Focused on the Finish Line

Well, let's learn how to stay undaunted through all the challenges of life. Welcome. Whether you're joining us via our live stream on YouTube or Facebook Live, our website, wherever you're joining us or whether you're live here in the auditorium, it's great to have you here with us. If you're here with us for Saturday at six o'clock live, we're so excited because Santa Cruz is now in the red tier, which means we are allowed to, in limited ways and COVID-compliant ways, have a live audience here in these services, and we're doing that starting with our Saturday 6 p.m. service.

As Mark just mentioned, everybody who's here live, let me hear it. Let me hear you give a cheer. Are you glad to be here? I'm loving this. I'm loving it. You know, for the last several months, the only person who has been in this room listening to me preach is Mark, and he gives me nothing. So I'm so glad that you guys are live and joining us.

Let me start with a true story. When she was just nine years old, a woman named Marla Runyon went blind. But that was certainly not the end of her story because Marla Runyon, in the year 2000, became the first legally blind athlete to ever compete in the Olympics. Believe it or not, she is a distance runner, and here's how good she is. Since then, she has won six national championships, then a two-time Olympian. Watch this. She was the top American finisher in the New York City Marathon, the Boston Marathon, the Chicago Marathon, and the '06 National Marathon champion. And did I mention she's blind?

You're asking yourself the obvious question. One interviewer asked her, "How can you run toward a finish line that you can't see?" That's a pretty good question, isn't it? Well, she kind of described technically how she does it. She listens to the other runners as they're alongside of her, and then she tries to get ahead of the sound of the other runners. That's how she wins all these races. But I love her ultimate reply, "I can't see it, but I know it's there, and so I run toward it." And that is a great illustration of our key Bible verse today, 2 Corinthians 4:18. We ended with this last weekend. We're going to start with this today. Wherever you are, read this out loud with me. Okay, here we go.

So we fix our eyes, not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary. But what is unseen is eternal. Let's talk about staying focused on the finish line, the finish line that you cannot now see. I want to invite you to grab or download your message notes. Undaunted is what we call our series in the biblical book of 2 Corinthians. This was originally a letter sent by the Apostle Paul to the early Christian believers there in the Roman city of Corinth.

And as he writes this, Paul has been jailed. He's been absolutely horribly mistreated several times. He's been tortured, slandered, under constant threat. In fact, he basically says in this letter for a long time when he got up every single morning, he thought, "This might be my last day on planet earth." He was living under constant threat. So how did the Apostle Paul keep going? And of course, here's why this is so important for us to learn. We're all in a marathon now. Can I say amen? Do you feel like you're in a marathon? If you feel like you are, type amen in the comments, whatever application you're watching this on.

We all feel under constant threat. COVID is now in its eighth month, and it's gotten to the point where it's impacting people that we all know. Of course, most recently the president and the first lady. And of course, we need to keep them and everybody else who's sick with this in our prayers. But related to that, unemployment is growing. And related to that, budgets are strained. And then the nation is divided. And then there's racial tension and lengthy recovery ahead for the fires locally. How do we keep the faith? How do we stay positive? How do we keep running this marathon that we're all in?

Where the Apostle Paul says to the Corinthians, "Here's how I do it." In 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 18 through chapter 5, verse 10. If you have your Bibles, turn to those verses. You know, two of the most universal questions in life are, "What happens when I die?" and "What is there to live for now?" Right? At some point, everybody asks those two questions, both answered in today's passage. I love this passage. This is one of my favorite passages in the whole Bible.

So check this out. Paul said, "As we've seen, I fixed my eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen." Okay, what does that mean? What exactly is unseen that Paul fixes his eyes on? What is the finish line that he's focused on? He starts talking about it in the next verse and he goes on for the next ten verses. He says, "For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven not built by human hands." In this verse, Paul is using the metaphor of buildings, tents, and permanent buildings for our earthly body and our resurrection body.

When he talks about the earthly tent we live in, he means this. He means your earthly body. And when he says, "The eternal house in heaven," he's talking about the resurrection, glorified body that God will give all of us eternally at the resurrection. Now, this is kind of a pet peeve of mine. I think one of the reasons that Christians actually don't really look forward to heaven is we don't really realize what the Bible says about it, right? We kind of are like the rest of our culture. We imagine we'll be disembodied ghosts or angels just kind of floating around on clouds, and the only thing we'll have to do for all eternity is play harps and this weird guitar-looking thing and lyres, whatever lyres are.

