Pastor Mike Coppersmith shared an illustration about eternity. He took a tape measure, the kind a carpenter uses, and pulled the tape out only a short length. “The first half-inch is our life in this world,” he said, “and the rest is eternity” as he pulled more and more and more of the tape out. “What we do here, in this first half-inch, is our preparation for all the eternity that is to come.”
Way back in 1650 the Puritan Richard Baxter put these words on the lips of a person who didn’t think hell was a real possibility, until he found himself there. “How many weeks and months and years did I lose, which if I had improved, I might now have been happy! Could I find no time to study the work for which I had all my time? No time, among all my labors, to labor for eternity? Had I time to eat and drink and sleep and none save my soul? Could I take time to secure the world and none to try my title to heaven?”
Today I’m preaching the funeral sermon for a church member who died unexpectedly, a good, faithful Christian man. I’m going to use Pastor Coppersmith’s illustration. Richard Baxter summed it up this way: “Study thoroughly this one word – eternity.”
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