I want you to picture something in your mind this morning. Imagine yourself going up a hill, and you know that on the other side of that hill is a cliff that drops off hundreds of feet below into a lake of burning sulpher and volcanic lava.
You know you have to get to the other side of that lake, but you do not know how you are going to do it. Then, you notice 20 different paths in front of you, all seeming to lead in the same general direction. At the beginning of each path is a person who seems very friendly, and that person is urging you to take his path.
They all seem so nice and inviting, and you just don’t know which one to take. So, which path should you take?
That symbolizes where humanity is today. We know that our future is either going to be falling headlong into that lake of burning sulpher or finding true peace on the other side of the lake where it is safe. But, just how do we know which path to take?
And that is the dilemma that we find ourselves in today, isn’t it? How do we know the true path when there are so many ways that seem like the truth at first glance? The truth can only be found if we are willing to search for it.
There is the story of a man who took his wife and mother-in-law on a trip to visit the Holy Land. Unfortunately, while they were there, the mother-in-law suffered a heart attack and passed away. He now faced the decision to spend about ten thousand dollars to ship her back to America to be buried, or to pay less than $200.00 and have her buried in Israel.
After much consideration on his part, he decided to have her shipped back home. One of the local rabbis asked him if he was sure he wanted to spend so much money when he could have the same thing done so much cheaper over there.
The man told the rabbi that 2,000 years ago, they buried Jesus in Israel, too, but he arose on the third day, and with his mother-in-law, well, he just couldn’t take that chance.
That man knew something about the resurrection, but he didn’t know the truth, did he? That is like many people in today’s churches. They know something about Jesus, but they don’t really know Jesus.
We all seem to have an interest in the subject of life after death, and at the same time, many of us have a fear of it, don’t we? I want to talk about life after death this morning, but first, let us open in prayer.
OPENING PRAYER
The whole subject of life after death makes many people skittish. They feel very uncomfortable with it. That leads us into our first point of observation this morning.
1. How do we handle things that make us uncomfortable?
Have you ever noticed that when a person is very uncomfortable, or afraid of a situation, they will either make fun of it, or they just flatly deny it? That is what many of us do with the topic of eternity.
We are afraid of it because we do not fully understand the precepts of the afterlife, and that makes us very uncomfortable with it, so instead of trying to find out more about it, many people just deny that it exists. Or, they admit it exists, and then they make up some kind of story about how they want their personal eternity to be like.
For instance, some say that as long as you really care for others and try to do good things in your life, you will go to Heaven. Still others say that it doesn’t really matter what you do or how you are in this life, everyone will eventually find their way to Heaven.
Let me say that if you are a good person, that is fine, and if you love everyone you meet, that is fantastic – BUT – trying to rely upon either one of these, you are trying to buy yourself into Heaven with what you do or how you feel, and you just cannot do that. Heaven is not for sale, period!
And, as far as everyone getting there; to that, let me just say, “RIGHT”. That is a scenario that might make someone feel really, really good, but it just isn’t going to happen that way.
Okay, then if we don’t get to Heaven by being loving and good to those around us, and if we are not all going to go to Heaven, just how do we get there? In other words, how do we know which path to take? The answer is actually so simple that an innocent child can understand it.
In the [NASB], EPHESIANS 2:5, says –
‘Even when we were dead in our transgressions, we were made alive together with Christ.’
That simply means that, without Christ, we are guaranteed to take the wrong path. Now, we seem to get all upset over this and either deny it, or we get all indignant and start blaming God for it, like it is His fault we made the decision we made.
Why would we do that? If you go out and stand in the middle of the freeway at rush hour, it will not matter if you close your eyes and deny that cars are coming towards you. One of them is bound to run you down. Deny it all day long, but as soon as you feel the thump, you will become a mighty strong believer in traffic, won’t you? Of course, by then, it will be too late to avoid the consequences of your decision.
Also, once you are hit, why would you blame somebody else for letting that happen to you? I have news for you. If you make a decision to go stand in traffic; if you make a personal decision to deny that there are any cars coming toward you; you have nobody to blame but yourself when you get hit by one of them! Whose fault is it that you are there in the first place? It’s yours. So, if you choose to live without Jesus as your Savior, and you choose to live like being a Christian is against the law, how can you blame God if you suffer the consequences of that decisions?
