What are you looking at? That’s what we’re going to talk about this morning.
Let’s start with a word of prayer.
Heavenly Father, thank You for this time. I just pray that You would help me to discharge these words that You’ve given. Lord, let the words that come out of my mouth be the ones that You would have. Redeem this time and distill these words so that each one here would come away with the message that You have for them this morning.
In Jesus’ name, amen.
Let’s start with some passages. Turn to Psalm 139.
I have no great biblical teaching this morning. I have just a simple testimony—something that the Lord’s been trying to show me. And I haven’t got it figured out, so let’s see if I can express it.
For Thou didst form my inward parts:
Thou didst cover me in my mother’s womb.
I will give thanks unto Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:
Wonderful are Thy works;
And that my soul knoweth right well.
My frame was not hidden from Thee,
When I was made in secret,
And curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Thine eyes did see mine unformed substance;
And in Thy book they were all written,
Even the days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was none of them.
I think some of us may be more curiously wrought than others.
Let’s go to Ephesians 1. These passages I’m reading from won’t seem to tie together. They may not want to get through either, but we’ll see.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ:
Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love:
Having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.
I know Paul is speaking to the church here, referring to our predestination, and I’m not going to get into predestination. But I think it’s correct to say that it is the intended destiny of every individual to receive Christ, to discover the Lord.
As the church, we are the ones who have fulfilled that destiny. But it is the intended destiny of every individual to come to the Lord.
One more passage, in Isaiah 65.
For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth;
And the former things shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.
We’re going to talk about having a sense of perspective today.
But just by way of introduction, my name’s Jonathan. I’ve been coming to the fellowship almost as long as David. And you would think that after twelve years, if you haven’t seen someone up here in all that time, you’d get the idea that maybe the gifts lie elsewhere. But apparently the brothers, at some point, decided they could stand up here and prove that.
And you would have thought—you know, I was supposed to give this presentation a couple of months ago, and the Holy Spirit saw fit to run out of time for me. But they didn’t get the idea, so.
And I know how it is. When a new brother’s up here, there’s an element of nervousness—not just for me, but out there. What’s he going to say? Is he going to be totally off the wall? You know, what if he throws up or something?
I was trying to think of some ways to make people feel more at ease, maybe by adopting some mannerisms of some of our more familiar speakers. I thought maybe if I got a turtleneck and some reading glasses, I could gesture with the reading glasses.
Or maybe I could adopt some figures of speech: “Do you get it?”
But then I thought, well, maybe I can use that uneasiness to my advantage by just coming out with something totally off the wall right off the bat. So here we go.
And this is true: I do not believe in an afterlife. Now, I’ll explain that. You’ll see.
But first—is there a big hook that’s kind of…? Nobody can leave now.
I want to talk about a sense of perspective. There’s a series of humorous science-fiction stories written by a guy named Douglas Adams called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
And in that story, there’s an invention called the Total Perspective Vortex. What it does is, it’s a torture device. They put you in there, and you see yourself in relation to the whole vastness of the universe.
It was invented by a guy in Trin Tragula who was a thinker and a philosopher, just kind of a guy that sat around all day looking at the stars. That drove his wife crazy, and she used to nag him and say, “Get a sense of perspective.”
Well, finally he had enough of this, and he thought, “Well, I’ll show her a sense of perspective.” So he invented this Total Perspective Vortex.
It works on the principle of extrapolated matter analysis, which means that theoretically you can take any piece of matter in the universe, and since every piece of matter in the universe affects every other piece of matter in the universe, you can extrapolate the whole of creation from, say, in this case, a small piece of sponge cake.
So he made this machine, and in one side he plugged in the piece of sponge cake, and in the other side he plugged in his wife. When he turned it on, she saw herself as a minuscule speck in relation to the whole expanse of the universe.
He was horrified to discover that it fried her brain. But he was quite satisfied to learn that he was right all along: if life is to exist in this vast expanse of universe, the one thing it can’t afford to have is a sense of perspective.