I mean, these people just look really, really bored, don't they? They're bored out of their skulls forever and ever. That sounds horrible to us. I remember the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov had a great quote. He said, "Whatever the tortures of hell, the boredom of heaven will be worse." And I think a lot of us fear exactly that. Well, this is definitely not the Bible's picture of heaven. The Christian hope for the future is not to be disembodied but to be re-embodied and to live in a physical place, the new heaven and the new earth. And this is what Paul is getting at here.

Next verse switches the metaphor from buildings to clothes. Meanwhile, we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling. Because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. Paul is saying we long to be re-embodied, not disembodied. "For while we are in this tent, our bodies, we groan and are burdened." Because this tent's getting worn out, right? How many of you at home or here in the auditorium, your tent's just kind of getting worn out? If you can say amen to that, say amen or type amen in the comments section, can you relate to me? My tent is feeling worn out right now. This is why I groan.

And I don't know if you can relate to me, but every year it seems to me that the print gets smaller in the books I read. Every single year, more and more people are mumbling every year. Last year I went to my high school reunion, and some of those people have grown so old they didn't even recognize me. So every year our tent gets worn out. Paul says, "We groan and are burdened, and we long to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." And I love that word, that phrase he uses there, "swallowed up by life." When he says that phrase, what he's saying in essence is he's saying, little footnote, refer to my previous writings on this same subject.

Because that same line is how he ends a whole long chapter of 53 verses that he just rips on this concept of the resurrected body in a previous letter that he has written to these same Corinthians. He says, for example, let me just read you a couple of verses from the end of 1 Corinthians 15 verse 33, "For our dying bodies must be transformed into the bodies that will never die. Our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies, and then this scripture will be fulfilled. Death has been swallowed up in victory." And that's the line he repeats here in 2 Corinthians that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

What he's getting at is everything here on this earth that is cursed and subject to decay, including your bodies, but everything else that decays and dies and suffers here on earth, one day it will be redeemed and restored. Now again, I feel like we American Christians are still so vague on the Bible's actual teaching about this. What we think we know about heaven actually comes from Hollywood movies and Greco-Roman philosophy that Paul's correcting here, not really from the Bible.

So let me just finish sketching in the picture here. Let me go to the very last book of the Bible, Revelation, and in Revelation 21 and 22, it talks about this new heaven and new earth. The Bible's picture of heaven is very earthly, very physical. We're not going to be disembodied. We'll be re-embodied walking on a recreated planet, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look, God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God." Now watch this. "He will wipe every tear from their eyes." You know, that brings a tear to my eye thinking about that actually.

We said last week that suffering is inevitable in life. Life hurts sometimes, and some of you joining us tonight, you've got hurts from life that still haven't healed. Not only is suffering inevitable, sometimes the suffering doesn't end. Well, this first means one day, one day, one day, God is going to see you, and he's going to see that tear that's still running down your cheek, and he's going to touch your cheek and wipe away that tear and heal that wound that still hasn't healed forever, forever. "And there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away, and he who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making all things new.'" Now please note, God says, "I am making all things new, not I am making all new things."

For years I really thought that's what the Bible said, that God was going to make all new things, you know. This earth would be burned up forever, and there'd be all new stuff, shadowy, cloudy, vapory, new things that didn't interest me. That's not what God says in the Bible. The Bible says God's going to make all things new. He's going to take all the stuff that's good about this world and renew it and redeem it and restore it. Think of the things you love here. Think of the rivers and the trees and the rainbows and the animals. Did you know that everything I just mentioned the Bible actually describes literally being on the new earth again? Trees, rivers, creatures, rainbows. It'll be like earth only. It'll be Eden again.

And see, this is the finish line. It's not vapory, cloudy, vague, being absorbed into the great unknown. It's living like you've always wanted to live again, and Paul's saying, "That's what I'm focused on." And when God says, "I'm making all things new," Paul's saying, "That includes you, this earthly tent that's damaged. You're gonna get a heavenly dwelling instead." That makes a difference to live with that finish line in view.

You know, I've told some of you years ago now how one summer when I was working at a camp for kids with special needs, I met a little girl named Area, spelled A-R-A-Y-A, Area. Now, Area was born with a genetic spinal disorder that keeps her from growing much taller from about this high, and she's unable to walk more than maybe two steps at a time, and when she does, she can only walk very painfully because of her crippling condition. Now get this, her birth parents, when she was born with that condition, abandoned her at the hospital, walked away, but Area was adopted by a hospital volunteer who happens to have the same exact condition, and this single woman adopted her and gave her the first name Area and the middle name Sunshine. Area Sunshine, and that's what she is.

