sunday sermon snippet 18 january
Then he said, “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.” — Luke 23:42
This week’s posting of the Sunday Sermon Snippet comes from this past Sunday’s sermon which is part of a short, three-week mini-series for the month of January at Grace Church.
This last Sunday we explored how the Good News of Jesus changes everything, our future lives, and therefore, our present living as well.
And if you’d like to check out the whole sermon, just click here.
Divine Pardon and Eternal Shalom
And what will be the end of that path, should you choose to walk down it? Jesus makes it clear in his story in Luke 16 — angels will carry you into the presence of our forefathers, and the presence of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, where you will experience comfort. But this isn’t the only place Jesus talks about what happens after we die, and after the intermediate state comes to a close upon his return:
Matthew 25:31-34 “When the Son of Man [that’s Jesus] comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them one from another, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
And what will this kingdom look like?
Rev 21:1-4 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband. 3 Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.
And you can go on in Revelation 21 and 22, and elsewhere in the Scriptures, to read about what happens when people, in response to Jesus and his Good News, choose to submit and surrender; to discover how this Good News changes everything in your future life: from Divine Punishment and Eternal Hell, to Divine Pardon and Eternal Shalom.
But the everything this Good News changes isn’t merely in your future life. The everything is your present life too, because, friends, nothing in our lives can remain untouched when it comes to the Good News of Jesus. Our King himself tipped us off to this reality in what he said in Matthew 25. But we’ve got to keep reading. Look at Matthew 25:35…
Matthew 25:35-40, 46 “ ‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; 36 I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me; I was in prison and you visited me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Master, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and take you in, or without clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick, or in prison, and visit you?’
40 “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’…46 [and] the righteous [will go] into eternal life.”
Do you see? There’s a connection between our future life after our death scene and what we do in our present lives before our death scene, in this great drama we’re living out day to day. And friend, brothers and sisters, the Good News — and our clearly and regularly proclaiming it, our keeping it passionately central — is how we make sure it keeps changing everything, and brings us life now and in the future.
Martin Luther talked about this. He said that the default mode of the human heart is to drift away from the Good News, even after you are converted. And so we have to keep updating the software, as it were; we have to keep rebooting the system, and setting it to Good News mode, so that we’re living out what Jesus talks about in this passage.
Tim Keller brings keen insight to this reality and fight:
“We believe the Good News at one level, but at deeper levels we do not…[so many other things] may serve as our hearts functional trust rather than what Jesus has done and as a result we continue to be driven to a great degree by fear, anger, and a lack of self control. You cannot change these things through mere willpower, through learning Biblical principles and trying to carry them out. [That’s not how the Good News Changes Everything. Rather,] we can only change permanently when we take the Good News more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts. We must feed on the Good News, as it were, digesting it and making it part of ourselves.”
Family, this is how we will grow one step closer to Jesus in 2026, by taking the Good News “more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts.”
But you should ask right now, “How? What does that look like?”
Let’s take a look at a couple examples…
If you’d like to check out the whole sermon, just click here.
