God has provided the means for us to look to the future hopefully.. A lot of people spend their lives worrying about tomorrow. They never enjoy today because they're worrying about tomorrow. Why? Because we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. Scripture actually tells us what to expect. In the 23rd Psalm David says he is not worried. "Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. " No anxiety, fear of the future, worry about tomorrow. He's confident -- "surely, goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life." I prayed yesterday with someone who just wants to get through one day. Imagine if you could have the assurance of goodness and mercy all the days of your life.
Where do you get that kind of confidence? If you're a believer, there are three reasons why you don't need to fear
the future: First, because God is watching over me.
Second, because God's grace is working in me. And Third, because heaven is waiting for me. "Surely goodness will follow me all the days of my life." Because God is good I can expect His protection and provision. I can expect that no matter what happens to me, God will bring good out of it somehow. It will always
either be for my own good, for the good of other people, or for the good of His kingdom. God is a good God.
Psalm 145 says "The Lord watches over all who love him..." God cares about the details of your life. Like a loving father, He
will provide for you in the future. We don't know what the future holds but we do know Who holds it. We know God is in control and God loves you and wants to help you. He says, I will be like a Father and will watch over you.
"Surely goodness will follow..." What does he mean by that? Obviously David had disappointments in life. Not
everything good happened to him. He's not saying, Surely, only good things are going to happen to me. That's not
true. Bad things happen to good people. He's not saying only good things are going to happen. He's saying only
goodness will follow. Good things will always come out of whatever happens even the bad, the evil, the difficult. God will insure that good will come out -- it will follow whatever happens to David.
The great promise that God has given to believers: Romans 8:28, "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." This is not a promise for everybody. All things do
not work together for good for everybody in the world. Things work together for bad for people who are not trying
to go the way God wants them to go, who are not following his path. But if you're a believer, the Bible says all
things are working together for good -- not all things are good -- but working together for good. That's what "goodness will follow me" means. There is no difficulty, dilemma, defeat, disaster in the life of a Christian that ultimately God won't bring good out of. Eventually, He'll bring good out of it. Somehow.
Often it's difficult to see God's goodness when you're going through a tragedy. There are times when you don't feel
like God is good. You don't feel His mercy. Sometimes you feel like God's goodness is hidden. Even Jesus, on
the cross, said, "My God, my God, Why hast thou forsaken me?" We go through those experiences sometimes in life -- Why? And we don't see goodness in the situation. It's only later, looking back, that we see God's goodness and how He was working for good. This does not mean only good things will happen to you, because bad things will happen to you, but God will bring good out of them.
Paul was put falsely in prison in Rome. Was that good? No. He was kept as a prisoner in Rome. While he was
there, he wrote some important letters that are now books in the New Testament. Goodness followed after his imprisonment.
Today we're benefiting from Paul's problem, pain, difficulty. Goodness follows. God says, I will watch over you. How does God watch over believers? Ps. 91, "God orders his angels to protect
you wherever you go." God uses angels to watch over you. Angels are real. They are invisible helpers. The Bible says one of the reasons God has created them is to watch over and protect believers. One of our members told me she hit a deer this week and she doesn’t know how it failed to go through her windshield. I said her angel was working overtime. You don't talk to them or see
them, but they are there working on your behalf all the time.
Just because we have a guardian angel doesn't mean that we're exempt from bad things happening to us. Sometimes bad things do happen. David had angels guarding him and bad things
happened to him. The apostle Paul had angels guarding him, but bad things happened to him. One thing you can count on: God will always be with you through adversity. He doesn't exempt you from adversity but walks with you through the adversity. Not only that, God can bring good out of evil. That's exciting.
The second point I want to make is Grace is working in you. Not only goodness will follow you but "...mercy will follow me all the days of my life." Isaiah 60:10 "I will have mercy on you through my grace." What is grace? Susan and I had a friend at our parish in Wheaton who always said Grace is God's Riches At Christ's Expense. GRACE. God is able to do what he does for us because of Christ. Grace is the fact that God gives you what
you need, not what you deserve. Aren't you glad God doesn't give you what you deserve? The Bible says, God is gracious and gives us what we need, not what we deserve. What is mercy? Mercy is grace in action. Why do we need mercy? Because we're imperfect. We stumble and fall, blow it, make mistakes. In the future you're going to sin! So in the future, you need not only God's goodness, you need His mercy. You need His forgiveness, pardon,
healing.
