Psalm 100: God's love fruits in our eternal life.

It’s a week ago today 14th Oct 2024 that a friend of ours, a child of our Father in heaven though her belief, her trust, in Christ Jesus, passed on, being promoted to Paradise, waiting with all the Church above for resurrection into eternal life in God’s new creation. Knowing her revealed a person of faith, a shining smile and a deep memory for old hymns.

Today we have jumped from Psalm 86 to Psalm 100, for it is a psalm dedicated to giving thanks to the Lord God; it invites us, God’s people, and even all the earth, all creation, to shout for joy to the Lord; to worship the Lord our God with gladness; gladness for all He has done for us, rescuing us, as Paul tells us [Col 1 from the dominion of darkness and bringing us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Peter in his 1st letter praises the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! [for] in his great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This hope is now our friend’s experienced reality. She has entered, the end result of her faith, the salvation of her life. I can envisage her entering God's courts with praise, walking, even running, with thanksgiving in her heart and on her lips. And I can envisage Jesus greeting her with the words, all who love Him long to hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant. Come and share your Master’s happiness.” It is the constant message of Scripture that the Lord is good and His love endures forever. The life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus is the living proof that these words are true and to be trusted.

Sadly many people think of life as a short flight of light between one darkness and another. You did not exist. You live. You cease to exist. hope of future life is at best being recycled as dust of the earth, until the universe itself ceases to be. But the Lord is good and His love endures forever.

However God made us in His own image, and so love is written by Him in our very nature. But our love, for others and for ourselves, is ultimately bounded, limited by time. We all of us come to death. What then of our love? Is it only to be remembered in the hearts of those who loved us. What then of our love when they also die?

As John the apostle writes in his 1st letter C4 v8b God is love. That truth is where many people stop reading, as if there is nothing more to be known. But it is not where John stops writing, for he knows we need to know what love is and how God shows His love to us. He has already said it in C3 v16: This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. Now in C4 he re-states it to stress that Christ's coming flows from God's: This is how God showed His love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. This was and is a work of love and life. It was agreed in the council of heaven by the Holy Trinity before creation was made. And, at the appropriate time, it was implemented in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. The Father, the Son and the Spirit agreeing in love to save us from death in this way.

The Lord is the good shepherd and He does not let death be our ending. As Jesus said to Martha when her brother Lazarus lay dead in his tomb. “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” [John c11 v25-26] And then, showing that His words were words of truth, He raised Lazarus from the dead. The Lord is good and His love endures forever.

To believe in Jesus, to trust in Him, is to enter eternal love. As Hebrews c13 v4 tells us: God has said ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’ The Lord does not give us up to the nothingness of death, the dominion of darkness. This is the promise, our friend is now experiencing as truth. A promise given to all.

What of our love? ‘Which of you, Jesus observes, [Matthew c7 v9-11] if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? … If you, then, though you are (not 100% perfect, without flaws, people who judge, hurt, pull down others) know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!" What is the greatest gift you have ever been given? Life. God the Father of Christ Jesus gave us life and it “my Father’s will,” Jesus observes [John 6:40] "that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life." God is love and His love endures for ever.

Eternal life is not about being 80, then 90, then 1000, then 10,000 years old, and sinking into some helpless physical, dementia being. Eternal life is living agelessly in your prime, in the fullness of your potential, in the love, joy and peace of a new creation with our heavenly Father, Christ Jesus, the Holy Spirit and all Christ's people. In that hope may we give God our trust, our praise, our thanks now, and like our friend enter His courts with praise, for the Lord is good and His love for us endures forever, Amen.