We are almost literally in the middle of a sermon series called “The God Questions…” so-named because the purpose of these three messages is to find answers to some of the toughest questions of life. For example, last Sunday we looked to the Bible for help when it comes to understanding the true nature and purpose of a horrible place called Hell. By the way, if after our study last week, you still struggle with some aspect of that particular issue I hope you’ll let me know. I’d love to talk to you.
In our examination of the Bible’s teachings about Hell, we began by looking at several verses from the 25th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, but this morning I want us to start with just ONE verse of scripture, a verse in which Job posed another “God Question”, one for which all people yearn to find an answer. Let’s “ask” it together by reading our text in unison.
The words are found in Job 14:14 and are on the screen behind me.
“If a man dies, will he live again?”
This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Would you pray with me?
Father God, The question we are dealing with this morning is one that is on all of our minds at some point because death is unavoidable and there is so much we don’t know about it. As we wrestle with this and other tough questions, we confess our smallness and ignorance. Our minds are finite and we cannot grasp the infinite. But we know that all things are open before Your omniscient eternal eyes. We know that You are the Giver of life. So, today we accept the invitation You have given us in Your Written Word and we ask that You will reveal Yourself to us as the Great Teacher and help us to learn from You the answer to this question. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.
This past Friday night Sue and I watched a special edition of 20-20 in which Charlie Gibson reported on the life of Billy Graham, specifically the relationship that Dr. Graham has had with every president since Eisenhower. Both Gibson’s interview and the cover story in this week’s issue of TIME magazine were prompted by a new book written by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy entitled, The Preacher and the Presidents. Here’s an excerpt from the book taken in the TIME article: “When Graham was around, presidents found themselves at ease, not on edge. They could tell that Graham wasn’t there to lobby or confront, but to listen and comfort. Since he made it safe to ask the simplest spiritual questions, conversations had a way of circling around to the eternal, to sin and salvation and to what death really means.”
At one point in Friday’s 20-20, the three living ex-presidents: Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter all sat around a table with an aging Dr. Graham, and these ex-presidents each took turns sharing testimonies of what their friendship with this world famous evangelist meant to them in the years that they sat in the oval office. I want to show you a brief clip from this segment of the show because it reveals the fact that even our nation’s chief executives grapple with this particular God Question. Even presidents wonder about death and the hereafter.
(Clip beginning with Hilary Clinton and ending with Nancy Reagan)
As I said, this portion of 20-20 shows that questions about death aren’t just asked by lowly “normal” people like you and me. The world’s most powerful people struggle with, and wonder about, the end of life as well. Did you notice that they ask the same kinds of questions about death that we do?
President Johnson wondered, “Will we see our loved ones again?” And Ike, President Eisenhower had led the allied forces to victory, defeating Hitler and the Nazi juggernaut in the brutal battles of WWII, but even this famous conquering general feared this last battle we all must fight, asking, “How can we be ready to face it?” As you heard, Graham comforted Eisenhower such that he was ready, and apparently did the same for other presidents, ministering to them as a “pastor” to a very unique “congregation.”
What does this aging evangelist know that enables him to give that kind of counsel to our nation’s leaders and their families? For that matter, what gives Billy Graham such peace in the face of death? How is he able to cope with his grief about his own wife’s recent passing? How could he so confidently reassure Mrs. Reagan that she would see her husband again? What does Billy Graham know about the answer to this particular God question?
Before we go any further, I think we need to realize that asking these kinds of questions is part of what makes us unique as humans. Unlike animals, people like you and me are conscious of our mortality. As Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, God, “…has set eternity in the hearts of men,” so all people have always known that death is not the end, that something happens after our bodies cease to function. But we all wonder what, we all question what it will be like after we die.
A great proof of the fact that God has given all mankind this “sixth sense” that tells us that death is not the end is seen in the Egyptian culture of four thousand years ago. They were a race of people who not only believed in life beyond the grave but were actually obsessed with it. In fact, most Egyptians began preparing for the after-life before they reached mid-life. Studies of the tombs and pyramids like these pictured here show that many of them required the efforts of one hundred thousand workers, forty years to build. Egyptians went to all that trouble because they knew something happened after death and they wanted to be ready for it. Some of their conceptions of what the afterlife would be like were somewhat skewed. But even these ancient pagan people understood in the core of their being that death was not the end. And their culture is not the only example of this.