When you really understand God's grace and mercy, that God isn't out there trying to get even with you, if you've
given your life to Jesus Christ, Jesus has taken the penalty for everything you've ever done wrong or will do wrong,
on the cross. He paid for it, you don't. So when a bad thing happens you don't have to think God's getting even
with you. God doesn't "get even" for things that have already been paid for on the cross. That's grace, mercy. When you understand God's grace and mercy then you have no need to fear the future.
Ps. 103 verse 2, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,”
When you understand mercy, that God is not only
being good to you, but He's being merciful to you in handling your mistakes, your sins, your faults, then you don't
have any reason to fear the future.
Mercy means that when I'm going through a tough time, a valley, a difficulty -- even one that I've brought on myself -- God is there to help me out. God has a 24 hour drop in service where we can go to Him asking for help. In His mercy, He can help because of what Jesus has done. Mercy, like goodness, follows us in life. Picture a parent following a little child around picking up after them.
God is constantly picking up your messes. Things that you blow, things that you make a mistake, things you get out of order and then you blithely go on to the next thing. God is behind you, picking it all up, putting it back together, working it all out, taking care of the messes. That's mercy. He's picking up behind you, cleaning up your messes.
"Mercy will follow all the days of my life" -- not some of the days, but all the days. God doesn't turn His goodness and His mercy on and off. He doesn't treat you nice one day and the next day treat you badly. All the days of my life, I'll have God's goodness AND God's mercy. You're going to experience many different kinds of days in life. Happy, sad, sick, depressing, lonely, difficult --that's why we fear the future -- we don't know what's going to happen and we fear it’s going to be bad. Fear is false evidence appearing real. Bad things may happen, but you will never face a day without God's goodness and mercy with you if you've given your life to Jesus Christ. He will be with you all the time. Some days you won't feel it, some days you won't see God's mercy and grace and it may be hard to determine. But surely, certainly, without a doubt God's goodness and mercy are going to be there even in the tough times in the future.
How can you be sure? Because God does not lie. He cannot tell an untruth or be inconsistent. He never changes.
He never breaks a promise. If He says, "surely goodness and mercy will be with you all the days of your life", they
will! We get so worked up and worried about the future because we start "what if"-ing -- "just suppose..." There is no supposing in the Bible. It says surely! Christians go to the future not with a question mark but with an exclamation point. Relax, trust. God will be with you no matter what happens. He will help you out. God's goodness will provide and protect. God's mercy will pardon and forgive. God's goodness will supply. God's mercy will sooth. God's goodness will help me. God's mercy will heal me.
Goodness is the fact that God gives us good things in life that we don't deserve. Mercy is that God holds back the condemnation that we do deserve. You need them both in life.
The 23rd Psalm is a psalm about shepherding -- "The Lord is my shepherd". You lead sheep, but you drive cattle. The
difference is that sheep are led from the front. The shepherd is in front of the flock. He leads and they follow. When you have goodness and mercy in your life you don't have need to fear anything.
My final point on why we shouldn’t fear the future is Heaven is waiting for me. Again from Psalm 23 we read "... and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." That's one of the most important little connections we see in the Bible. It connects yesterday and today with tomorrow. God says, "I've got this great life planned for you and surely goodness and mercy will follow you through it, but that's not the end! I've got something else at the end!" Heaven! Brothers and sisters if you really understand and believe that you’re going to heaven, how can you fear the future? Jesus saves the best until last. With God it just keeps getting better and better. The best is yet to come. 2 Cor. 5:1, “For we know that if the tent, which is our earthly home, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
How long is forever going to last? Forever! Someday your body is going to die, but you aren't. Your body is going to end but
that's not going to be the end of you. You're going to live forever in one of two places -- heaven or hell. They are both real places. You will spend eternity in heaven or hell. Your body is going to die but you're not going to die. We were made to last forever.
