How to Unlock Your Future Blessings Today

((music playing)) All right, we are in Mark chapter 10 tonight and I'm here with uh Pastor Eric Luchetta once again and um if you don't mind uh you're going to take us a little bit through Mark 10 this evening, but I want to ask you one simple question as we jump into it.

Um what is eternal life? Eternal life, that's a major topic here in chapter 10. So to answer that question, let's jump into right where the idea of eternal life shows up. And I'm going to read to you Mark 10 verse 17. This is the famous story of the rich young ruler.

He comes up to Jesus with an urgent question. He's concerned about something. And here is his question. In verse 17, as Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. Good teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

He's concerned about inheriting eternal life. So, let's define eternal life. What is eternal life in the Bible? Well, what it's not is the idea of maybe going to heaven when you die. Now, it's true when you die, you go to heaven. You go to be with the Lord.

But eternal life is more than going to heaven, right? and spending eternity in heaven. Rather, it refers to a future time where God frees this earth from sin and death, rescues it from evil and corruption, and he sets it right like the Garden of Eden. Let me say that again.

Eternal life in the Bible refers to the future time where God comes to remove sin and death, to remove evil so that creation can become what God originally intended. And what he originally intended was the Garden of Eden, right? A land flourishing with abundance where humans live there.

So eternal life isn't about going to heaven. Eternal life is about heaven coming to earth. That's good. To transform it. And here's the amazing thing. If you read the end of the Bible, the book of Revelation, it ends with Eden coming back again. Eden being reborn where human beings live in the earth with God.

Yeah. So, when you talk about eternal life, you're talking about the earth reborn into the Garden of Eden. And this was the hope held out in the Old Testament that those who know God and those who God knows would inherit that world. That's right. So, we're talking again about heaven coming to earth.

Not so much about us going to heaven. Now, if you look at the Old Testament, you can see where God creates the earth and then in a little tiny sliver of land, he creates Eden and the Garden of Eden. Right? But the book of Revelation, eternal life, then ends with the Garden of Eden expanding throughout the whole earth and human beings living throughout the whole earth.

And if you think about it, that was Adam and Eve's call. Yes, they were supposed to through having children expand the human race throughout the whole earth. And so eternal life is the hope that one day God would fulfill that promise. That's right. that although the project got sideways, God would be faithful in the end to bring it to completion.

That's good. And and the Eden was the place where heaven and earth were originally over overlapped. Yes. They were connected. Yeah. And through sin and corruption, they were disjointed, almost fractured. Yeah. Um and and so you you see that all the way through the scriptures where um there's this this corruption and this sin and this brokenness in the earth in God's creation in the world in humankind and instead of upholding the rule of heaven, humans try to rule in our own way.

Yeah. And everything goes bad. Yes. That's exactly right. And Jesus has come to reset it and to set it right and to bring heaven and earth back together. And it's it's not ironic that Jesus uses actually the picture of divorce at the very beginning of this chapter because he says right what God has br brought together let no one separate.

He's not just talking about earthly marriage between a man and a woman. He's talking about heaven and earth. He's using marriage as a metaphor to say they should be together as one. Yeah. And therefore, it's not wrong when we say we will live in heaven forever. Correct. The question is where will heaven be?

Yeah. And heaven will be on the earth. It will. So eternal life is living in a heaven and earth future reality where it's nothing but abundance and needs met and flourishing. human flourishing, creation is flourishing, sin and death are gone, and heaven and earth are one again. That was, like you said, the original plan for the Garden of Eden was for God to live with humanity in the earth.

Therefore, heaven and earth would touch. They would merge together. Right? And the apostle Paul, he himself even talks about how marriage is a symb is symbolism of heaven and earth coming together. Yes. So Jesus talks about divorce and talks about things not being separated. And Paul is saying it's it's symbolic of of husband and wife coming together are symbolic of heaven and earth coming together.

That's right. and and the Hollywood version of eternal life is sort of our physical body goes in the ground and then we're taken away to heaven as sort of a soul or a spirit floating in the heavenly realms um in this sort of disembodied city up somewhere else somewhere away.

Yeah. And that's not actually how the Bible explains. It's not how it ends. Yeah. No, not at all. Um the resurrection is the very picture that our physical body will be raised again and eternal life where heaven and earth come together will actually be a physical conscious dwelling in the earth but with Jesus and with God dwelling with us.

