The Eternal Perspective

Hi, this is Bernie Dake. You're listening to The Salvation Army's Words of Life. Hi, I'm Megan Hoffer, and if you're enjoying Words of Life, I want to invite you to check out another show brought to you by The Salvation Army. Heartbeat is a one-minute show about real life.

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I'm Bernie Dake. Cheryl, our cohost, will be back with us for our next series, but today is our final episode of the Easter series with Majors Mike and Christine Harris. If you've missed any episodes, this series began on March 19th, so visit salvationarmyradio.org to listen and get caught up.

Next week, we will be launching a new series, so visit the Words of Life page on our site to learn more. Now, as the challenges of the pandemic continue, families living in poverty have to find a way to get through it all, through the hunger, through the bills, through the fears of eviction. But when you give to The Salvation Army, you're lending a hand to bring hope for the road ahead, through bill assistance, job assistance, daycare, and more. Just $25 a month helps keep families in their homes.

Keep hope marching on at salvationarmyusa.org. I love it when we get to go to England. We've gone a few times to go visit your mom and your sisters and their families, but what's my favorite place to go that I always like to visit? Bath. Where's Bath?

Exactly. With the Roman baths that they have down below, and we go into the city where they've excavated all of the old Roman coins they found in the pottery and then the actual original baths, the real baths that the Romans would have used. And so, this one particular time to visit, the last time we went with our children, and we were having lunch nearby, and we went into the bath abbey, and we were explaining the things on the floor and what was on the walls, and there was a gentleman there.

Do you remember that? Well, if you remember, because it's a bit like a museum these days, unfortunately, most people are in there and not there for religious purposes. True.

More for historical purposes. And so, there's a lot of people in there sort of milling around. And over on the right-hand side, I remember seeing this fellow putting out Gideon bibles. I'm a big fan of the Gideons.

You know that. So, I went to talk to this gentleman and thanked him for what he was doing. I just think it's a wonderful ministry. And as I spoke to him, I was curious about what he did as a day job. And he said, well, I'm a professor at the local university teaching science. So, I said, well, that's quite interesting that because a lot of people would say that faith and science are actually at odds with each other. And he said, well, I used to be an atheist. He said, I love the writings of Stephen Hawking and the like. He said, but I've learned how to sort of connect it to my faith. He said, I don't see that there are actually odds with each other at all. If you really look at it, science and faith complement each other.

I was a bit more curious about his story then. I said, well, if you are an atheist and a scientist, what changed everything for you? And his answer was very simple and very profound. He said, I had an encounter with the living Lord. There you go.

That was his response. I had an encounter with the living Lord. As we're finishing up this sort of five-part series on Easter perspectives, I want us to look at that sort of eternal perspective today. And that's represented by the living Lord, the resurrected Christ.

And how encounters with the living Lord changed so many perspectives and so many behaviors. I mean, no one knew what Easter morning was going to bring. The Roman gods were guarding the tomb, which had that huge stone rolled in front of it. The people, they were preparing to go home after the Passover celebrations. The religious leaders, I'm sure they were sleeping very well that particular night. And they thought they had one, didn't they? And the disciples, they certainly did. And the disciples were hiding because of that, because they feared for their own lives.

Actually, it was the women. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, they stood early in the morning and brought spices and other things to embalm the bodies. Quite clear, they had no expectation to find anything but a tomb and a corpse. That's what they were expecting. In fact, it even says, as they were sort of preparing to get there, how are we going to get rid of that big stone that's there in front of the tomb? I wondered the same thing.

Yeah. But to their shock, of course, and we know this story, the stone was rolled away, the tomb was empty, the body was gone, and there to greet them was an angel. Not quite the morning they expected, I would say. And Matthew says, the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet full of joy.

I love that sort of idea, afraid but full of joy. Very disconcerting what had just happened. But boy, the hope that came with it. And then it talks about how they had an encounter with the resurrected, with the living Lord. Of course, they ran to the disciples. They told them what happened. They had a hard time believing it.

Even Peter and John, who then ran to the tomb to see what was going on. Scripture says they were confused. They certainly weren't convinced.

They didn't get what was going on. However, for the religious leaders, having heard this news, they weren't resting anymore. Indeed, these overseers of the law were so bothered by the empty tomb that they actually broke God's law to cover the story. It says that they bribed the gods with a huge sum of money to say, his disciples came in the night and stole him while we were asleep.

