Intro: Begin with Question: Where are you going?—not after church… not in your career … I mean the “BIG going.” What awaits you when you face physical death?
- I hope in your heart your response is heaven. If so… do you have any idea what heaven will be like? Simply a place of rest? Issued halos and harps?
- Is such a future merely a matter of consolation… conjecture?
Going to begin a series entitled, “From Here To Eternity”… focusing on the grand questions of death and eternity… of what lies on the other side. A little background…
1. The significance of dealing with death may seem obvious… there’s no experience more common to us all than death itself.
- Billy Graham—‘Death is the most democratic experience in life, for we all participate in it.’
2. My own experiences—both personally and in a pastoral context—in which life was lost.
- A period of several encounters with death… 3-5 years… began when just 18 years old.
o Girlfriend Diane Shibley
o During college my roommates and I took people in who were homeless and messed up … one suicide… another older woman… Lola… became a daily drama of family like care for years… and would be the first funeral I would lead when I was 21.
o During that timed I moved to India….first time I had actually handled bodies that had lost their life.
- Pastorally… privilege… of sharing in the painful losses many of you have experienced
o Brauns… child
o Pittlucks… nephew
o Pat’s… mother
o Many others (lost parents… grandparents.)
Every time we lose a parent, we lose a part of our past.
Every time we lose a child, we lose a part of our future.
3. Our eternal hope is a priority of God
- ‘God’s world is centered in his desire to maintain relationship with us… the great love and mercy expanded to give us life… and the great hope that awaits us.
4. Contemporary confusion
- Cults that draw well-meaning lives sold strange mixes of spirituality and science fiction. Hollywood conjecture. Entire culture is trying to hold together a strange combination of materialism and mystical conjecture.
5. God has stirred this within me… and so I’ve set out to study…
Some of what God has to say to us will be merely a comforting reminder of truth and Good News you may know well… some will be a labor of understanding some complicated parts of scripture to get a better perspective… and some will surprise and stir your soul.
All in all I believe these weeks will infuse you with a depth of hope… even excitement, about your future.
And the hope God reveals… is a hope which stirs in the face of life’s loss… life’s sheer brevity.
- Apart from God… human life is at a loss for any lasting purpose or prospect… futility
- Writer of Ecclesiastes… ‘life under the sun’ = apart from God
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; and yet they cannot fathom what god has done from the beginning to end… I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him. Ecclesiastes 3:11, 14
- Larry Crabb—“Ever since God expelled Adam and Eve from the garden, we have lived in an unnatural environment, a world in which we were not designed to live. We were built to enjoy a garden without weeds, relationships without friction, fellowship without distance. But something is wrong, and we know it, both within our world and within ourselves. Deep inside we sense we’re out of the nest, always ending the day in a motel room, never at home.”
- Malcom Muggeridge—“For me there has always been—and I count it the greatest of all blessings—a window never finally blacked out, a light never finally extinguished. I had a sense, sometimes enormously vivid, that I was a stranger in a strange land; a visitor, not a native, a displaced person. The feeling, I was surprised to find, gave me a great sense of satisfaction, almost of ecstasy. The only ultimate disaster that can befall us, I have come to realize, is to feel ourselves at home here on earth. As long as we are aliens, we cannot forget our true homeland.”
In the coming weeks we’ll explore the realm of heaven that’s ahead… but this morning… I just want to explore the eternal nature that’s in us… the nature of death that divides us… and what God has done to see us home again.
- There’s little value in the hope of heaven if we don’t know how to get there… how to understand and overcome death itself.
- Your outline is filled with Scripture because this is a subject that deserving real assurance… not merely assumptions.
1. MY LIFE WAS CREATED BY GOD, WITH AN EVERLASTING LOVE FOR AN EVERLASTING PURPOSE.
- God created life… Genesis 2:7 “He formed man and breathed into him the breath of life and man became a living soul.”
o Plural—‘living souls’=his image and life continues in every life we now bear
- God’s Spirit is everlasting
- God’s Love is everlasting; He has loved us with an everlasting love; “His love endures forever”
- His purpose is everlasting—to share in his glory…an everlasting glory.
The five-year-old daughter of an obstetrician answered the doorbell. “Is your Daddy at home?” asked the person at the door. “No,” the little girl replied, “he’s gone to the hospital on an ETERNITY case.” That was a good answer. Every infant who is brought into this world is an eternity case. Every newborn baby is the inheritor of all that has gone before, and the participator in all that is yet to come. And just one child can make a tremendous difference. Whether it be in the lives of millions or in the lives of just a few.
- God’s word affirms that our spirits…our souls continue to exist in a dimension of real existence…
Proverbs 12:28 John 14:1-3
Daniel 12:2 Hosea 13:14
I Corinthians 15:40-44 2 Corinthians 5:1-4
2. DEATH IS THE CONSEQUENCE OF LIFE SEPARATED FROM GOD
“…sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned…” Romans 5:12
“…for the wages of sin is death…” Romans 6:23
- A process which began in Adam and we participate in
- Sin = shortcoming/separation=death
o Bible sees 2 DIMENSIONS of death… first spiritual… only then physical
- Death… physical death… did not always exist
o Genesis 3:19 (curse)
o Revelation 21:4 ‘death will be no more, for the old order has passed away.’
