24. A Comfort You Can Count On

LONNIE: Welcome to Exploring the Word. I hope you’ve been enjoying our studies together. And I hope we’ve been able to help you appreciate the breadth and depth of God’s wisdom in the Bible. Today the subject is death and eternal life. We’re going to get a firm grip on the kind of hope that sees right through the grave. Jeannie, we get quite a few letters on this, don’t we?

JEANNIE: Yes, like this one from a Discover student named Jenalyn. She asked: “When someone dies, what turns to dust? Where does the soul go, where does the spirit go?”

LONNIE: This relates to the popular idea of the immortal soul. Our bodies may decay, but something else is indestructible. Where does it go?

JEANNIE: And then another student, Anthony from Oregon has a related question. “Scripture seems to uphold the doctrine that our recreated spirit in Christ will never die.” He wanted to know what we thought of that.

LONNIE: And he makes reference here to a statement Paul made in Philippians about dying and being with Christ.

JEANNIE: These aren’t just academic questions, of course, Lonnie. They’re very real issues when you’re standing beside the grave of a loved one

LONNIE: Some very big questions. So what we’re going to do today is to find, in the Bible, words of comfort that we can count on, something rock-solid. We’re going to try to nail down a hope that we can count on.

JEANNIE: And if you read our homework assignment from last week, John chapter 11, you probably already have some clues. The story of Jesus and Lazarus gives us hints about how Jesus approached death and the afterlife.

LONNIE: Thanks Jeannie. And remember our Discover Guide number twenty-four, “When a Person Dies…What Then?” has additional information on today’s topic.

What can we count on, when we’re facing the end? You know what archeologists almost always find when they investigate ancient burial sites? They find artifacts buried with a skeleton. They find precious possessions which are supposed to help an individual in the afterlife, possessions which identify who this individual is.
Human beings have been doing that for thousands of years. People want to preserve something of an individual's essence. They want to hide something away with him or her that won't just crumble to dust.

And we're still at it. Today we do it in what seem to be more scientific ways. Take Cryonics for example. That involves freezing a body in an attempt to preserve the individual. The hope is that some medical breakthrough in the future will permit scientists to thaw out the body and bring that person to life again.

Others wonder about what we might be able to hide away inside tomorrow's computers. We can already store an incredible amount of information digitally. What if you could transfer everything that's in someone's mind into megabytes of information in a file? What if you could preserve a personality that way?

After all, people say, the brain is really the hardware. But the mind, what’s in the brain is software. We ought to be able to preserve that software even when the hardware goes down. What if all our ideas and emotions could somehow be loaded into another computer, another brain, and live on?

It’s just speculation, science fiction. But people speculate like this because of a very basic human longing. We want to hide something away in the hour of death. We want to somehow preserve the essence of ourselves. We don’t want to disappear completely, become a zero.

Well, here’s the good news. God is way ahead of cryonics and computers. He has designed a way for us to never, ever become a zero. I believe he has devised a plan so that every believer can be preserved and recreated as a whole personality---no matter what happens to the hardware, the body. God has a way of preserving vital information. And it all revolves around one basic principle: our life being hidden with Christ in God.

But this biblical hope is actually rather different from many popular conceptions of what happens to the soul after death. You’re going to discover some things that may surprise you. So get your Bibles ready. We’re going to be looking at your homework assignment in John chapter eleven.

It happened near the town of Bethany. One of Jesus' best friends had just died, a man named Lazarus. And the sisters of Lazarus were crushed with grief. They thought that Jesus should have come and healed their beloved brother. They’d asked Him to come. But He didn't arrive until four days after the funeral. We see that in John 11:17. Lazarus had been in the tomb four days.

Jesus went directly to the place where they'd laid His young friend. And He gave a rather strange command. Look at verse 39: “Take away the stone.” Lazarus had been laid in a cave and a large stone rolled across its entrance. But now Jesus motioned for some men to roll it away.

Martha, one of the sisters, objected. Her dear brother's body has been decomposing for four days. There would be a terrible stench. What was the point?

But Jesus persisted. After a brief prayer, He called something out in a loud voice. What was it? Verse 43: "Lazarus come forth!"

Again, it was a simple command. But the remarkable thing is that Jesus expected corpses to obey His voice.

And what do you know. The mourners saw a flash of white in the dark tomb. Lazarus came out, very slowly, still wrapped in his grave clothes like a mummy. And Jesus commanded, "Loose him, and let him go."

Lazarus catches his breath and runs over to embrace his incredulous sisters. That scene outside Bethany was a small preview of the great resurrection, of the time when the dead will rise to be with Christ and wonderful reunions will take place.