Let me ask you one question. If being a devout Christian were against the law, would there be enough evidence in your life to convict you? Think about that one.
Verse 5 also says something that is more important than I think most of us realize. It says that we have been made alive with Christ. That means that as soon as we humbly receive Christ as the Savior and Lord of our lives, we become alive with Christ. We will then live forevermore and spend our own personal eternity in Heaven – sitting at the Table of Grace with God our Father.
If we go down to vs. 8,9 it says,
‘8) For by grace you have been saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God’ 9) ‘not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.’
That tells us the only way we can be saved is through the grace of God. Now, to understand what that means, we must know what the accurate definition of ‘grace’ is.
‘God giving us what we surely do not deserve.’
When we will drop all the worldly pretenses, and just humble our hearts enough to have Jesus as or Savior, we show God that we are having faith in Him. And, when we show God that we have faith, God gives us the wonderful gift of grace. And we do not deserve His grace. We cannot buy it and we certainly cannot earn it. It is a gift. It is a gift of true love.
When we love somebody with all our heart, we try to give them some kind of gift that will show just how much we love them, don’t we? That is what God does. He wants us to have something that will prove His love for us. What better gift to do this, than a gift that would give us eternal life in pure happiness and joy – with Him?
Verse 9 goes on to say that this is not given to us by anything we have done, so that none of us would be able to proudly proclaim that we got to Heaven with Jesus! If you think about that, it will show you that there is absolutely nothing in this world that you can do that will earn you a free trip to Heaven. You cannot get there without Jesus.
Some years ago, a Canadian scientist by the name of Hardy wrote a book. He was not a believer in Christ, and his purpose in writing his book was actually to dispel the myth of Christ, saying nobody could have ever defeated death.
His book dealt with the destiny of mankind and the philosophy of life. At the end of the book, he asked two simple questions.
· Has anyone ever really defeated physical death, and if so;
· Was it done in such a way as to make it duplicatible for others?
Dr. Hardy found the answers to those two questions by reading about the resurrection, and that led him to find his own personal eternity as a believer in Christ Jesus. Dr. Hardy became a believer as he was trying to prove the story of Christ was a myth.
God is good, isn’t He? Just when you think you have it made, He does an end-run around you and pulls you into His plan of salvation. Why would He do that if He didn’t love you?
2. Lies are so prevalant in our lives today.
Two friends who happened to be avid fishermen met up at the local coffee shop. The first thing they started doing was to swap fish stories. The one man said he had caught a fish up at the lake that weighed 400 pounds.
The other man, not to be outdone, said he had gone fishing over on the coast in California, and his line hooked something, and when he brought her in, there was a very muddy lantern on the hook. He said it was from an old ship down below that they had been looking for, since the 1800’s. He said the lantern was all muddy, but when they cleaned it up, it had the date of 1467 engraved on the bottom.
He said that wasn’t all - - he said the light was still on! At that point, the first man said he would be willing to shave 150 pounds off the fish if the other man would douse the light.
It seems that small lies, commonly known as fibs, are a natural, and daily, part of our lives.
Turn with me in your Bibles to MATTHEW 28:11-15, and follow along as I read the passage. Starting in verse 1, we see that it was the first day of the week and Mary Magdalen and th eother Mary came to look at the grave.
All of a sudden, there was an earthquake and an angel rolled back the stone and his appearance was snow. At this point, the guards, being the hardened warriors that they were, fainted dead away because they were so scared.
The angel said that Jesus had arisen and let the women see the inside of the tomb. The Scripture says that the women then left to go tell the others that Jesus had arisen, and while they were on their way, some of the guard got together wiht the local elders and told them what had happened.
Well, the religious leaders sure didn’t want people to fine out about this, because this would ahve proved that Jesus was the Son of God, so they devised this sneaky little plan to keep the truth away from everybody. This plan called for bribing the guards who were at the tomb to lie and say that the disciples came and stole the body during the night.
Why would someone be willing to do that? The answer is painfully simple. They thought it was a win-win situation for everybody. The guards got some extra money, and the religious leaders kept the status quo.
I think the reason most people lie today is to either cover something up so they do not get into trouble, or they want to impress someone as the two fishermen did. But, no matter the "why" of a lie, we can see that in hindsight, a lie is never the smartest thing to do.
What always happens? You will eventually get caught, and it is always more embarrassing and hurtful later, than it would have been if we had just owned up to the truth in the first place. Don’t we ever learn?!