Now, that may be true for the world. And actually, I think it is true for the world.
One thing that never ceases to amaze me is man’s power to close his eyes to God’s creation, to the existence of the eternal—to close his mind to considering what happens after this life. Yet people have to do that, say goodbye. I don’t understand how they do.
Now, for Christians, we do need to develop an accurate sense of perspective, and that is the perspective of this life as it relates to our eternal life.
I brought some visual aids.
Can anybody tell what that is? Maybe your glasses hurt. It may be. Actually, it’s just pretty distorted because I blew it up so big. All you can really see are the printer dots.
But the thing with this is, it’s looking too close at this picture. That is a small part of this picture. It’s just this little tree up here, blown way out of proportion.
Now, if you look at this picture, you don’t even understand what this picture is, much less the big picture. To look at that only is to take the whole thing out of proportion and miss the big picture.
If you were to take this away, if you were to take out this little bit of the picture, there would be something missing. It’s an important part of this picture. But you need to look at the whole thing and take the whole thing in perspective.
Does anyone know whose work this is? Can I go? Would you like this? All right.
This is one of his more optimistic canvases, by the way, as illustrated by the presence of God, as symbolized by the sun. Of course, he’s walking away from the sun, and his work is largely being undone by these blackbirds that are talking, but that’s neither here nor there.
Now, it seems to me, and some others, that the church has changed its perspective in recent years. There used to be more of a focus on heaven, and more of a yearning and talking about heaven and getting to heaven.
Maybe some of you have heard Jim Dobson talk about this recently. He says you can hear it in the hymns that we sing. When’s the last time you heard some of these hymns?
I know we sang “Maranatha” this morning, but even that song has more of a sense of deliverance than really getting to eternity.
And it seems like nowadays, whole ministries within the church have arisen to deal with life issues, to help people with the problems that they have dealing with this life. And I think part of that is we’re getting things out of perspective.
I think one of the reasons for this is that life is just plain easier than it used to be. That’s progress. We have progressed ourselves out of our need for God and for wanting to go to heaven.
Back one hundred years ago, life was pretty lousy. It was disease, it was outhouses, it was—there was more of a yearning for something better.
But now that we have progressed, I think Satan loves progress because we just get away from our need for, our yearning for, heaven.
Now I have an illustration, and this is what we’re going to dwell on—an illustration that, for me, has really, or is really, helping to put things in perspective.
Now, in this assembly, in the fellowship, it seems to me that there’s a little bit of an inordinate number of technical people. We have all kinds of engineers, architects, medical professionals, IT professionals—IT professionals.
I have a degree in literature, which, if you can imagine anything more useless—but one thing it does, though, is help you to see metaphor and allegory, to look for, to read between the lines, and find deeper meanings in simple illustrations.
Of course, the Bible is so rich with illustration and metaphor and allegory. Baptism, of course, is just a beautiful picture, a simple picture. There’s nothing mystical about the water. There’s nothing magic about going down below it. It’s just a picture that helps us understand something that has a much deeper meaning.
Because we have this simple thing that we can understand, it helps us to grasp the bigger meaning. The emblems, of course, are the same way. There’s nothing magical about the bread. There’s nothing magical about the cup. It doesn’t turn to anything. It’s just a reminder, a simple picture that helps us understand.
So I’m going to present this simple picture. Let me go ahead and explain about that afterlife thing.
To speak of an afterlife implies that this life is the main event. And that’s to get things exactly backwards.
Better to speak of a pre-life.
Because this life is just a preparation—or you could look at it as a gestation.
I believe that this present physical life relates to our future life in heaven in the same way that our period of gestation, our nine months in the womb, relates to this current life.
Now, I was born in March of 1961, but I was supposed to be born in April 1961. My sister was two years old at the time. Where is she? Oh, there she is. That’s back when she was Debbie Ford.