Archeologists and anthropologists tell us that from the beginning of time, history is full of proof that all people have this unique awareness that there is a thing called eternity. Arnold Toynbee, the philosopher and historian, once insightfully wrote: “Man alone….has the foreknowledge of his coming death and, possessing this foreknowledge, has a chance, if he chooses to take it, of pondering over the strangeness of his [eternal] destiny…”
In spite of all these ancient societies that demonstrated an awareness of the afterlife, the fact is today our modern culture tends to respond to this foreknowledge, this sixth sense, this awareness, by denying death. We don’t want to talk about it. We don’t want to think of the afterlife or prepare for it. That’s “morbid” in our thinking. Plus, it forces us to talk about religion and that’s definitely a “no-no” these days. Instead we deny death and the hereafter and focus on extending and enjoying this life! Ours is a youth-oriented culture in which we spend billions on gyms, spas, health foods, vitamins, Botox and face lifts, doing all we can to remain eternally young.
But in spite of all this expense, our efforts are fruitless because all we can do is extend life, no one can stoop death. With miracle drugs we have eliminated diseases like polio and the plagues that devastated entire nations in the past. We’ve learned to bypass clogged arteries and fight cancer cells and replace worn out joints, but no one has discovered a cure for death.
This week I came across an interesting example of the extent to which some people go to deny death, in the form of an actual letter that appeared in Newsweek magazine a few years back. The letter had been sent to a dead person by the Greenville County South Carolina Department of Social Services. It said: “To whom it may concern: Your food stamps will be stopped immediately, because we have received notice that you passed away. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances.” I hope this was a computer error, surely no human actually wrote this letter, because everyone knows once you die you don’t come back. There is no such thing as a “change of circumstances” once you die. Death is both incurable and irreversible.
If those facts weren’t bad enough, we can also see that death is no respecter of persons. As Jesus’ parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus shows, death marches into the mansions of the rich and the squalor of the slums. It really doesn’t matter how well you feel or how in shape you are, because no one escapes the certainty of death. As Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 7:2, “Death is the destiny of every man.” Even presidents.
But the main thing that prompts people to deny death and do all they can to stop it from coming is the fact that most people don’t know the answer to this particular God Question. They just don’t know what happens after we die and all of us ponder this dilemma. We wonder about it whenever we pass a graveyard or attend a funeral or read an obituary. Death is the great unknown. And all of us tend to fear unknown things.
Do you remember the fear you experienced when you first called that girl to ask her for a date or the feeling in your gut as you left home and headed for college, or the first time you bought a house, or went to that job interview. The unknown can indeed be terrifying and, as I said, the greatest unknown is death.
The best antidote for fear of the unknown is information so, as we did last week, let’s go now to this Book of Truth that God has given us to search for information about death. How does the Bible answer this particular God Question? What happens when we die?
(1) First, God’s Word teaches that the moment you die, your SPIRIT leaves your BODY.
This is a great place to start because, according to the Bible this is the definition of death. In James 2:26 we read, “…the body without the spirit is dead.” We know that when Jesus died on the cross He experienced this separation. Do you remember some of the last words our Lord uttered before He died? He said, “Father into Your hands I commend My spirit.” (Luke 23:46) So Jesus’ died, when His spirit left His body. And do you remember when Jesus came to the daughter of Jarius who had died? In Luke 8:54 it says, “Jesus took her by the hand and said, ‘My child, get up!'” Then it says, Her spirit returned and she at once stood up.”
Hers is another example of the fact that the human body without the spirit, the soul, is dead.
As a minister, I have seen several people die: church members, family members, dear friends and each time, as I watched, there was an instant when I could almost see the person’s spirit leaving his or her body. From that moment on it was obvious that something very important had changed. Now the body was just a shell, an empty, non-functional container.
I’ve heard rumors of studies done where a human body was weighed immediately before and immediately after death and afterward it weighed less. I don’t know about the validity of those studies but do I know the validity of my own “studies.” I do know what I have seen and my experience lines up with the teachings of Scripture. When we die, we leave this flesh. We set it aside as we do a suit of clothes. We are more than just animated pieces of muscle and bone. Humans are made up of an eternal spirit dwelling in a physical body.
One morning a little girl crawled into bed with her father. The father played “possum” and kept his eyes shut, and as children will do, his daughter tried to wake him up by poking and punching him and trying to get her daddy to open his eyes. Finally she crawled up and sat right on his chest and reaching down, she pried open an eyelid. Then she leaned over and said, “Are you in there daddy?”
Apparently, even this child understood that humans are made up of a body that contains a spirit. She instinctively knew the body wasn’t her dad, but rather it was what held or contained her dad. Of course she was right. This child was wise beyond her years, because in the same way a hand animates a glove, so the spirit energizes a human body. And when the spirit departs, the body, like a lifeless glove, it is put aside.
