A Future for the People of God

Try as we may, we cannot bring back the past. But there is a marvelous future for the people of God, anchored in a promise that cannot fail. Today, R.C. Sproul looks to the hope of the resurrection.

Vesta and I had the opportunity to return to Pennsylvania and to visit our childhood home. I had two experiences that were very meaningful to me. Anytime I get back to Pleasant Hills, which is a suburb outside of Pittsburgh, the City of Champions. Anytime I have a chance to get back there, I always make a pilgrimage to 150 McClellan Drive. I take my car and I drive down the street, and I look wistfully at the house that my father built, where I was born and where I grew up

This trip was no different. I drove down McClellan Drive, and as I slowed down approaching our family home, I saw a woman out in front of the house clipping the hedges. She was, obviously, the owner of the house and I pulled the car up alongside and I said, "Hello." I said, "You know, my father built that house." She said, "Really?" I said, "Yes." I explained that we'd moved way back in '56, and she said, "Would you like to come in and see the house?" I said, "I'd love to."

So, her husband came out, and they brought us in and they escorted me through the house and showed me what they had done with this room and with that room. It was exciting to see that. It was as though something were laid to rest in my soul.

Then, the next day, I drove out to our old baseball field, Mowry Park. As I entered the entrance way of Mowry Park, I noticed that there was a monument built out of stone and on the monument was chiseled the date of the dedication of this baseball field. It said May 30th, 1955. Then it had, underneath it, the names of the city commissioners who had been there for the dedication of that baseball field. Ladies and gentlemen, I saw that. I went nuts, because I remembered, May the 30th, 1955. I played in the first baseball game that took place on that field. We started out at the Stefano drug store and we were in our baseball uniforms and we marched in the parade with the firetrucks and the bands. We marched two miles out the road and came into the entrance of Mowry Park.

I'll never forget it, but this day as I went back to Mowry Park, there wasn't anybody there. Nobody! Nobody on the field, nobody in the stands, nobody in the dugouts. So while, I knew no one could see me, I walked out on the field and I stood in my old position where I had so many memories. I sit there and all of a sudden I felt like I could do it again. Then I thought, this was 31 years ago. Then that thought came to me, and 31 pounds ago. Then I checked that thought again and I thought, nope, it's more than 31 pounds ago. As I lived with the ghost of my friends and my teammates there on the field, and then walked off the field again, I realized this, that there's no going back.

I can dream about it and I can remember it, and I can savor those memories, but I can't go back. What is past is over. We can memorialize it, we can celebrate it, but we can't bring it back. It's when we realize that, that we ask the question that Ezekiel asks. Is there a future?

Obviously, this passage of scripture is not talking about the resurrection of the dead of individual people. God himself says to Ezekiel, this. He said to me, "son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They indeed say our bones are dry, our hope is lost and we ourselves are cut off."

Now, I don't want to get into a large discourse on eschatology and the different views that we have in the church about the future promises of God. I remember 1967 when I was on my porch in Boston, Massachusetts, and I turned on a television set. I saw Jewish soldiers rushing into the square of Jerusalem. While the firefight was still going on, they were throwing their guns down and running over to the Wailing Wall and weeping there. Because for 1,897 years, they had been saying to each other, next year in Jerusalem, and it finally happened.

There is a future for the people of God, and the promises of God go well beyond the promises that God gives here to Ezekiel too about the Jewish people. The promises in the New Testament say to us, that we shall not all perish, but that when Christ returns, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, as the trumpet is sounded and our Lord appears in shekinah glory, in an instant, the graves of our loved ones will be opened. There will be new life. My father will live again. You will see your loved ones again, because the God we are assembled here this morning to worship, is the God who is the author of life. He is the one who holds the keys of death. He is the one and the only one who has the power and the ability to bring something out of nothing and to bring life out of death. My dear friends, he has promised, categorically and immutably, that the dead in Christ shall rise.