If the guards had told the truth, all the people would have then realized that Jesus was, in fact, God. But they lied, didn’t they? They lied, and in so doing, they denied God by denying His Son.
In 1 JOHN 2:23, we are cautioned,
‘Whoever denies the Son, does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father, also.’
There are many people today who say they are “very spiritual,” or that they have a relationship with God, but they do not really believe in Jesus. It all boils down to whether a person believes the Bible or not. I am not talking about believing parts of the Bible, I am talking about believing the entire Bible for what it claims to be.
You cannot pick and choose which parts make you feel comfortable in believing. You either see the Bible as the inerrant truth of God, accurate in all it says, or you believe it is the biggest hoax ever given to mankind. There is absolutely no in-between on this one. There is no gray area in which we can comfortably hide from making a decision for truth. It is – or it isn’t.
So, getting back to Dr. Hardy. To answer his original questions; Yes, somebody did defeat death, and He did it in such a way as to make it duplicatible for each of one of us this morning.
Jesus defeated death as He arose from the tomb that glorious morning so long ago. And because He defeated death, you and I have the hope of living forever, too, as joint heirs to the throne of God with Jesus. Because Christ has risen, we have the hope of Heaven.
There is something that bugs me, though, because I just cannot understand it. We have what is known as a ‘survival instinct.’ Now, it would seem to me that, because of this instinct, we should always be very focused on those things that will offer us life instead of death.
Many people try their best to ignore this whole subject, but by their ignoring it and refusal to make a decision as to where they want to go, they have already made the decision. And the decision they made is not to go to Heaven.
We read in ECCLESIASTES 3:11, that God put a yearning for eternity in the heart of man, but we cannot understand what God has done. See, we have the instinct, but because of the hardness of our hearts, we cannot understand it. And, what do we do with everything we cannot understand? We tend to either discount it as untruth, or we blame someone else when we suffer the consequences of discounting it.
We have an instinct that is ingrained in our hearts; an instinct to believe, but the lie that was told so many years ago by the Roman guards is still being told today. The lie that says Jesus wasn’t resurrected. That Jesus doesn’t still live. And that lie says that Jesus wasn’t our Messiah.
Mankind has conjured up every conceivable scenario to offer us another way to Heaven. Unfortunately, all of them are false hopes and none of them offer us anything but tragedy. In PROVERBS, we read where there is a way that seems right to man, but in the end will lead to death. The many ways we come up with to take the place of Jesus will only lead to our spiritual death.
There have always been many different religions and beliefs, and every single one of them has shown an intense need for immortality. Mankind has an internal need to always look for his eternal destiny. Jesus said that because He lives, we too will live.
The core of Christianity is based upon the resurrection of Jesus. Without that, Christianity is nothing but a false hope. But, with the resurrection, Christianity becomes our eternal hope and offers each of us eternal salvation through the shed blood of Christ.
Because of the lie that the guards were bribed to tell that said Jesus never really arose, there have been born many other lies that deny the deity of Christ. The Gnostics who threatened the church of Colosse claimed that the “Christ” came upon the “man” named Jesus, and then moments before the “man” named Jesus died, the “Christ” in him left him.
Now, if the “Christ” left Jesus, where did it go? Did it ever show up again? If it never showed up again, how do we have evidence that it even happened? See, this belief leaves many questions that just remain unanswered.
The Judaizers believed that there was no “Christ.” They believed that man, through his own good works, and if he had a really, really good heart, could get to Heaven without any other help. Again, what is the standard of good works?
Is there a benchmark that one can gage himself against these many beliefs? And, of course, we need to know what works are good enough to qualify us. Where is the line between doing enough good works and almost doing enough good works? Again, too many questions remain unanswered.
There is one theory called the “swoon-theory”. That is a belief that Jesus never really died in the first place. Those that follow this theory believe that due to the loss of blood and the shock that Jesus was in, He was only thought to be dead. And, with some unknown healing, Jesus woke up on the third day and, as ill and feeble as He was, managed to roll that large rock away and walk out. This also leaves too many questions, such as, where did He go? Did He die later or what? Of course, this theory didn’t begin until a man named Vintorini made it up in the 1600’s.