Well, one day she's in her church, and she's seated on the front pew as always, and as part of the worship at this church, she sees a beautiful ballerina dance, and she whispers, "Mommy, when will I be able to dance like that?" And her mom said, "I didn't have the heart to tell her." Well, never. And so she said, "In heaven, in heaven you'll be able to dance like that one day, Area." And so right after church, little Area shoots right over to the ballerina and says, "My mommy says one day I will dance like you in heaven." Well, the ballet dancer and her husband are so inspired by this that they choreograph a dance, call it Area's Wings, and it's designed for that ballet dancer Cynthia and Area to dance together.

And I got to see what you could call the world premiere one day. That's Area right there, and that's Cynthia Newland, the ballet dancer that she saw that morning in church. And in this dance, the scene is Area waking up on the morning of the resurrection, and Cynthia, as an angel, tells her, "Look now, at last you can stand, Area. You can walk now. You can dance. You can fly." And slowly she wakes up like a butterfly waking up out of a caterpillar's cocoon. Watch what happens next. And Area's old cocoon turns into Area's wings.

Now, when I saw Area and Cynthia do this dance, it was over at Mission Springs, and it was on the last night of the Johnny and Friends camp for special needs kids. And this ended, the lights went out, and there was a momentary silence. And then there was just this huge ovation, people cheering themselves hoarse. And I suspect the cheers from all those special needs kids and their families were not just for Area and Cynthia. They were cheers for the vision of the finish line. That one day the Lord will wake us all up in heaven, and we will be thoroughly healed. That's part of the unseen finish line.

Watch this. Paul says, "Now, the one who fashioned us for this very purpose," we're all caterpillars waiting to be turned into butterflies, "is God who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come." I think he's saying those moments when you sense the presence of a divine love beyond this world. Maybe you've sensed it in church or in Sunday school or in camp or by yourself in the forest. I believe that's the Holy Spirit with a preview of what you'll always have forever, the love of God permeating you and surrounding you like the old hymn says, "Blessed assurance Jesus is mine." Do you remember the next lyric? "Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine."

Here's what Paul's saying. I can live through earth's uncertainty when I am confident of heaven's reality, right? I can live through any uncertainty here on earth when I'm confident of the reality of the finish line. I can't see it, but I know it's there. This really makes a difference. What difference does it make to me when heaven is this real to me? Well, that's where Paul goes next, and he talks about three things. First, I have less fear because I know the best is yet to come, right? Paul says, "Therefore, because of this," what he just described, "we are always," what? "Confident, and we know that as long as we're at home in the body, we're away from the Lord for we live by faith and not by sight." He says it again. "You're confident," I say, "and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord."

Do you see the difference that this makes? Do you see? If you're about to go under the anesthetic and you're scared of the surgery, you can be confident. You can say, "Well, if worse comes to worse because of the resurrection, I know I'll be home." If you lose a loved one, you can say, "Ultimately, they are not lost to me because of the resurrection. We'll hug again." If for no other reason than to face your inevitable death with peace, it is so worth it to be a believer, but it does more than that. Second, when heaven is real to me, I have greater purpose because I know that what I do now matters forever.

Paul says, "So," again, because of what I just described, "we'd make it our goal to please Him, whether we're at home in the body or away from it, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad." Now, I don't think he's talking about the great white throne judgment that's in Revelation chapter 20, where eternal destinies are decided, heaven or hell. Here he's talking about another judgment referred to in the Bible that's sort of a work review of all the people who are in heaven. And the work that they've done in their life is judged, is evaluated to see whether or not it's really for something that lasted. Their works on earth, Paul's saying, "I want my work on earth to last."

What am I talking about? I think of the fire at Camp Hammer, 30 structures destroyed there, almost everything at Camp Gone. But you know what will never, ever be destroyed? The thousands of young people who gave their lives to Jesus at that camp, they will live forever in heaven. No fire can possibly touch that. And that gives me purpose. Verse 11, Paul says, "Since then, we know what it is to fear the Lord. We try to persuade others." Now, by fear of the Lord, he is not saying he is afraid God will hurt him. He means something like that feeling that you feel when you're standing at the foot of a giant mountain or on the rim of a Grand Canyon or under a massive rainbow canopy or near giant ocean waves like we've had around here lately.

You take that sense of awe times infinity and you apply it to God, and you imagine facing God. He's saying, "I have such purpose because of that." He's saying, "You know, I've been given my marching orders by God, so no Roman guard's going to dissuade me." Like somebody said, if you fear the Lord, there's very little that human beings can do to intimidate you, right? So it gives me more of a sense of undaunted purpose and undaunted fearlessness and courage. And number three, I am motivated by love because I know every single person is cherished by God.