That's coming against the commandment that says don't bear false witness. They were bribing these guys to tell a lie. But this day was critical for the disciples and their ever shifting perspective. Boy, what a few days it had been for them. I mean, when they went to bed Saturday night, they were convinced it was done. They were convinced that Jesus had died. They'd lost all sense of direction. They'd lost all sense of hope. And I'm sure as followers of Jesus, they were afraid for their lives.

I mean, they couldn't stand there and pronounce their alignment to him anymore. So I'm sure the conversation about moving on had occurred. What do we do now?

What do we do next? But then when the women come back and they're telling the story of an empty tomb, the conversation must have shifted. Goodness me, what does that mean? I mean, Peter felt the urge to go and what was he thinking when he saw the strips of cloth that were lying there in the empty tomb? But the concept of a resurrection was dismissed. It was too fantastic.

It was too much to hope for. Whichever way, we know that the disciples didn't believe that Jesus was alive until he appeared before them and showed them his hands, showed them his side. Now they believed. Well, at least 10 of them did. I was like, don't forget Thomas.

Yeah. Well, yeah, we can never forget Thomas. Bless his heart. He is scarred by this for all eternity because we know that Thomas wasn't there. So when the disciples came to Thomas and said, we have seen the resurrected Lord, Thomas said, unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. We have people like that today.

Well, that's true. And Jesus addresses that as well. Even though Jesus had repeatedly talked about his death, even though he prophesied about his resurrection, even though the disciples had told Thomas that they had seen the resurrected Christ, still he didn't believe them. So when Jesus appears to Thomas and said, fill my hands on my side, and then instructed Thomas to stop doubting and to believe, Thomas responds with something remarkable and profound. Thomas said, my Lord and my God, my Lord and my God. An encounter with the living Lord had led Thomas to truly and finally understand who Jesus is. And here we see this brand new perspective for Thomas, indeed for all the remaining disciples, indeed for all who had not seen and yet believed.

And that's us. The perspective shift was given to us. Jesus had defeated death, the ultimate consequence of sin, opening the door for eternal life.

Hallelujah. And God, in the form of Jesus Christ, had paid the price for our sin. You described that in one of the prior episodes where Jesus became our sin so that whosoever will may be saved. If we truly believe this, then we have experienced the ultimate perspective shift from our own perspective to a heavenly one, for our own perspective or a worldly perspective to an internal perspective.

And once we've experienced that shift, our priority is no longer self-justification and self-righteousness. It becomes obedient faith because we've been justified by Christ and made righteous by his blood. And then after Jesus ascended into heaven, there are about 120 believers, it says, who were still a bit confused, but what they learned above all things was to listen and to obey. Obedience was a big shift for them. Obedience is a big thing. Well, it is, and we're called to be obedient because our obedience is an act of faith. So that's a call for us to be men and women of faith. So in Acts 1, we see where Jesus instructs the disciples not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the gift the Father has promised and to be baptized by the Holy Spirit. And because of their encounters with the living Lord, the disciples learned to trust God's word and to obey it. And by obeying God's word, they lived a life of faith as outlined in the Great Commission, which says, therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. Absolutely.

Often we forget that piece. And surely I am with you always to the end of the age. Remember, to love God is to obey him. We're going back to Genesis chapter 2 here. Jesus said, anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.

My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Just like in the Garden of Eden, obedience is the key to fellowship with God. So by surrendering what we want and by changing our perspective, we can partake in the divine nature. That's just an amazing concept to me.

Having escaped the corruption of the world and having let go of any evil desires. Adam was made perfect. He was created in the garden in the image of God. But his sin became the sin of mankind.

We inherited that from Adam. And sin, by definition, is rebellion against God. But Jesus came to restore God's image in us, that we might partake of the divine nature.

He became sin to destroy its hold on all of mankind. And he came to shift our perspective to a divine perspective, meaning we are united with God in transforming the world and bringing people to Christ. It's time for all of us to consider our perspective. If we're going to help this world, we complain about it all the time.

We complain about its division. But if we're going to help it, then we must wake up every day with our relationship with God being the most important thing of all. Your individual relationship with God is the most important thing of all. And then priority number two is the salvation of souls. All God ever wanted was to live with us for all eternity, to pour out his love upon us.

Let us bring that message to the world. Thank God for Easter. Thank God for the cross.

Thank God for the resurrection, the ascension, and the hope of eternal life. The Salvation Army's mission, Doing the Most Good, means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support. And we'd love to hear from you. Call 1-800-229-9965 or visit salvationarmyradio.org to connect.

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