The story is told of a young preacher who was conducting his first funeral and he wanted to reverently say something memorable and profound, but he ended up making an unintended joke at an inappropriate time. In his funeral message he compared the human body to an external shell and pointed at the body of the dearly departed lying in the casket in front of the pulpit and said solemnly, “Here we have the shell, but the nut is gone.” When I die, the “nut” that is me will leave this flesh. The rest of you “nuts” will do the same because that’s one thing that happens at death. This leads to a second thing the Bible tells us in answer to this God Question:
(2) …at death our bodies decay but our personalities don’t.
The physical decay of our bodies begins the moment we are born. It’s a while before we notice it because for a few decades our bodies make more cells than it loses to decay, but eventually it falls behind, this decay really begins to accelerate as we reach middle age and when death occurs, when our spirits leave our bodies, this physical decay speeds up to the point that eventually our bodies, our earth suits, return to dust.
But this decay does not happen to our spirits, our personalities, even in death. The spirit that is uniquely you continues to exist. Do you remember what those two disciples on the road to Emmaus said after they realized the resurrected Jesus was their traveling Companion? They said, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” In other words, they said, “He thought and spoke and acted just like Jesus! How could we have not recognized Him?!” Jesus’ experience is a “first fruit” example of the fact that when we die we are the same people, minus our sinful flaws.
As I often say at funerals, even in death there is a permanence of personality. And this makes sense to me because I have come to realize that there is a difference between me, Mark Adams, and this body that I have dwelt in now for a little over 53 years. The real me is much skinnier and has a full head of hair! All kidding aside, this body of mine has changed over the decades. It doesn’t work as well as it used to. It’s got less hair and more wrinkles, less muscle and more fat. It doesn’t see or hear as well as it used to. It isn’t as durable, it can’t work as hard. In so many ways this body of mine has changed, much like a suit of clothes begins to show wear and tear the more you wear it. But the me that lives in here, Mark Adams, I have not changed or weakened. I am the same basic person I was as a teen, a little wiser, a little more mature, but the same. I can deduce from this that one day my body will cease to function, but the part that is me, my personhood, will continue to exist.
Dostoevsky, the great Russian novelist believed this too. He said, “Surely I haven’t suffered through this life that I may simply manure the soil of the future.” When someone asked the great preacher D. L. Moody if we would be the same after death and if we could therefore know each other in heaven, he replied simply, “Don’t you think we will have as much sense in heaven as we have here?” Of course we will. And Jesus’ example isn’t the only proof of this. Remember? Moses and Elijah were recognized by Peter, James, and John on the Mt. of Transfiguration and they had never seen these two before and they still called them by name. The Apostle Paul put it this way, “Now I know in part, but then (when I die) I shall know even as also I am now known.” There won’t be any need for name-tags in eternity. We’ll be knowable, recognizable. While your body will waste away and finally die, your soul, that part that is most uniquely and personally you, is going to survive the grave. It flows on. There will never come a day when you and I aren’t. When the cardiac monitor flat-lines, that which is you isn’t lost. It doesn’t dissolve like a drop of water into some ocean of cosmic consciousness.
What happens when we die? Let’s review: the Bible tells us that our spirit leaves our body and also that, whereas our body decays our personhood doesn’t. You go on. This leads to a third reply the Scriptures give when it comes to answering this particular God question:
(3) …At death we leave TIME and enter ETERNITY.
The same instant that our eyes close in death they open into eternity. There is no halfway place, no intermediate state, no period of soul sleep, no purgatory and in spite of what the movies tell us, our souls do not invisibly wander the earth for a while as ghosts. Remember, the heavens opened and received the martyr Stephen the moment he cried out, “Lord Jesus receive my spirit!” And “receive” is in the present tense. The Bible does clearly teach that when we die we don’t cease existing, even for a moment, we immediately enter eternity.
When Reverend W. B. Hinson, longtime pastor in Portland, Oregon, discovered he had a terminal disease, he walked outside of the city where he could see Mt. Hood. Then he looked at a river, and in the evening he gazed up at the stars. Finally he said, “I may not see you many more times, but Mountain, I shall be alive when you are gone; and River, I shall be alive when you cease running toward the sea; and Stars, I shall be alive when you have fallen from your sockets in the great pulling down of the material universe.” With these words Rev. Hinson underscores this fact, that as Paul tells us in 1st Corinthians 15, at death, “…the perishable will become imperishable.” And this is true of both Christians and Non-Christians, because all humans have eternal, imperishable souls. At the moment of our physical death we leave time and enter eternity-and at that point we either go to Heaven or to Hell.