In reality, Jesus was dead before they took Him from the cross. The Romans were quite efficient in doing their jobs, and they would have known very easily if He had remained alive. In short, mankind has thought of every possible scenario as to what may have happened, just to keep from acknowledging what actually did happen.
Let’s get back again to the original lie that some of Jesus’ friends stole the body while the guards were asleep. I see two problems with this right off the bat. First of all, guards were posted to guard, not sleep, and so at least one of them would have been awake at all times. Even if they were asleep, a huge stone being rolled out of the way surely would have wakened them. And, any person in the military would never admit to being asleep on watch. The lie does not hold up under scrutiny.
Secondly, if someone had stolen the body, the Romans would have put out an arrest warrant; had those people arrested and, at the least, flogged if not killed. But, no records mention any desire to arrest anyone. So, here again, we have more unanswered questions. So, by the lack of any common sense reactions, we can see that none of what happened actually made sense.
A nurse worked in the children’s ward, and she would always let the little children listen on the stethoscope to their own hearts before the doctor came in, and this would always cause the children to be amazed. One day, she put the plugs in little Jimmy’s ears and then let him put the stethoscope over his own heart. She asked Jimmy what he thought that noise was, and the boy quickly answered, with excitement in his voice, “That’s Jesus, knocking on my heart!”
That little boy knew the truth. He was innocent of the lies of the world, and therefore, he was in tune with God’s imprint on his heart. We should all be so innocent and truthful.
If we remain totally objective, and look at the entire resurrection story, the only scenario that makes sense is the truth. Jesus is the Christ, sent from Heaven as He said He was, because He did arise from the tomb of death and that right there makes the hope of man come alive.
This belief only has one unanswered question, and that is this: How did this happen? That is of God, and we are not meant to know all the technical things of God. The need to know the technicalities before we believe precludes any faith we could possibly have.
That question will remain unanswered until the day we join Jesus in the clouds. At that point, we shall understand everything that is meant or done in and through Jesus, the Christ.
3. How can we be sure we have the truth in our lives?
First of all, Jesus walked the walk of truth. Truth, by its very nature, will be a confrontational type of walk. The world has its own theories as to how a person should live their life, and that theory is to be the “don’t make waves” theory. The problem with that, is that by living this way, you are living a direct lie unto God. Of course, any time you decide to dispute one of the world’s lies, you are labeled a confrontationalist.
Jesus confronted a lie. He drove the merchants out of the Temple when the lie they lived came before worshiping or loving God. They found out very quickly that when one puts their profit margin above God, there will be a huge cost to pay.
In MATTHEW 23:1-3, we see where Jesus was teaching a crowd of people, including His disciples. He told them that the religious rulers of that day were to be obeyed, but He warned them not to do everything they said to do, because they didn’t practice what they preached. In affect, they were living a lie. Jesus confronted that lie by telling the people not to do as they were told to do.
As Christians, if we are to follow the steps of Jesus (which is what every Christians is supposed to do), then we must be willing to confront any situation or any person that hinders the truth of Jesus Christ.
Not long ago, I ran across a woman who I knew from years ago. I used to work with her husband and they were both friends of mine. They were also avid Christians. I asked about him and she said that another man in their church had lured him into gambling at the casinos. She said that her husband got addicted to gambling and had ended up losing his job, their house, and finally their marriage.
I asked her if she had ever confronted this man before all the damage had been done, and she said that she didn’t want to make matters worse, so she didn’t. By her not confronting, the matters did they get better or worse? Let me say this again: As Christians, we have an obligation to confront anything and everything we encounter that hinders the belief in. or walk in, Jesus Christ. If we do not do it, we are not fulfilling our duties as Christians.
Now, I don’t mean that by confronting people and situations you have to be mean and nasty. There is an old expression that says: "It’s hard for someone to hit you when you are shaking their hand in kindness."
We do not confront with anger. We confront by offering the truth in love. But, we do offer the truth. We do not opt to be quiet and let a lie go by, since that would be offending Jesus and we do not want to do that.
In MATTHEW 5:44, we are told to love our enemies and pray for them.
MATTHEW 19:19 says to love our neighbors as ourselves. It doesn’t say love them if they always act, or think, or say, the same things and ways you do. It doesn’t say love them if they are Christians. It says love them. Period.
And, in ROMANS 12:9, it tells us that our love must be a sincere love. So, as we try our level best to live our life like Christ lived His life, we must do so in love, not impatience, hatred, or intolerance.