My father was away on business. My sister decided that she would help my mom by doing some housecleaning. She found herself some cleaner and some rags. I didn’t check the details on this—maybe you need to clarify afterwards—but she got herself some cleaner and some rags.
She went upstairs to this—we had the big hallway. Well, I remember it as big. And a nice vanity there with a huge mirror. She proceeded to wash down this mirror and the whole vanity and the whole upstairs hallway, wooden floors, with this cleaner.
Well, that’s the point. The cleaner that she found turned out to be baby oil.
So my mom had to get down on her hands and knees and clean up all this mess and wipe down the vanity and try and clean the mirror. I’m sure she had some choice thoughts for my sister at the time, and my father, who was away. And I was born the next day, is that right?
Now, why was I born?
That’s a very good point, actually, because for some reason my parents decided to have another kid after that. I guess they figured they could do no worse, or it would be balanced out or something.
But why was I born at all? Why did I leave the womb?
My parents didn’t decide to have a fetus. They wanted a baby. But first, for nine months, they had to have a baby in the womb to get to that point.
Now, that time in the womb, is that important? Yes. I had to go through that to get to this.
Is it the most important thing? No, of course not. My intended destiny was to be a developed, born baby.
But in order to become that, I had first to be a fetus for nine months—an unborn child—and go through that whole period.
And what happened to me in the womb determined what I was going to become. Likewise, what happens to us in this life determines our destiny in our intended life, our real life that is to come.
God created us as eternal creatures to live in eternity. But to get there, we go through this brief life. And what happens to us here, the decisions we make, determines our destiny—whether we’ll fulfill our intended destiny of going to live with the Lord for eternity, or, in effect, be stillborn into death.
I sincerely believe that God instituted this to give us this picture. He has done that in so many ways—these pictures in nature, of course, and in Scripture. But I think this is an example from general revelation of the Lord giving us a picture to help us grasp the relationship of this life to eternity.
Can anyone think of any individual or individuals who didn’t go through a nine-month period of gestation?
Adam and Eve. Right. Why? Because when God created them, they were created into their intended destiny.
The world at that time was an unfallen world. It was perfect. It was good. The Lord said so. Before the Fall, Adam and Eve were placed in the garden. They had no need for this picture at that time, because there was no living through one life to get to another—no brief life, and then death, and then getting to eternity.
So that picture wasn’t necessary. We have no idea what pregnancy and childbirth would have been like before the Fall. We do know it would have been different because it was changed in Genesis 3:16.
Unto the woman He said,
I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy conception;
In pain thou shalt bring forth children.
So we have no idea what childbirth and pregnancy would have been like before the Fall. Maybe the kids would have just popped out. Or maybe the stork really would bring them.
We do know that after the Fall, the Lord instituted this long period of pregnancy, this wearying time, sick, and then having to go through the pain of childbirth. And I believe that was to give us this picture and help us put these things in perspective.
By the way, I believe that this is another reason why the Lord hates abortion. It corrupts this picture. In the same way that divorce corrupts the picture of marriage as Christ’s relationship to His bride, the church, I believe that abortion corrupts this picture of our pre-born life as this life relates to our heavenly life.
Now, just for fun, and so I don’t sit down now, I want to expand this metaphor with some illustrations that I’ve taken from this whole picture of the pre-born life and the current life.
Some of you might think I’m stretching this metaphor a bit, but remember, I’m professionally trained in this area. So don’t try this at home.
What is it like in the womb? For one thing, it’s dark. You can’t see anything, I assume. Yet a baby has eyes. An unborn child’s eyes are totally developed after just twenty-six weeks. So he can see, yet there’s nothing to see.
I think we have similar senses. In this life, I believe we have an eternal sense. I’m sure of it. I know of it. Scripture speaks of it. We have God-instilled senses that don’t really have a function in this incarnation.
We are eternal creatures, yet we live in time. Let’s look at Romans 1:18.
