Dear Brethren and Friends,

Welcome to the Filipino Worship Service!

Our earthly journey as pilgrims is insignificant compared to the heavenly eternity ahead of us as believers. Let us therefore, seek life eternal than the temporal. Yet, there is only one way to eternity, it is knowing, receiving and trusting in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour. I pray we all have done that! If not, let this day be the day of your salvation!—JTGL

ETERNAL LIFE! (Abridged) 2/2
(Charles Haddon Spurgeon February 6, 1887, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit)
https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/eternal-life-2/
“This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” (John 17:3)

Dear brethren, notice that ETERNAL LIFE CONSISTS IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF JESUS CHRIST, WHOM GOD HAS SENT.

This shows that it would not be eternal life to know God apart from Christ. No one does know the true God in the real sense of knowledge except through Jesus Christ, for no man cometh unto the Father but by the Son. It would not be life to our souls to know God apart from his Son, Jesus Christ. We must know the Christ whom he has sent, or our knowledge does not bring eternal life to us. But, beloved, when we see God in Christ meeting us, demanding a penalty and yet providing it himself, decreeing the punishment most justly and then bearing it himself, when we see him to be both Judge and expiation, both Ruler and sacrifice, then we see that “herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Then it is, in the knowledge of God in Christ and God through Christ, that we find that we have entered into eternal life.

Let me here add that it would not be eternal life to know Jesus Christ, if he were not God; if, as some say, he was only a good man. If he were nothing but a mere man, how could he give us eternal life? And of what avail can we trust in him? But if he who bled on Calvary was very God of very God, as well as man, then the sacrifice he offered has an infinite value about it, and I, even I, dare trust my soul to him with the full assurance that there must be, in such a Saviour, ability to save to the uttermost all them that come unto God by him.

How do we come to know Christ? I do not think it necessary at this time to explain much about how we know Christ, because I am addressing to thousands of persons who do know him. Brothers and sisters, you know Christ in the glory of his divine person, God and man. You have no doubts about either his deity or his humanity; you have tasted of the sympathy that comes to you through his manhood, and you have felt the majesty of his Godhead. He is to you your Brother and yet your God. You know him, then, in the glory of his person.

You also know him in the peace-speaking power of his precious blood. This is to me the best evidence of the truth of our holy faith. I was once troubled and tossed to and fro, driven almost to despair under a sense of sin; and it was only when I understood Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice, and realized that he stood in my stead, and bore my sin in his own body on the tree, that I obtained peace with God. I know the power of his blood by the peace it brought me; do not many of you know it also? I am sure that many of you do. Whenever sin returns to assail you, and you get troubled and perplexed, do you not go and look again to Christ upon the cross, and all your anxiety disappears?

We know Christ also in the perfection of his righteousness. By faith, we have put on that glorious robe, and we have gone in unto God with our Brother’s garments on; and the Lord has accepted us for his sake, and we have come from the divine presence exceedingly comforted and blest, “accepted in the Beloved.” We know, dear friends, now, what communion with God means; I have never seen him, but I know him better than anybody I ever saw. I have never heard his voice, nor do I expect to hear it till these ears be deaf in the grave, unless the Lord should come suddenly first; but I know his voice better than I know the voice of anyone on earth, I can discern it in a moment. A stranger will I not follow, for I know not the voice of strangers; but if there be any truth uttered, I know that truth by a kind of instinct within my soul. The charm of it is that Jesus has spoken it, and it commands my immediate loyal acceptance. Question anything Christ has said? Brethren, if I find Christ contradicting everything that I ever thought of, or any decision I had arrived at, I would, without regret, fling every thought in my mind to the winds, but I would embrace each syllable that he has spoken with a joy most intense, and a loyalty that never questions.

This will give you something to trust in, this will give you rest to your spirit, this will give you power for service, this will give you a holy expectancy for the world to come; in fact, everything that life means comes to the man who knows God, and knows Christ; and everything that death means comes to the man who does not know God, and does not know Christ; he is dead even while he continues to exist.

You live by the true God, you live by Jesus Christ; therefore, keep yourselves from idols. Idols are untrue gods, and they are death to you; therefore, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” I need not say to you that we must carefully preserve our integrity in the matter of worshipping anything that can be seen. No child of God may dare to worship a picture, an image, or anything that is visible. I would like to break out of every church every image of the saints, lest it should be worshipped; and especially to banish from all public observation every symbol and sign that ever has been worshipped in the church of Rome, lest it should be worshipped again. I see, in the symbolism of certain churches, a tendency to set up something visible as an object of worship. Remember the commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” that is, have nothing to worship but God; and then, next, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor servo them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.” The worship of the cross, the crucifix, the “consecrated” bread, or anything of that kind, is sheer idolatry, and it always brings death with it. Out dies gospel light when anything but the true God is worshipped. Away with idols, worship God alone.

Then keep yourselves from all other idols; from the idols of your own brain, from creeds of your own making, from thoughts of your own imagining. Keep yourselves from letting anything but God rule you. Keep yourselves from golden idols; keep yourselves from the love of fame; keep yourselves from the adoration of human science: “Keep yourselves from idols.” There is no God but God, and Christ Jesus his Son is the only Mediator between God and men. Keep yourselves from allowing anything but God to get the upper hand of you; make not gods of yourselves, your own persons; make not gods of your families, make not gods of your children. Verily, I say unto you, there are many who worship their children, and set them up as little gods; and when they are taken away from them, as they will be when they worship them, then they cry out against God most bitterly. How could they think that God would allow the little Dagons to be set up in his place? It must be God first, God last, God midst, and God without end. May he make it so with us that, henceforth, we shall have this eternal life, which consists in knowing the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent! Amen.