Hebrews 7:16

THINGS WHICH NEVER DIE

‘The power of an endless life.’

Hebrews 7:16

We talk of ends; but where are ends? It may be an end in relation to the past; but is it not a beginning in relation to something which is to come? Ends are all means.

Many think of their souls as immortal, but of their bodies as belonging only to this present world, and perishable.

I. Your bodies are to live for ever.—This is the great resurrection-truth, which characterises the Christian religion. And is there not ‘power’ in that realisation of the body’s ‘endless life’? Will it not help you to treat that body respectfully, chastely, modestly—if, whenever you look at it, you realise that you are to carry that body into the courts of the Most High God, and to wear it for ever in God’s presence?

II. The friendships, the affections, the communions of this present world—if He is in them Who makes the eternity of everything—they are not made for time. The parent, the partner, the child, the brother, the sister, the friend who is gone, is not less parent, partner, child, brother, sister, friend, because the veil is drawn for a little while. They live. They are yours. It is only a parenthesis in the immortality of a true affection—made matter of faith for a little while—preparatory to a higher fruition.

III. Prayer is a thing which never dies.—It may occupy a moment. You say it, and you forget it. But it is gone up, and it is registered in heaven. God looks at it. It is still in His faithful keeping. And long after it has passed from all human memory, and after the very lips that uttered it are cold, that prayer lives on! And answers, years to come, down many generations, will prove ‘the power of its endless life.’

IV. What a fugitive thing is a thought!—It scarcely comes, when it is flown! For ever you may have it. You may arrest it; you may eternalise it. Ask God that that thought may not cease. It will come back, back! That thought that just glanced through the mind; that thought of a promise; some great truth. It will come back when least you look for it. Perhaps in some dark passage; perhaps on a sick-bed; perhaps in a dying hour. And the slightest association will awaken it—a flower, a scene, a breath of air! Have you never felt it? Have you never felt it with some thought, and found that in that thought there was ‘the power of an endless life’?

You are an ‘endless’ being; and dealing always with ‘endless’ realities. Men speak of the brevity of human life. It would be more true to say, its infinite duration!