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Crossway Pond Sermon Podcast · Crossway Christian Church

Eternity is Now in Session

·36 min·1 clip
Dave Ripper greets the room as lead pastor of Crossway Christian Church in southern New Hampshire. He frames the church's mission around practicing the way of Jesus together, pursuing God, building community, and unleashing compassion. He thanks listeners for joining the on-campus sermon podcast and hopes the message helps them experience God more deeply and live more like Jesus. He opens with a familiar question he hears all the time: whether it is Donut Sunday. He uses that light church-life moment to talk about sweetness, Scripture, and the way kids were encouraged to connect study with something sweet. The sermon then turns to the difference between knowing church routines and knowing Jesus personally. Ripper says many people know the practical motions of church attendance. He asks whether they know Jesus in an intimate, interactive, experiential way like a friend or family member. He links that kind of knowing to an eternal kind of life available here and now. He cites John Ortberg's phrase that eternity is now in session to describe the idea that eternity has already begun to break into the present. He is careful to say this does not erase suffering. He names disappointment, disease, trials, and tribulations as real. He still insists that believers can taste what is to come in the present. He then sketches two core practices that shape that life. The first is learning how to live and interact with God by living in the kingdom of God. The second is immersing oneself in Scripture until knowledge becomes acquaintance rather than mere information. He pauses to note that the kingdom of God is one of Jesus' central themes and one of the most misunderstood. The sermon keeps its measured, cumulative pace, revisiting the same ideas until they settle. It closes by returning to the promise that the kingdom has come near and that listeners can repent, believe, know Jesus, and experience eternal life now. Ripper finishes with a blessing and a warm invitation to connect with the church community.

As heard by us

A warm sermon on knowing Jesus as present life, not future theory.

Dave Ripper starts with parking, Donut Sunday, and the plain routines of church life before moving to John 17:3 and the idea that eternal life is not only a later promise.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want a sermon that ties ordinary church life to eternal life now.

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