We focused on the Bible’s teachings about Hell last week so we won’t talk about it more this morning, but I do want to take a moment to make sure that last week with my stumbling words I didn’t confuse your understanding of a very important truth. As I said in that message, from our current perspective, a place like Hell makes sense because we know that there has to be a consequence to our choices and behaviors. But I didn’t mean to say that people go to Hell because they do bad things, nor that people go to Heaven because they do good things. Hear me on this! The place we spend eternity is not based on the good or the bad we do, but rather on our response to what God has done in sending His Son to die in our place. The final destination of the journey your eternal soul will take when your body ceases to function depends solely on your response to the unmerited grace of God.
In the TIME article I mentioned earlier it tells of an argument that George W. Bush had with his mother years before he became president. Their dispute centered around who could and could not get into heaven. Bush said that only born-again Christians would be granted admission. His mother, disagreed and phoned Dr. Graham to ask him settle their dispute. Graham’s response was very tactful, but he agreed with the future president. Graham warned both George W. and his mother that no one should try to play God, for God alone knows who has or has not received Christ as their Savior. Graham was saying this is God’s decision but in His Word God has said that only those who have responded to His grace by accepting Jesus as Savior will spend eternity in Heaven.
And, since we dealt with Hell last week, this morning I want us to talk briefly about what happens when people who accept Jesus die, by looking at what the Bible tells us about Heaven-about what eternity will be like for Christians.
(1) First, it says that we will be given NEW BODIES.
And Jesus’ resurrected body gives us a preview, a first fruit taste, of what our new bodies will be like. For example, the Biblical record tells us that our Lord’s new body was both similar and also different than it was prior to His death. For example, Jesus looked the same. Remember? He showed the disciples the nail scars in His hands and feet, but even without those scars He was recognizable. We know this because the Bible tells us Jesus was identified some 11 times after His death.
Another thing, Jesus’ new body was like His old one in that He was touchable, solid. On the first Easter Sunday morning Mary Magdalene held on to our solid, touchable Lord in the garden so tightly that He had to comfort her and in essence say, “You can let go of Me Mary, I have not yet ascended to My Father! I’m going to be here 40 whole days.” Plus, like His old body, the resurrected Jesus ate food. Remember the fish He requested? But at the same time His body was different. He could travel great distances instantly. He could walk through walls. He didn’t seem to tire.
Well all this does indeed give us a preview of what our bodies will be like when we rise from the dead at the 2nd coming. In 1st Corinthians 15:42-44 Paul puts it this way, “In the same way, our earthly bodies which die and decay are different from the bodies we shall have when we come back to life again, for they will never die. The bodies we have now embarrass us, for they become sick and die; but they will be full of glory when we come back to life again. Yes, they are weak, dying bodies now, but when we live again they will be full of strength.”
And, even old Job understood this promise. He said, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end He will stand upon the earth and after my skin has been destroyed-yet in my FLESH I will see God.” (Job 19:25-27)
(2) So, we’ll have new bodies but we’ll also have a NEW HOME to match!
Jesus promised, “In My Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with Me that you also may be where I am.”
Robert Russel, Pastor of Southeast Christian Church in Louisville says that he thinks Jesus’ reference to “many rooms” here means just that. He writes, “I picture one room of just worship. We go there to hear Jesus teach and listen to Paul and Peter and others. And even if you can’t carry a tune in a bucket here you’ll be able to there. I also picture an instant-replay room where you can go and relive any moment in history exactly like it transpired. There won’t be any revisionist history. We’ll be able to see exactly what happened. I also picture a question-answer room where we can hear the Lord answer the tough questions that we’ve never been able to answer here. I also picture an instructional room where you can learn how to do things you didn’t have time to do on earth, and listen, if Jesus fished after He arose from the dead, I’ll be able to play golf!” Well Russell had fun imagining what will be in heaven and that’s good, but it is also exciting to ponder what will not be there.
A. For example, there will be no tears.
In Revelation 21:4 it says, “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away.” Think of it! This means there will be no tears caused by the pain of depression or sorrow in heaven, and one reason this is true is because there are things we won’t ever say there. I mean, in Heaven you’ll never say “good-bye” or “I hurt” or “I’m tired” or “I’m lonely” or “Time for my medication.”
B. Another thing-there will also be no partings in Heaven.
You will never be separated from your loved ones again. In fact in heaven we will be reunited with parents and friends who have died before us. Plus, we’ll be able to get to know relatives who lived before we did.