Pascal called this the God-shaped vacuum inside each of us, this sense of eternity and God as He is revealed in creation. And that’s expressed here in Romans 1:18.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hinder the truth in unrighteousness;
Because that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested it unto them.
For the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse.
Like a child in the womb who has eyes, we have a God-instilled sense of the eternal, which allows us to see God in His creation.
And this gets back to what I talked about earlier: man’s astounding ability to just be blind to that, to turn that off, to not see that, to miss it altogether.
Another picture: is the baby alone in the womb?
From the baby’s perspective, he would think so. But from outside, you see that there’s never a time in that baby’s life where he’s less alone.
And I think this is a beautiful picture of how our heavenly Father’s love envelops us in this life. We may feel like we’re completely alone and cut off sometimes, but like a child that’s in the womb, the Lord has us enclosed in Him.
Now, a child in the womb certainly can hear his mother’s voice. And of course, when the child is born and hears his mother’s voice and turns toward that voice—instant recognition. That baby knows to whom he belongs. He identifies that voice as belonging to the voice that he’s been hearing all this time and listening to.
And I think that when we get to heaven and hear our Savior’s voice: instant recognition. I can’t snap anymore. Instant recognition. We will recognize that voice if we’ve been listening for it in this life.
We will hear His voice and recognize His voice and instantly know to whom it is we belong.
What does the unborn child go through to achieve its intended destiny? We already spoke of the fact that the unborn child is there for a time, but that’s not what he’s intended to be. He has to go through that. That’s a very important time, but his intended destiny is to be a born child.
What do you have to go through to get to that point? You have to go through a frightening and painful birth process.
What do we have to go through to achieve our intended destiny? A frightening and painful death process. It’s really the same.
In fact, what do we call that birth process? What are some words we use for it?
Let me say “delivery.”
Delivery is the one I like to think of in these terms. Oh, that the Lord would deliver us. And He will one day, through that process where we will be born into our true intended life.
One more of these little pictures. What else is it like for the baby in the womb?
The baby swims around in this amniotic fluid. No, we’re not intended to be fish. We live in the open air. We breathe oxygen. But for nine months before we’re born, we swim around in this fluid.
This is a foreign element. It’s appropriate at the time. It’s what the baby develops in and lives in, and it seems natural at the time. But it’s really a foreign element for that creature.
Now, we live in a foreign element called time. As I mentioned before, we are created as eternal beings. We have a sense of the eternal. Yet for now, we live in this element, this foreign element of time and space.
Eventually, when we get to heaven, these things will be gone. That’s what’s so hard for us to imagine. I don’t know, when I was a kid, I used to really give myself the willies trying to imagine how God always was and how He always will be, because you just can’t imagine that.
It’s foreign to us. We don’t know how to exist outside of time.
For now, it’s what we dwell in. Yet we fight against time. We’re always running out of time. You know, animals aren’t eternal creatures. Animals don’t have a problem with time. You don’t see animals walking around looking at their wristwatches or getting speeding tickets.
They’re not eternal creatures. They don’t have a problem with time. We sure do.
We create time-saving devices like cake mixes and interstate highways, supersonic jets, and things to save us time. So what’s the upshot of that? Less time than ever.
Time is the one commodity that we have less and less of. And the older you get, I’m realizing this, the older you get, the faster time goes.
I think we can expand the metaphor even farther, stretch it even more, to creation. It seems like creation is running out of time. The more time-saving devices we create, the faster things go, so there’s even less time.
I think this is apparent in Scripture. And the same metaphor is used—the same metaphor of childbirth. Turn to Romans 8.
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
It’s the same metaphor. And the picture is this whole incarnation, this whole creation, coming to term and eventually transforming, being born into eternity.
Again, in Matthew 24, Jesus is describing some of the trials and tribulations and the shaking that will come about in the end in order to turn men to Himself.