Skip to verse 14, "For Christ's love compels us." Compels us. Christ's love. Don't miss this. We're convinced that one died for some who deserve it. No, for all. And therefore all died. And he died, there it is again, for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again. For all. Paul says it twice. So I looked it up in the original Greek. And you know what the word all means there? Yeah, all. Every single person you ever come into contact with, Jesus loves them so much, he died for them and was raised to life for them. He gave their lives for them so that they could be with him in the new heaven and the new earth, including that person who super annoys you, including that person who won't vote the way you really think they ought to vote in the election this November. All.

Including the red state people, the blue state people, the black and brown and the white people. All. The homeless ones, the ones in mansions. All. For Paul, this includes the guards who beat him up in prison. All. Christ died for them. And so he says Christ's love compels us. And so we no longer regard anybody from a worldly point of view, though we once regarded Christ in this way. We do so no longer. He's saying, yeah, we used to think Jesus was just some guy. And we looked at other people kind of as how can I use this person or this person's my enemy or my opponent or just some moron. Now we see everyone as Christ sees them as somebody that Christ loves.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old is gone, and the new is here. He's saying there is hope for anyone. Anyone. And this is why Christ's love for them compels Paul. Now I just really want to drive this home for a minute. Can you say when you wake up in the morning, when you go to sleep at night, when you're talking to people on the phone, when you're thinking about the condition of the world, when you're thinking about your neighbors, when you're thinking about the presidential election, can you say, you know what I'm really compelled by? You know what really drives me? You know what motivates me? You know what gets my gears turning? Christ's love compels me. Is that what compels you?

Let me just make this a little uncomfortable on both the left and the right. Or does Christ's love compel you, or does Sean Hannity's anger compel you? Does Christ's love compel you, or does Bill Maher's sarcasm compel you? Does Christ's love compel you, or does your own fear compel you? What's your driver in life? If you see how gracious God is and you've got your eye on the finish line and how beautiful that place is going to be and that Jesus, out of love, died for all so that they could join him there, Christ's love is going to compel you.

I got to tell you something. I've been tempted to quit once or twice from this job. It's not an easy job. No job's an easy job. But you know, I'll tell you what has kept me going. When I think of my friends here in Santa Cruz who don't know Jesus the way I know Jesus, I got to tell you, I really love them. I really, really, really love them. And I believe Jesus loves them so much. And sometimes I just weep when I'm thinking of them and I'm praying for them. But that's why I do what I do. I couldn't last if that wasn't what compelled me.

Does Christ's love compel you? I wish the world today would see Christians more compelled by love than by fear or anger or hatred or something else. And let me show you what it looks like to be compelled by Christ's love because you're focused on the finish line. Each week in this series, I interview another undaunted person. And this last week I spoke with Carrie Luther and how she has stayed focused on the finish line. Watch this.

Well, Carrie, thanks so much for joining me. I was wondering if you could summarize the trial that you have gone through that you've been sharing with more and more groups these days.

Yeah, yeah, I would love to. It's not a pleasant story, but it's a powerful one. My son, Tosh, died almost five years ago. It'll be five years ago, October 27th, when he took a quarter of what he thought was a Xanax tablet to help him sleep one evening. And it ended up being a counterfeit version of Xanax and was made with fentanyl instead. And it killed him in the middle of the night. Based on, again, what we learned later, Tosh had no idea that what he was taking wasn't what he thought.

And then over time, I realized this was a very common issue around the country, around the world, actually. Thankfully, as we know, God has turned something so tragic into something so amazing. And Carrie, you've been able to share Tosh's story and the dangers of these counterfeit drugs at a lot of schools with a lot of students. But also, you've been on ABC, NPR, and The Wall Street Journal on all kinds of different news stations. You've been in Washington, D.C. at least a couple of different times talking to legislators there. You've been to state legislatures. It's amazing how God's been using you.

Absolutely. The other way is just people have found me in their research, other parents, and I'm able to share just an encouraging word with them, to come alongside them and share how Christ has been my strength and my peace and my leading me through this journey. Nothing else. It's become a ministry that I never, ever, ever would have expected in my life.

Carrie, how can people reach out to you? Tosh's Story at gmail.com. T-O-S-H-S-S-T-O-R-Y. How has your faith, how has the gospel helped you through this?