Yeah. As heaven and earth have come back together. So it will be a real experience. We will be doing work. We will be ordering the world such that it it reflects heaven's rule. They will just be all together. Yeah. And if you think about it, human beings being in the earth with God is what God called very good.

Yes. And like we always say, whatever God calls very good, he's committed to until the very end. That's right. And so when he says human beings in the earth bearing my image is very good, then he's committed to that. And so that's ultimately even what salvation is about.

The cross is about becoming the sort of human being that God intended and ultimately to dwell in the earth with God forever. So when this rich young ruler asks the question, how can how can I be sure that that future life will be my inheritance? That's right. He's asking that question because it was a common question of the day.

Even religious leaders argued over who qualifies to get into that future life. And of course, Pharisees, they definitely would have said, "Follow the Torah." Yeah. Obey the Torah and that will that will qualify you for your inheritance. And other people said, "Well, it's this way or it's that way."

And what does Jesus ultimately tell the rich young ruler here? Follow me. Yes. The answer is in following me. But here's the here's the point though. The rich young ruler was right to ask that question. That's a great question. What must I do to in to to make sure that I inherit the life of the age to come?

And Jesus ultimately says follow me. But again, the important thing here is for all of us as Christians to remind ourselves that God has not abandoned this world. He still calls it very good. Human beings living in it. Living in it is what he desires. Full of abundance, human flourishing, creation flourishing.

So when we talk about eternal life, we're talking about the future time where sin and death are gone, human beings are flourishing, creation is flourishing. There is abundance. And abundance is a good way to describe that future eternal life. Yes, but there's one more thing that another aspect of eternal life that we should talk about and that is mentioned here in chapter 10.

And it's the idea of how in the future the eternal life, human beings won't just be experiencing abundance. Human beings will be ruling. That's right. Over creation. Yes. It's abundance and rulership. That's good. and uh and and so so basically abundance and rulership is what's central to uh the idea of eternal life.

Abundance is good. But when you're ruling, when we're ruling in the age to come in in eternal life, we're fulfilling our human calling. Actually, here's what it is. We get to experience how amazing it is to be a human being. Yes. You know me a as a Christian and as a Bible teacher to be honest with you sometimes I have to remind myself just how special humanity is, how unique humanity is, how God calls it very good humans be human beings being in the earth and to have a perspective of humanity from God's perspective because you and I as pastors we've seen it where people have said, "Oh, I don't have a a very positive view of of humanity as if it's something that almost like God's going to just get rid of one day and we'll just get rid of the earth and he'll crumble it up in in a in a ball and throw it in the garbage can and we'll just go to heaven forever.

God so loved the world. Yes. That he sent his son. That's right. So that it would ultimately be recreated. So rulership over creation in eternal life in the new heavens and new earth is what it means to bear his image. So we will be proper imagebearers ruling over creation and watching it flourish in abundance.

So the other night we were I love your your point right here that you're going to make and I'm going to add a quick story to it. Yeah. Um, the other night we were talking with my uh my daughter who's 10, oldest one, and my youngest one who's nine.

And my oldest one has a birthday coming up and um she's going to be 11. She has every single night before we go to bed, they have to put their room in order. They have to put their room in order. We also homeschool, so they have to put their classroom in order.

Both of those things are their domain. They rule over and keep those in order. And Finley was talking about how excited she was about, you know, the presents she was going to get and the new things she was going to get. And I said, "Look at this room.

Look how packed it is. Look how much is in here. What do we need to get rid of so that you can put the new things in?" Wow. And it dawned on her, I'm not going to have enough space for everything I want for my birthday unless I remove things and put things in order.

And so we're teaching them ordering your life. Discipline is literally the way of going, "Hey, what should be here and what shouldn't be here?" This is what God has called us to as Christians in the present age. He's called us to right now to say, "What shouldn't be here in the earth?"

Well, greed shouldn't be here in the earth. Lying shouldn't be here in the earth. Deception shouldn't be here in the earth. Murder shouldn't be here in the earth. What should be here? Kindness, goodness, gentleness, love, peace, patience, all the fruits of the spirit. So yes, as a ruler over her room, Finley has the choice about what should or should not be in that room.

And I, as a father, a good father, am helping to teach her, here's what it looks like to rule over your space the right way. Yeah. And so it's the same thing with God. God, he he has partnered with us or he has called us into a partnership with him to rule over his good earth the right way.