Now there’s an interesting postscript to this story. Lazarus actually became something of a celebrity. He had been buried--and come back to life. Everyone wanted to touch him. Everyone wanted to talk to him. He was Exhibit A in this Messiah's claim to conquer death.

But we have no record of Lazarus describing any kind of out-of-the-body experience during his four days in the tomb, any kind of soul travel. What happened to his soul during those four days? Did it go up to heaven and come back down again?

Well the story itself gives us a clue. And here’s something I hope you picked up last week as you were reading this chapter. Look at John 11:11. When he heard that Lazarus had died, this is what He said:

“Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him up.” Luke 11:11

Jesus often compared death to a sleep. The dead are asleep.

You don't do anything while you're sleeping. You're not conscious of what's going on around you while you're sleeping.

And this picture of death is consistent with other texts in Scripture.

Ecclesiastes 9:5 tells us:

“For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing…”

And in Psalm 115:17 we learn that:

“The dead do not praise the Lord, nor any who go down into silence.”

What's the picture we have here of death? It's silence. No thoughts. No consciousness. And Jesus Himself paints the same picture. The dead are not conscious.

People actually find great comfort in this biblical point of view.

Notice that the writers of Scripture don’t have a sentimental view of death. They don't try to explain it away. They accept the stark picture: death reduces consciousness to zero. There's no suggestion of souls floating about.

Well that raises a question. And it’s Jenalyn’s question. So what does happen to the soul? What does happen to the spirit?

Let’s look at Ecclesiastes. The book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament describes human death, dust returning to dust, in this way:

“Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.” Ecclesiastes 12:6,7

The spirit returns to God.

What does that mean? And by the way, “spirit” and “soul” are often used interchangeably in the New Testament. There’s no firm distinction between them. Soul sometimes may be used to refer to our emotions and thoughts. And spirit often refers to our spiritual capacities.

So in what sense does “the spirit” return to God? Turn to Philippians 1:23.

This is a text Anthony referred to.

The Apostle Paul was facing a possible death sentence. And he told the Philippians that he was hard pressed between two possibilities, remaining in the flesh with his beloved friends, or departing and being with Christ. Philippians 1:23. He was “hard pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ. . . “

So Anthony asked, doesn’t this text indicate that our re-created spirit in Christ will never die? After all when Paul dies he expects to depart and be with Christ. And Paul makes a similar statement in 2 Corinthians 5:6. He said being absent from the body meant being present with the Lord.

Texts like these have tripped some people up. They start wondering: so just when are we going to heaven? Don’t we go there at the second coming of Jesus? Paul certainly seems to say that clearly in 1 Thessalonians. He’s talking about the Lord descending from heaven with a shout. That’s the second coming. And what happens to the dead? “The dead in Christ will rise first.” 1 Thessalonians 4:16.

The next verse, verse 17, shows us caught up in the air to meet the Lord. “And thus we shall always be with the Lord.” “Therefore comfort one another with these words.” Verse 18.

The dead in Christ rise at His second coming. That’s an event we can count on. That’s a comfort we can count on.

Why does Paul talk about departing and being with Christ at death? Well think about it. If the dead are asleep they’re not conscious of the passage of time. When Paul dies, what’s the next thing he knows? What happens in the next instant for him? The second coming of Jesus Christ. That’s when he’s awakened. That’s when he, like everyone else, rises to meet his Lord. So death is just like departing and being with Christ.

Now, how does the spirit returning to God fit in?

Well, I believe we find an answer in something Paul wrote to the Colossians. Colossians 3:3. Now Paul is talking to believers who are very much alive. But he says:

“For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Believers died, spiritually, to the old ways. And now their life is hidden away in God, hidden away with Christ. Paul echoes this thought in his letter to the Ephesians. He says that believers have been resurrected with Christ; they have ascended with him; they are co-seated with Christ at God's right hand in heavenly places.

That's our secure position as believers. But that doesn't mean we are physically in heaven. We're still walking around here, driving to work each day, going to bed each night. Our conscious being is still all here on earth.

But what Paul is saying is that God has a hold of us in a special way. Our identity is secure in his hands. And because of that we have hope of eternal life.

When we die, all this hardware is going to go away. All this flesh is going to decay. But the good news is, God is going to keep holding on to us when we're laid in the ground. He's going to keep holding on to us when dust returns to dust.

How can he do that? Because God has an infinite capacity to store information. He has enough memory. He has enough megabytes to fill the universe. He's the one who designed our original software, the miracle of our unique personality. And he's the one who can preserve it even beyond the grave.