Oh my goodness. I mean, without knowing where my eternity is and where my son's eternity is, that's huge. I'd be a basket case. There's no doubt. I mean, even leading up to Tosh's passing, there have been a lot of struggles and trials. Each one of those, through God's word, I've seen how he uses each one of them for good, just like he promises. That's what we've seen in this series, Paul sees this pattern for how God works, crucifixion to resurrection.

How Jesus has just, like you said, he has resurrected me, taken death to life and bad to good. He gave me a verse years and years and years ago for this time. I've had it in my car. You can't even see what it says because it's so faded and beat up, but it is 2 Corinthians 4:18. Why don't you read that for us?

Well, I don't even have to read it. I can just repeat it. We fix our eyes, not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. I just hang on to that knowing that, I mean, I hung on to it for years knowing that, gosh, this is a tough life we have here. I'm just going to focus on my future in eternity. But then when Tosh passed, it had new meaning. My son is gone from this earth, and I won't, I'll have to live without him for another 20, 25 years. That's heartbreaking. But just the joy that I have knowing that that's only temporary, that's my hope.

And I love that. And did you notice, contemplating heaven, staying focused on the finish line, didn't make her just sit around thinking about heaven and being no earthly good. Actually, she's just plunged into service to other people. She's saying, no, that makes me want to help people now. And that's exactly where Paul is going. Heaven-oriented people unleash compassion here on earth. That sounds like a contradiction, but it's so true. Heaven-oriented people unleash more compassion.

On earth, C.S. Lewis said, "If you read history, you will find," C.S. Lewis, not Dionysius, said, "If you read history, you'll find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought the most of the next." There it is, great quote from C.S. Lewis, and I'm so glad to report that the Corinthians finally got this. Now I want to show you a quote from Dionysius why he was a pastor of the Church of Corinth a few decades after Paul wrote this letter in the second century during a plague that killed a tenth of the population.

And yet he writes of the Corinthians, those same selfish, distracted Corinthians that Paul had to correct. Watch this. "Most of our brethren showed love and loyalty in not sparing themselves while helping one another, tending to the sick with no thought of danger, gladly departing this life with them after becoming infected with their disease. Many who nursed others to health died themselves, thus transferring the death to themselves." How could they do that? Gladly departing this life. How are you able to do that? Focused on the finish line, that's how.

So how are we going to live out this principle here at Twin Lakes Church? Many ways, let me just give you one practical way right now. I saw this report this week on NPR headline, Crisis Within a Crisis, Food Insecurity and COVID-19. It says there's this tidal wave of people who never had to go to a food bank before now that they don't have any more money to pay the bills because of lost work due to COVID. I got this letter myself just the other day, "René, I just lost my job teaching, and I am now supplementing my pantry with food from the church. Thanks to all the volunteers, we have wonderfully packed baskets." So first let me just say, if you need help, please go to TLC.org/help. We have resources we can help you.

But second, stories like this and that NPR story are why starting next weekend we will begin our fall food drive. You know Second Harvest Food Bank needs our help now more than ever. And I pick up that they're expecting that because people are stretched thin, the drive this year is going to be less successful than years past. I say let's prove them wrong. Are you with me in this? If you're with me in this, type, "I'm with you" in your comments. Or raise your hand if you're here with us live. Let's go crazy on this. Let's once more bring in the equivalent of a million meals again because people need it now more than ever.

Now what's this have to do with heaven? Well, did you know that Jesus, the most common description that he used to describe the new heavens and the new earth was a feast, a celebration? So let's bring a little bit of that heaven down to earth this fall. More details next weekend. I started with Marla Runyon. She was interviewed earlier this year when the Boston Marathon was canceled because she is now one of the organizers of that race. And she said, "Don't lose heart, runners. Remember we will have the marathon again one day." And here's her quote, "For all athletes right now, I would say keep in your mind that vision of the future." That's what keeps me going now. That vision of us all coming back together in person. And what an amazing celebration that will be for all of us.

She's talking about the Boston Marathon. Paul's saying the exact same thing about the new heaven and the new earth. Get that vision. Stay focused on that finish line, and you can live today undaunted. Let's pray together. Would you bow in prayer with me wherever you are and let's prepare our hearts for communion. Lord, we just ask that you would help all of us keep our eyes focused on the finish line. Help us to endure our hurts knowing there will be healing. God, I pray that you would help us to be compelled by Christ's love, not by anger or hatred or fear. And help us to bring a taste of heaven to earth by loving people in practical ways like the food drive and by sharing our faith. And God, of course, we pray for all those impacted by COVID, including the president and the first lady and those impacted by the fires across California. All those who've lost homes, those fighting on the front lines, bless them with the strength to endure. In Jesus' name, amen.