Yeah. And you know, we can look in the world today and say, "Well, God hasn't set it right yet. There's still sin. There's still sickness, disease, hatred, um, corruption, right, that's going on in the earth." Yet, the rich young ruler is saying, "What must I do to inherit that future?"

So, it's clear it hasn't shown up yet. Yeah. But Jesus is saying, "Well, come follow me and you'll get to experience it." And we can see from scripture that ultimately that future eternal life. You might say, "Well, when is it going to show up?" At Jesus's return. When Jesus returns, that's when sin and death will be removed.

That's when eternal life, the new heavens and new earth will appear. But here's the tricky thing, and this is the thing that I think confused a lot of people in Jesus's day when he was preaching about eternal life. Jesus was preaching that eternal life would be experienced fully one day.

Yet, he's talking about experiencing it now in the present. Well, if eternal life is talked about as some future reality exclusively in the future, how can Jesus be talking about giving it out now in advance of its arrival? And here's what we find out. The gospel is the announcement by which that future is starting to show up in the present.

Yes. Yes. It will show up fully in the future. Sin and death will be gone. But right now, God is beginning to bring about the the abundance and the provision of eternal life even now in the present. Yeah. Here's what I mean. Think about this. When Jesus returns and he removes sin and death, will anybody die of cancer?

No. No. Will anybody will there be hatred? Nope. No. Will there be lack? Will people be hungry in the new heavens and new earth? No. No. That's what the miracles that Jesus is performing are showing signs of. That's good. Every time he heals somebody, it's more than a miracle.

It's a sign that the future is showing up in the present. The future, eternal life, is breaking in in the midst of human hurt and pain and chaos and confusion. And it's starting to set things right now. The forgiveness that the rich young ruler was waiting to experience in the future with eternal life, Jesus is handing out the forgiveness right now.

Yes. But that was supposed to be something that those who qualified would get later when eternal life comes. He's saying, "I'm going to give it to you now." So, what do we see? Jesus's kingdom message is, yes, eternal life will show up fully in the future. That's right.

But it's already breaking into the present now. And so, we have to ask ourselves this. Let's just say you get a bad doctor's report and you think, "Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? What am I going to do?" Pause and ask yourself in the future in in in the new heavens and new earth, eternal life, will this be here?

Will will this terminal illness be here? No. Okay. But that future is breaking in now. So why not pray and believe for healing now? That's right. That's what's being made available. The forgiveness, the healing, the provision, the abundance is breaking in. And Jesus is saying, if you believe in me and use my name, you're going to begin to experience and walk in the signs of eternal life even before it fully shows up in the earth.

Love that. And I and man, as you were talking, I was thinking cuz you said earlier, it's it's more than just a miracle. These are more than just miracles that Jesus does. He's not just proving, okay, I'm God in the flesh. Yes, that we see that. But Jesus is is performing these miracles to say, "This is what these signs look like of it breaking in now."

And then he says, "Yeah, and I'm inviting you into this project with me." So, it's not just a sign of what Jesus is supposed to be doing. It's a sign of what we're supposed to be doing. like we're supposed to join in with this project. Yeah. With this recovery, with this renewal, with this restoration project.

And like you just said, it is it's not just Jesus um sort of signaling who he is. He's signaling who we should be with him in this. And you know what's amazing is this rich young ruler, he's clearly concerned. It says he runs up to Jesus, falls on his knees, and says, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"

And so Jesus has a little conversation with him. And at in the end, he challenges the the this rich young ruler. He says, "Go sell all of your wealth and come follow me." In other words, if eternal life is really what you want, you can come follow me now.

That's right. And when he hears this, his face goes down. He puts his head down because he couldn't he was struggling with parting with his wealth and to abandon his wealth to follow Jesus even though eternal life was being offered was just something that the rich young ruler couldn't do at that time.

Yeah. So the rich young ruler with his head down walks away. But when he walks away Jesus turns to his disciples and says something very interesting about what we're talking about right here. Let's read Mark 10 29 and 30. And this hits the point of what you and I are talking about with how we are understanding eternal life.

Jesus says, "Truly I tell you, I'm sorry. Truly I tell you, Jesus replied, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields or for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age. homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children's field fields along with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life.