Now, we have to come down to the bottom line and realize something very important and vital to everyone sitting here today. We all claim to be Christians. I have found one pretty good way of testing myself to see if I am really acting as a Christian in any given situation. I urge you to test yourself, too.
I routinely ask myself this question: "Do I have a RELATIONSHIP with Jesus, or do I have a RELIGION about Jesus?"
Religion always focuses on how things “look” to others, while a relationship will always focus on how things "relate" to others.
Do I live my life trying to “look” like I am a good Christian, or do I try to live my life trying to be just like Christ in every possible way so others might come to know Him,too?
Religion always deals with pride and how great ’I’ think ’I’ am while ’I’ am doing something. It makes me want others to notice what ’I’ am doing and to look up to me for doing it. In short, a religion will keep you from seeing the truth because your “I’s” will be too close together.
A relationship will always focus on the other person. It will always try to leave “me” out of it and put "them" in the glory seat for God to notice. There will be no pride in a relationship.
When you have a relationship with God, through Jesus, you will try to do everything you can to make your life as meaningful as possible for Jesus’ glory.
When we have a religion, we will always gauge ourselves on how we "look" to others. We have all known someone in our lives that always seems to be paranoid about how they are viewed by others.
You know that person. Do you think there is any room in that person’s heart to have a real and meaningful relationship with anybody but themselves? Absolutely not! The only relationship they have is the one they are having with their own distorted view on how they project themselves to others. They are living a lie, aren’t they?
In 1 TIMOTHY 6:3,4 it says,
“If anyone does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing.”
When you are doing things to show others how great you are, and when you do things to show yourself how good you are, you are doing it for your own glory and not for the Lord’s glory. The only truth is when we do things for the glory of God, and when we do those things, we do not ask for anyone to notice us.
In MATTHEW 23:25,26, Jesus says that trying to impress others how good of a Christian we are is like cleaning the outside of the cup, but leaving the inside filthy. He tells us to clean the inside and then the outside will also be clean.
The Lord has given Christians a time – not a lot of time – but a time to get ourselves together. The Christian church has been so blessed in the last 100 years that we have gotten off focus a bit. We need to start making the focus of our work salvation through Jesus Christ instead of preaching how to have a nice life all the time.
There is the story of a man who wanted to get rid of all the mice in his house, so he bought a mousetrap. He did not have any cheese, though, so he cut out a picture of some cheese out of a magazine and put it on the mousetrap before he went to bed.
The next morning, he was shocked to see a picture of a mouse where the picture of the cheese had been. A counterfeit truth only produces artificial results. And if we rely upon a lie about Jesus being the Christ, we are going to have nothing but artificial and short-lived results in our spiritual lives.
The lie of yesterday is still being told today. That lie may be that people you know will emotionally persecute you if you stand up for Jesus in your life. The truth is, most people you know will never truly reject you because of your commitment to Jesus. They may not adopt the desire you have for them, but they will not reject you.
The lie may take another form. It might be that you don’t have to rush in making a decision for Jesus; that you have plenty of time to take care of that somewhere later down the road. Let me remind you that you have no idea what is going to happen to you today or tomorrow, so to try and put the most important decision of your life off until some more convenient day, is like committing spiritual suicide.
Jesus loves you – enough to forgive everything you have ever done wrong. And the final truth is that Jesus did, in fact, arise from the grave, to live again and offer us the only way to Heaven – through a belief and commitment in Him.
As we go into our invitation time this morning, I encourage you to realize the differences between the lie and the truth. Have we been thinking we were livng in the truth, when in fact, we have been living a lie because Jesus is not in our lives? Have we been denying Jesus the favored place in our lives, and therefore, denying God without realizing it?
You cannot get on a bus without a ticket; you cannot get on a train without a ticket; and you cannot get into Heaven without a ticket. The ticket you need is none other than Jesus Christ as your Savior. Do you have your ticket yet, or do you still think you have plenty of time to think about it later?
What is later is today? You know which path is the path that leads to safety now, but are you ready to choose it over the others?
Would you be willing to take that path with us? Would you be willing to let us help you begin your journey to safety? As the music starts, I ask that you stand up where you are and start walking on that path. That path will start by leading you up here this morning. Please stand for our hymn of invitation. And please step out onto your personal path to Jesus.
INVITATION
