Live for the Line
I want us to try to do something. I want us to try to think about forever. Start with this: think about tomorrow. Ok, now 100 years from now. Then a billion years from now. Then a quintillion (billion billion) years after that. Then think about the furthest point possible in time you can think. Now, think a little past that. You’re not even to forever yet.
Thinking about forever can feel overwhelming, can’t it? There is actually a specific anxiety that is recognized as a phobia called apeirophobia, which is the fear of infinity or eternal time.[1] When your brain tries to process a concept with no end, it gets stuck in a loop. It’s trying to use a finite tool (the human mind) to grasp an infinite concept. So, for some people, even thinking about the eternality of heaven freaks them out. I don’t want to freak you out today. Heaven shouldn’t freak us out. It should cause longing and hope within us.
So here’s the first thing we need to see for today. It shouldn’t freak us out. It’s core to who we are.
We were made to live forever.
We are more than physical beings. We are spiritual beings. When our physical body dies, we—the real us—do not die. Every single person lives forever. Some in everlasting glory, others in everlasting torment. Some get grace and mercy for all eternity. Others get the due penalty for their sin. It all depends on what you do with Jesus in this one finite life. Don’t take my word for it; take the Word’s word for it:
Daniel 12:2 – And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
Matthew 25:46 – And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
Your decisions on this earth have eternal ramifications. First, regarding your faith and where you spend eternity. Secondly, since we were made to live forever, that affects our affections and desires here. Eternity affects what satisfies us here on earth.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 – He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
There is a reason temporary things never satisfy: they can’t. We are eternal beings. Think about it like this: Have you ever tried filling up a funnel? What happens? You can’t. You have to just keep pouring in more and more. It’s bottomless. You can’t fill up something that is infinite with something that is finite. It is impossible. If eternity is in our heart, what is the only thing that can fill it? The eternal. Nothing on this earth was ever meant to satisfy your heart.
This life is but a blip on the timeline of eternity.
During this life, our lives feel like forever. Time is a weird thing. We are eternal creatures that live within the forward progress of time. And time goes slow. So that makes it seem like forever—until you look back and wonder where all the time went.
James 4:13-15 – 13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
There is a famous picture of earth I want you to see called “Pale Blue Dot.” Voyager 1 was about 4 billion miles away when it took this picture of earth. In it, earth is only 0.12 pixel in size. Carl Sagan, the atheistic/agnostic[2] astronomer, who was actually instrumental in pushing Nasa to turn around the Voyager 1 towards earth to take this picture, wrote of this image in his book by the same name.
“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”[3]
That opens our eyes to the enormity of space and the smallness of us, but what a sad and hopeless worldview that is. If that pale blue dot is all there is, that’s pretty hopeless. The wisest man to ever live (Solomon), over and over in Ecclesiastes, used the Hebrew word hevel,[4] to describe it, which some have translated “vanity” or “meaningless.”[5] It really means breath or vapor, but they translate it like that because “hevel describes something momentary, elusive, and insubstantial that amounts to nothing or vanishes quickly.”[6] And that’s exactly how King Solomon starts off Ecclesiastes:
Ecclesiastes 1:2-4– 2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. 3 What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? 4 A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.
If you don’t look at eternity, and just look to this world, it’s a hopeless existence. It looks as if this is all there is and all there ever will be. What’s the point?! But, praise God, that’s not reality! Heaven is more real than this broken-down earth! And so, we must live for what will last.
We must live for the line, not the dot.
That means we must live for the eternal, not the temporary.
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The dot is this life on earth. The line is heaven—eternity—what will last forever. Remember what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount:
Matthew 6:19-21 – 19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Since this world and the things in it are wasting away, we must live for what will last. We must live for eternity. That’s the only thing that will satisfy, and that’s the only thing we can take with us when we die.
Here are some of the ways King Solomon observed this:
Ecclesiastes 5:10-15 – 10 He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity. 11 When goods increase, they increase who eat them, and what advantage has their owner but to see them with his eyes? 12 Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep.
13 There is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun: riches were kept by their owner to his hurt, 14 and those riches were lost in a bad venture. And he is father of a son, but he has nothing in his hand. 15 As he came from his mother's womb he shall go again, naked as he came, and shall take nothing for his toil that he may carry away in his hand.
Verses 10-12 shows us that the person who has more just keeps wanting more. It’s never enough. Verses 13-16 show us that all wealth is eventually lost, and verses 15 and 16 specifically show us something we know but almost never live by: you can’t take it with you. We know that! But man do we cling to our stuff! These are all stewardship truths about this finite reality. But we must cling to and live for the greater truth if we are ever going to live out the stewardship truths.
Jesus has purchased an eternity of perfection for us.
What lives on in eternity? Nothing of the material here. But our soul does.[7]
Mark 8:36 – “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”
Remember how some people freak out thinking about eternity? It’s partially because all we know is this broken world, separated from the presence of God. In Christ, what you have waiting for you is perfection, though, and dwelling with God. We get to dwell with the Lord. We don’t have to face sin and suffering.
1 Thessalonians 4:17 – Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.
Revelation 21:3-4 – 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 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.”
And that eternity was purchased at great price because the eternal Son, Jesus, took on flesh, died for your sin and brokenness, and rose from the dead. The Apostle Peter therefore said,
1 Peter 1:18-21 – 18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you 21 who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
We are rescued from an empty, hopeless way of life not by money, but by the costly and perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ.[8] And Peter could only say that because of the eternity that awaits those who believe. He had just before said this:
1 Peter 1:3-5 – 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! 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, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
So, what are you living for? The dot or the line?
[1]https://youtu.be/7dvVnPyaEbk?si=KiGeCcqOuNUX3qFY; https://exploringyourmind.com/apeirophobia-fear-infinity; https://practicalpie.com/apeirophobia
[2] https://www.wondersofphysics.com/2023/11/why-astronomer-carl-sagan-was-agnostic.html
[3] Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (New York: Random House, 1994), 6–7.
[4] https://biblehub.com/hebrew/1892.htm
[5] https://biblehub.com/ecclesiastes/1-2.htm
[6] https://www.gotquestions.org/hevel-in-the-Bible.html
[7] https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/the-brief-biblical-case-for-the-eternal-life-of-the-soul; https://www.gotquestions.org/human-soul-mortal-immortal.html
[8] https://www.gotquestions.org/not-redeemed-with-corruptible-things.html