That's right. Look what he's saying. He's talking about the present age and the future age of eternal life. But he's saying if you follow me now, the hundfold, the abundance of the future eternal life will start showing up in your life now. Yes. So the future is showing up in the present.

But it's very important to see how he's thinking. Jesus is saying, "Yes, there is a present age full of sin and corruption. And yes, there will be a future age called eternal life, the new heavens and new earth. But make no mistake about it, faith and following me will cause that future to show up right now in the present."

Yep. So what do we see here? Jesus has a radical message of the future blessing is for now. But here's the thing. If the future blessing is showing up now, what about the rulership part? Shouldn't human beings start ruling? Isn't part of eternal life is to finally be in the condition of a true imagebearer ruling over creation so that heaven and earth reflect one another?

Well, interestingly enough, that's what comes up next. And what we see is shortly after this exchange with the rich young ruler and he walks away sad. And Jesus says, "It's showing up now." James and John, two of Jesus's disciples, get a bright idea. And they start thinking, "All right, well, that things are really moving along here.

Things are breaking forth into the present human be." They're saying, "We know the story of Israel, the story of the Old Testament. Human beings are meant to rule." So they go up to Jesus and they say, "Uh uh uh, hey master, when you start when you really take over creation, we want to rule along with you, but we want to be one on your right hand and one on your left hand."

In other words, we want high positions of authority. We want the most honored positions. In a sense, what they're saying is, "We want to rule over other human beings. We want the top positions." Watch how Jesus responds to this because he's going to redefine what authority is, what power is.

He's going to redefine what it looks like when a human being is truly ruling the way God intended. So his these two disciples, James and John, ask Jesus for the highest positions. Well, the rest of the disciples, they overhear this and they get mad and they no doubt get mad because they thought, I should have asked that question first.

So here's what happens. Here's verse 41 in in Mark 10. When the 10 heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. Jesus called them together and said, "You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.

Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be a slave of all. For even the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

So in other words, when the future eternal life starts showing up in the present and human beings are learning what it means to be human and experiencing what humanity was meant to be, they find themselves serving. Yep. To rule is to serve. To rule is not to boss and bully, manipulate and intimidate.

To rule is not to say, "This is my position. I'm in charge of you. Now do what I say." That true imagebearing now that eternal life is beginning to show up. Now that humans are beginning to rule, looks like service even to the point of dying for somebody else.

Mhm. And notice what Jesus says here. He has no problem with people wanting to be great. He says,"Great. You want to be great? Wonderful. You want to be a great ruler as a human being. That's a good thing to aspire to." Yep. Lay down your life and you'll fully experience what it means to rule.

Lay down your life for somebody else and you'll experience what it means to be human. Yep. So that's what we're seeing here in chapter 10. Both the coming of eternal life in the form of abundance and provision yet also coming in the form of the restoration of the ruling human being the true imagebearers and it turns out to be service.

Yep. So the sign that eternal life is breaking in is both abundance and service. That's what Mark chapter 10 is ultimately about. So what did we see so far in this chapter? That the future eternal life of abundance and human rulership where heaven and earth reflect one another.

Where heaven and earth merge together as one another with one another as God intended. Although it still will show up fully in the future through faith in Jesus, it's beginning to break into the present. How does it break into the present? with provision, with needs met, with abundance, and with human beings beginning to serve as his image bearer.

That's great. This is great. And and I love how this mirrors a story from the Old Testament. So, I'm going to go there real quick. Explain it. In Numbers 13, the children of Israel, God has called them by faith to enter the promised land. This is the land of abundance and God's goodness and his promise.

So, the children of Israel send 12 spies and only two of them have a good report when they come back. The other 10 say, "There's no way we can enter the promised land. The giants are too big. We're going to get demolished. They're going to destroy us." So, they lack the faith.

Yeah. But the two, Joshua and Caleb, two spies in Numbers 13, say, "No, we can do it. We have to trust God to bring this to fruition, but we can do it. And we partner with God in going into the promised land. That's what I see here. There's 12 of them and 10 of them are like, "What is happening?"

Well, yeah. Well, why didn't we think of this? And James and John are like, "Hey, we we want to we want to be great. We want to do something great." And Jesus goes, "Cool. You're going to do it my way." Yeah. And my way is Yeah. Go low.