C. In Heaven there will be no fear.
No one will suffer from anxiety attacks. We won’t need locks on the doors, bars at the windows or alarm systems. Everything that causes fear will be eliminated. One of the greatest sources of fear and depression is darkness, and in Heaven we won’t worry about that because everything will be light, and I don’t know about you but I love light. After college I worked in a huge warehouse at a Reynolds Aluminum plant for several months. I reported for work before the sun rose, and in the winter I didn’t leave work until it set. It was so discouraging because I would go for days without seeing the comforting light of the sun. Heaven will be illumined by the light of God, making the sun, moon, and stars a pale comparison to the authentic Masterpiece. This leads to a final thing we know about Heaven. We’ll have new bodies. We’ll have a new home…but best of all:
(3) God will be there.
And whereas the absence of God will be what makes Hell a place of unimaginable torture, the presence of God is what will make Heaven a place of unimaginable joy.
This past Christmas, Ashley Willumson gave Daniel a copy of The Discovery Channel’s DVD set, Planet Earth. And, I know it was Daniel’s gift, but I have absolutely enjoyed watching it myself. The camera work that went into these DVD’s prove that the beauty of our planet is truly breath-taking. In fact, I almost always find myself watching it with my mouth open. Here’s a short clip.
(CLIP FROM PLANET EARTH)
If it’s so thrilling to see our planet and all the species that inhabit it, can you imagine how wonderful it’s going to be to be able to be with the Creator?! The best thing about Heaven is the fact that, as 2nd Corinthians 5:8 says, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” Think of it. We shudder at the intricate beauty of this world and it is but a shadow of God’s glory. What will happen when we see not the shadow but the substance? As Christians in this life we have faith that God is with us, but what will it be like when instead of faith we have sight?! No longer will we “…see through a glass darkly…” No longer will our stubborn sins and rebellions separate us from our Heavenly Father. In Heaven we’ll be with Him forever!
One other thing I want to share is my belief that at the moment of death all this happens instantly. Many of us wonder about what happens for Christians who die before Jesus returns. We wonder what happens to us before our bodies are resurrected on that glorious day. We think, “If at death I leave time and enter eternity, what happens to the body I leave behind, a body that the Bible says will be resurrected one day?” I believe that, since we do cross from time to eternity at death, then in that crossing we skip ahead to the end of time. And I believe the Bible supports this. Do you remember what Jesus told the repentant thief? “Today you will be with me in Paradise!” Ephesians 1:6 says, “God raised us up with Christ. He has seated us with Him in his heavenly kingdom because we belong to Christ Jesus.” Did you notice the tense? “God has seated us with Him…” as if it has already happened!
I’m not alone in this belief. This week I came across a quote by the late Ray Stedman. He said, “I believe that when a believer in Jesus Christ dies, he at once experiences the coming of Christ for His church. He steps out of time into eternity and the next event for him is the coming of the Lord. The moment he dies he must awaken with the consciousness, ‘I’ve made it! I thought there might still be some time between my death and the coming of the Lord, but isn’t it an amazing coincidence? He came just as I died!'” Stedman died a few years ago so he now knows if he and I are right.
Conclusion
In any case, the Bible does indeed answer this particular God question. Death is not the terrifying unknown for people who study His written Word. For the Christian death is not something to dread but rather something to look forward to. Statisticians tell us that 60 million people die every year. That’s 150,000 people entering eternity every day, 100 every minute. Think of it, since this service began 6,000 people have seen first hand what happens when we die. This confronts those of us present this morning with two questions and the first is this:
“Are you ready for death?” As, Billy Graham’s father-in-law, Dr. L. Nelson Bell once said, “Only those who are prepared to die are really prepared to live.” Well if you are not prepared for death, you can be! More than anything God wants you to be ready. He doesn’t want you to fear death. He loves you, loves you so much that He doesn’t want you to experience the Hell of separation from Him now, or in eternity. All you have to do be prepared and unafraid is put your trust in Jesus, the Savior God has provided. Admit your sin to Him, ask for His forgiveness, and give Him your life. If you have questions about this decision come and talk with me as we sing.
The second question this knowledge of death confronts us with is for Christians and it is this: “Are you doing all you can to help others get ready for death?” Are you looking for every opportunity to share the secret of eternal life with everyone you can? Perhaps today you need to recommit yourself to this task.
If you don’t have a church home, a church where you are actively involved, then I encourage you to seek God’s direction. It could be that He is leading you to be a part of the work He is doing through us here at Redland. If so, come and join our church family. Let this be a place where you learn to share your faith, a place where you work alongside other Christians. Whatever decision you have to make, we invite you to make it public as we sing. Bobby and I will be at the front ready to receive you.
Benediction
Let the PEACE OF CHRIST rule in your hearts since as members of one body you were called to peace. Let the WORD OF CHRIST dwell in you richly and whatever you do…in word or in deed Do it all in the NAME OF CHRIST giving thanks to God the Father through Him.