I think we’re really starting to see some of this coming about. We’ve gotten so comfortable. We’ve gotten to the point where we can totally ignore God. We used to say, “God is dead.” Now I think it’s like, “God is irrelevant.”
But God is going to bring us to the point where these shakings and tribulations will mean that you’ll no longer be able to ignore God. You may curse God or you may submit to God, but you will no longer be able to ignore God.
But anyway, these tribulations He speaks of in Matthew 24:8—He describes them. He says that all these are the beginning of birth pains. And of course, again, this is to bring about the end of this creation into the eternal creation.
So we have this picture, this whole big metaphor of childbirth relating to pre-life, as this life relates to our eternal life. How does that help us achieve an eternal perspective?
Well, how far back do you remember?
My earliest memory where I actually know how old I was was on my fifth birthday. We were sitting around the dining room table, and all my friends had their pointy birthday hats on. I’d just blown out the candles on my cake, and across the table was my friend Scott’s mom, Carolyn Gentleman.
She clapped her hands together and said, “Now you’re five.” So I know I was five years old at the time.
I want to see a hand. Who remembers something that happened when they were five years old? Four? Four, three? Wow, two? Hands go down. One year old. Anybody remember? Does anyone remember being born? Does anyone remember the time before you were born?
No. Do you see the point? Let’s look at that verse in Isaiah.
Isaiah 65:17. And this is the crux.
For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth;
And the former things shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.
“The former things shall be remembered fondly and discussed over coffee, and we will pull out our photo albums and have a good laugh about all the silly things that used to bother us.” That’s not what it says, is it?
The former things shall not be remembered, nor even come to mind.
Does that really give us this picture now? It’s just like the time before we were born. We don’t remember it. We don’t regret not remembering it. It doesn’t even come to mind. We don’t even think about it.
It was an important time. It was vital. But, in perspective, it just has no bearing or relevance on the life that we were born into—this life. Do you see that picture?
And we don’t really know what heaven will be like, but I think we can draw this conclusion: our past life on earth will hold just as much relevance to us in heaven as our time in the womb does to us now.
And from that, you can conclude that the only things—the only things in this life—that have any significance are those that have a bearing on, or carry through to, eternity.
And do you see how that changes things? Do you see how that puts things in perspective? Even the biggest things, even the biggest things, just fade back into the background.
And since we know that everything from this incarnation will be forgotten, just like our birth, that means that we can invest everything—our energies and thoughts and cares—into our future real life.
And that, for this very brief time on earth, we can endure anything. We can accept anything. We can lay down anything that is merely of this world. That’s the eternal perspective.
In fact, you really begin to see that anything that happens that draws men to the Lord—whether it’s planes crashing into buildings, or anthrax letters, or famine, or persecution—anything that happens that draws men to the Lord is mercy.
It’s what C. S. Lewis called severe mercy.
And for us in Christ, anything that happens that causes us to look to the Lord is a blessing. Anything that happens that draws our eyes to the Lord is a blessing.
So what are you looking at?
For me, this has really helped to put things in perspective in this life, and really begin to try and lay things down and look ahead.
Let’s just close with Psalm 90.
Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place
In all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth,
Or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God.
Thou turnest man to destruction,
And sayest, Return, ye children of men.
For a thousand years in Thy sight
Are but as yesterday when it is past,
And as a watch in the night.
Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep:
In the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up;
In the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
For we are consumed in Thine anger,
And in Thy wrath are we troubled.
Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee,
Our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance.
For all our days are passed away in Thy wrath:
We bring our years to an end as a sigh.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
Or even by reason of strength fourscore years;
Yet is their pride but labor and sorrow;
For it is soon gone, and we fly away.
Who knoweth the power of Thine anger,
And Thy wrath according to the fear that is due unto Thee?
So teach us to number our days,
That we may get us a heart of wisdom.
Amen.
Norman, no, we need to be looking at You. We pray, Lord, that You would…