Be a servant. It's not about you. It's not about your power, your wisdom. It is about doing it my way. And God says the same thing to Israel as they're going to the promised land. You're going to do it my way. I have what? I have the power to to remove the enemy.

I have the power to remove the corruption. I have the power to bring you into the promised land into the flourishing. But you got to trust me. Yeah. And Jesus is saying, "You got to trust me. You got to trust me that this is the way it's going to happen.

Yeah. It's not going to happen by us bossing and bullying and manipulation. It's going to be through service. It's going to be through self-sacrificial love. Yeah. And to show and to show the signs of it. It's kind of like when your wife was pregnant and my wife was pregnant with our first, we started seeing signs long before we actually experienced this birth.

Yeah. Long before we actually I actually saw my first child. For months, we saw signs that Yeah. that it was happening. Yeah. And it was funny because we we got u I say we got pregnant, Tara got pregnant. Um I served I got to be like James and John.

Um I I served her, but she was pregnant on Mother's Day, but we didn't have a baby yet. Mhm. But people would come up and go, "Happy Mother's Day." Right. That they saw the signs. They knew what was happening. They knew it was good as done. Yes. It was as good as done.

We just hadn't seen the child yet. Yeah. It's the same thing with us. We haven't seen the full culmination or the the exclamation point of Jesus return and putting a stamp on the kingdom, but we're seeing signs of it now and we are participating in that expectation because we're already it's kind of like hotspots.

We flew last year uh out of the country and we got to an airport and I I needed self- serve and my phone was struggling. So, I sat next to somebody that had a hot spot and I was like, "Hey, can I can I bum off your hotspot?"

And they said, "Sure." Yeah. That's what it's like for us as followers of Jesus right now. We are a hot spot of God's Wi-Fi in the world. And when people get around us, we should be that that that life of God should be flowing out of us where people can connect in.

People can connect in. And we should be serving and giving and self-sacrificial and love and joy and peace and but it only comes through trusting that Jesus way is the way. Yeah. It is the way to rule. Yeah. It is Jesus showed us that self-sacrificial love as his death and resurrection shows us it is the way of humanity.

Yeah. And so anyways, I just man that that idea of us being a being a hot spot wherever we go as showing signs. We are showing signs. Yeah. Of this age to come. It it's amazing that God sends us out to show signs of what the future will be.

Yes. We are like billboards that are announcing the future. Yeah. And we do that through the abundance that comes to and through us. but also how we look at power very differently. True power is the service. Actually, if you want to here, here's something very interesting. If we look at historically at the early church, why did the early church grow so rapidly?

Well, obviously the answer is first and foremost, it's because of the Holy Spirit was present and the spirit was being poured out and it was it was drawing people. But also along with that, if you look at historically, why did the church grow? It's because the world was shocked by the way we took care of the poor and the sick.

Yes. The marginalized, the least of these we look at as Christian. Look, we are when you become a Christian, it's not five minutes until you're told you're supposed to love people, right? That you're supposed to forgive people and you're supposed to take care of people. Like we learned that in the first 5 minutes of being a Christian, but that was not the main virtue in that day.

Not in the Roman Empire. Not in that time. They they looked down at the weak. They looked at them as disposable. Yes. So this new group of people come along, these people who follow the Messiah, this Jewish Messiah, and they start taking care of people. They start bringing them in, nursing them.

They start praying with them, praying for them. And actually one of the reasons why the church exploded was because they saw there was a new way of being human. Yeah. And they were gravitated towards us. And that's why again when you talk about eternal life, you're talking about the future showing up in the present in at least two ways.

Abundance and serving. Yeah. And here's I'll end with this. Here's the rich young ruler who was panicked over inheriting eternal life in the future. And Jesus was offering it to him now. Yeah. And he turned it away. Wild. Thank you. Uh I I want to take a moment and just pray for us.

Father, I I just pray for all of us that have heard this word tonight. And we ask you that you would um make us come alive with this truth, this seed of your word that's planted in our hearts. Father, I pray that it would bring us to a place where we embrace this role.

We embrace this restoration project that you have brought to us, Lord Jesus. And we would join in every day by the power of the spirit. We would join in to this project that we would show signs now in our lives every single day. Father, thank you that you're going to do it through us.

That we don't have to try to muster up the faith or the power that you give it to us as a gift. But Father, may we take it and put it into action in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Pastor Eric, thank you. Thank you.