- Death is an intruder… enemy… “final enemy”
“Death is a safety-device because, once man has fallen, natural immortality would be the one utterly hopeless destiny for him”…C.S. Lewis
- Lewis saw in death “a severe mercy”… a severe but needed means of limiting our attachments to a fallen world; leaving us SOBER and SEEKING… with mortality, the very consequence of our sin, ever before us.
- Simple but sobering consequences…
o Hebrews 9:27 “Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.”
> Great truth here: OUR LIVES ARE LINEAR, NOT CIRCULAR.
o Our hope lies in a plan for redemption, not a recycling plan…
o The idea of reincarnation may be appealing, but so are lots of ideas that just aren’t true…(i.e. to fly like a bird)
o First of all, it’s at a loss for providing any basis for justice
Present suffering is caused by our karma in a previous life… there’s no basis for alleviating suffering.
o Secondly, it assumes humanity is progressing.
Does reality really declare human nature is progressing?
GOD’S WORD IS CLEAR… WE ARE REAL INDIVIDUALS… AND OUR LIVES ARE LINEAR… WE, LIKE CHRIST, HOPE IN RESURRECTION… NOT IN RECYCLING.
3. DEATH IS A POWER WHICH DOMINATES PRESENT LIFE, NOT JUST SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS AT THE END OF OUR PHYSICAL LIFE.
“I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.” Romans 7:10-11
- The title of the movie ‘Dead Men Walking’ captures the reality of our separation from God well…
o Those who are on death row are referred to as ‘Dead Men Walking’
- ‘Heaven’s Gate’ cult and suicide… indeed deceived… and I suppose we can say ‘foolish’, but I can’t help imagining what God sees in the countless lives claiming its foolish tragedy. Does he not see ‘dead men walking’? Only in this case a pardon has been offered… or better… a price paid but refused.
… apart from God, in whom eternity exists… we are only living to die.
4. CHRIST HAS COME TO DESTROY THE POWER OF DEATH BY RECONCILING US WITH GOD.
- To a woman seeking in Jesus to know the truth of resurrection and life… Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies.” (John 11:25)
- Even though we may die a physical death, Jesus offers the eternal life that our hearts desire.Life… life with God… eternal life…
- For the separation, which death represents, has been crossed… the great chasm between us and God’s eternal glory has been crossed over in Christ.
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God…For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Romans 5:11-2, 10
We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. Romans 6:4-5
Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 1 Corinthians 15:20-22
This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel. 2 Timothy 1:9-10
What then do we see in death? Our ultimate futility or our ultimate frontier?
In Christ we can affirm both!
- By it we are sobered by the consequences of our sin.
- By it we are saved from the consequences of our sin.
- “On the one hand death is the triumph of Satan, the punishment of the Fall, and the last enemy. Christ shed tears at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane: the Life of Lives that was in Him detested this penal obscenity not less than we do, but more. On the other hand, only he who loses his life will save it. We are baptized into the death of Christ, and it is the remedy for the Fall. Death is, in fact, what some modern people call “ambivalent.” It is Satan’s great weapon and also God’s great weapon: it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which He conquered.” (Source unknown)
5. ETERNAL LIFE WITH GOD DOES NOT BEGIN AT PHYSICAL DEATH… IT BEGINS NOW!
I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. John 5:24-26
And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:6
> Eternity is parallel to time, not simply after it.
- Eternity is a dimension of both space and time;
- It’s a place… a realm… a dimension, as we’ll se in coming weeks;
- It’s a dimension in which, like Christ and thru Christ, we can participate even now.
- Next week… what actually happens when we die a physical death… What’s up when I go down?
- But before we consider further where heaven is, we must realize that our place in heaven is our place in Christ;
- To ask ‘where is heaven?’ leads us to ask ‘where is Christ with us?’
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. Hebrews 2:14-15
Some of you… GOD IS AWAKENING YOU TO DEAL WITH DEATH
• A doctor telephoned his patient. “John,” he said, “I have the reports from your tests. I want you to come to my office immediately.” In less than thirty minutes John was in the doctor’s office. “John,” said the doctor, “I’ve got bad news and worse news. The bad news is that you are going to live only twenty-four hours…” John interrupted: “Doctor, that’s TERRIBLE news. AWFUL! What could be worse than THAT?” To which the doctor replied, “I tried to call you yesterday.”
• Maybe God tried to call YOU yesterday—and the day before, and the day before… and the day before… and from all eternity. You’ve been on God’s mind for all eternity. You’ve been God’s “Heart’s desire” for all eternity. And at this very moment, if you are really listening, you will hear him say: “You are my beloved child. My favor rests on you. I love you and I want you for my own.”
