Heaven Part 2 Series

Living or Dying Well

INTRO: In 1996, Jeanne Calment was the oldest living human whose age could be verified. On her 120th birthday, she was asked to describe her vision for the future. "Very brief," she said.

Another woman was asked the benefits of living to the age of 102. After a pause, she answered, "No peer pressure!"

Finally, John Fetterman, rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Madison, Wisconsin, told of an elderly woman who died. Having never married, she requested no male pallbearers. In her instructions for her memorial service, she wrote, "They wouldn’t take me out while I was alive; I don’t want them to take me out when I’m dead."

PROP: In the end of the age and the end of our lives we can have victory.

#1. The End of the Age

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

1Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, 2for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3While people are saying, "Peace and safety," destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

4But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. 5You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. 6So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. 7For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. 8But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. 9For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. 10He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. 11Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

Before his novels The Firm, Pelican Brief, and The Client catapulted John Grisham to the status of "commercial supernova"--as Newsweek called him--he was an unknown, small-town lawyer. Today, with all the notoriety, Grisham makes a concerted effort to focus on things that have lasting meaning, including his faith in God. Grisham remembers, as a young law student, the remarkable advice of a friend:

One of my best friends in college died when he was 25, just a few years after we graduated from Mississippi State University. I was in law school, and he called me one day and wanted to get together. So we had lunch, and he told me he had cancer. I couldn’t believe it.

"What do you do when you realize you are about to die?" I asked.

"It’s real simple," he said. "You get things right with God, and you spend as much time with those you love as you can. Then you settle up with everybody else."

Finally he said, "You know, really, you ought to live every day like you have only a few more days to live."

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

13Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. 14We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 15According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18Therefore encourage each other with these words.

Matt 13:24-30; 36-43

24Jesus told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

27"The owner’s servants came to him and said, ’Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

28" ’An enemy did this,’ he replied.

"The servants asked him, ’Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

29" ’No,’ he answered, ’because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. 30Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’ "