Why are Christians the most confident people about the future? Again from Second Corinthians "We look forward with confidence to our heavenly bodies. And we are not afraid, but are quite content to die, for then we will be at home with the Lord." Death, for Christians, is a transfer, a promotion. It's on to better things. No more problems. I once told the mother of a 14 year old who died that for a Christian there is no such thing as a life threatening disease. I also said the only terminal in terminal illness is the one that takes us to our next destination…Heaven.
Someday. If we have accepted Christ we're going to go to heaven. What is heaven going to be like? You're going to be rewarded for your faithfulness to God and your obedience to Jesus Christ. We're going to be reunited with loved ones who know the Lord. We're going to be reassigned work to do that we like to do in
Heaven. Some people think when you get to heaven, you'll be given this white sheet and sit around all day on a cloud, strumming a harp – I don’t think scripture supports that. I can't think of anything more boring than sitting around on a cloud strumming a harp. Can you imagine what heaven is going to be like? It’s really beyond my imagination, but it’s going to be great. We're going to be released from pain, from sorrow, from suffering, from depression, from fear. Rev. 21:4 reads "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."
Doesn't that make you a little homesick for heaven?
Who is heaven made for? It's not made for everybody. It's made for people who say, "Lord Jesus, I want to be a child of
God. I want to follow You." I Peter 1:3, “…according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,” It's not up to me to make sure I get there safely. Once I've committed my life to Christ, He makes sure I get there safely to receive it because I'm trusting Him. So be joyful! There is wonderful joy ahead, even though the going is rough for a while down here. But it's just as true that one day we're going to be with the Lord. Heaven was made for Christians, believers,
for those who love Jesus. If you didn't love Jesus, why would you want to go be with Him for eternity? From God’s point of view our time here on earth is relatively insignificant. You're going to spend 60, 70, 80 maybe 90 years here on earth. If you’re Ellie Christiansen 101 and counting. But you'll spend thousands, millions of years in eternity -- heaven or hell. This isn't the big show. This is the opening act you're in right now. The problem is that even most Christians act like that all there is to life is going on here and now. That's all that matters. No! This is just preparation for the big event where you're going to spend all of eternity. You are only visitors here...your real home is in heaven. So act like it! Don't act as if everything that matters is
what is here and now. Live in light of eternity. Realize you're not going to be here forever. You're going to be in
eternity forever
Does everybody go to heaven? Absolutely not! Everybody does not go to Heaven. How do you know you’re going to heaven? If you were to die tonight are you sure you would go to heaven? I don't have an ounce of doubt in my mind that I would. Not that I deserve it but because I've done what the Bible says to get
ready. John 10 "My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall
never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand." How do I know I'm going to heaven? Two things: Jesus says, "My sheep listen to me and they follow me." Are you doing that? Are you listening to what God says to do with your life? Are you following Jesus Christ? Is He your Lord and your Savior? If you say, Yes, I'm listening to God and I'm trying to let Him lead my life, I know I'd never get to heaven on my own and I'm trusting Him. Then you can say with absolute confidence as it says in the 23rd Psalm, Surely I know I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. I will dwell. Not I might or I wonder. I know I'm going to heaven, because I've done what the Bible says. I’ve done what Jesus says.
What if I sin after I commit my life to Christ? What do you mean if? You're going to sin after you become a Christian. When you give your life to Christ – he doesn’t let you go. You may try to let Him go, but he will be faithful and hang on to you. There are times in life when you’re going to try to do what you want to do not what he calls you to do. . You're going to want a relationship that you know is wrong, read material that you know is bad, make an unethical decision, do things that God says not to do. You're going to want to let go of God's hand. But He's never going to let go of yours. He says you are in His hand and no man can snatch you away from Him. I will not perish -- not because of me. I
don't have to keep myself safe; God's goodness and God's mercy keep me safe. It's not up to me. Thank goodness. I trust him and he never fails me.
So let’s get back to my original question. Are you afraid of the future? I can only think of one reason why you should be. If you haven’t accepted Christ as your Savior and committed to follow Him as your Lord you don’t have a future and your present isn’t going to be much either. If you are following Jesus then he is watching over you to turn everything that happens to you into something good for you. His grace is working in you so you get what you need and not what you deserve. Finally as a believer Heaven is your future home. What better future could there be?
Amen. |