That’s what our spirit returning to God means. God preserves our identity, our life force if you please.

And this is how we can put all the texts about the afterlife together. The dead are not conscious, that’s clear. But our identity is preserved safe, hidden away with Christ in God.

That’s a comfort we can count on. For thousands of years human beings have been searching for that comfort. But it isn’t found in artifacts in the ground. It isn’t found in anything we can carry with us to the grave. It’s found hidden away with Christ in God. That’s a wonderful comfort for those who have lost loved ones.

JEANNIE: You know one reason I appreciate today’s message, the New Testament picture of the dead asleep in Christ, is my Dad. I really identify with what some of our friends shared today.

It would be difficult for me to imagine my father taken up to heaven and looking down now on all the tragedies and disasters in our world. It would be heartbreaking for him to see sadness and hurt in his own family—and he couldn’t do anything about it.

LONNIE: I don’t think heaven can truly be a happy place for us until we’re all there together, until Jesus comes to take us all home.

JEANNIE: Exactly.

I take comfort in knowing that my Dad’s death is really a temporary thing. That he's only "asleep" in the grave until Jesus comes. To us, it seems like a long time since my dad died, but not for him. HMS Richards Sr., founder of the Voice of Prophecy, used to say about those who die in Christ—“They’re just taking a nap." Well Dad’s just taking a nap. And when he wakes up the first face he'll see is the face of his Savior. There’s great comfort in that.

LONNIE: And I’m so glad Jeannie that this is precisely the picture that comes through when we put all the Bible texts on the subject together.
JEANNIE: Lonnie, I guess at the heart of this comfort we can count on is that one great event, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That’s when death was really defeated wasn’t it?

LONNIE: Absolutely and because that event is so well documented by eyewitnesses our hope of life beyond the grave has a real basis in history.

It happened at a Garden Tomb just outside of Jerusalem. Jesus Christ rose from His tomb, not as a disembodied spirit, but as a living, flesh-and-blood individual. Hundreds of eyewitnesses would see Him, and talk with Him, and touch Him, and eat with Him.

The picture of life beyond the grave in the Bible is crystal clear because it's the picture of Jesus. It's a definite face we see there coming out of the brightness of the tomb. It's not just a vague sensation.

The eternal life the Bible talks about relates to this person, this face. Jesus walked out of the tomb. He broke through the chains of death. He leads the way for all who place their faith in Him.

He’s the One who ordered Lazarus out of his tomb. He’s the one who quieted the voices of weeping. Jesus spoke to a corpse. And the corpse obeyed His voice. Jesus is the author of eternal life.

Jesus' resurrection assures us that the dead will be awakened. Yes, death is like a deep sleep. Yes, it appears that we lose everything at death. But there is Someone whose voice can penetrate through any tomb. There is Someone whose voice will call down from the heavens.

And the dead in Christ will respond. That's the wonderful hope the writers of Scripture offer us. All the texts of hope in the New Testament fill in the same picture. We can have eternal life because our life is hidden away in Christ. That can be true right now. That can be true at the hour of our death. God is the only one who truly holds us in his hands. He's the only one who can keep holding on even when we're laid in the grave.

Do you have this wonderful assurance today?

I don’t think a cryonic lab has the answer. I don’t think freezing your brain is the way to conquer death. And I wouldn't put my faith in some supercomputer in the future that might reduce you to gigabytes.

I'd put my faith in a Heavenly Father who loves you and gave up His Son so that you could have eternal life. That's who I want holding on to me right now. That's who I want holding on to me in the end.
You can make sure right now that your life is hidden with Christ in God. You can have that assurance just by taking a definite step of faith toward God. You can do it now as we pray.

Dear Father, thank You so much for the gift of eternal life that is in your Son Jesus Christ. We place our lives in His hands right now. We accept Him as Savior and trust in Him as Lord. We want to be identified with Him in life and in death. Thank You for accepting us so graciously. Thank You for the blessed hope that we can enjoy each day, hidden with Christ in God. Amen.

JEANNIE: Time again for a little homework assignment. Are you ready to jot it down?

LONNIE: Next week we’ll be exploring what the Bible has to say about finding a church that’s right for you.

JEANNIE: And we’d like you to read a passage in Colossians. Colossians 2:6-23.

This passage has some clues about the differences between a healthy church and an unhealthy church, between healthy and unhealthy spirituality.

LONNIE: So remember, read Galatians 2:6-23 for our next program.

So, until then, God bless you and yours. Never stop exploring the Word. And remember, God really does love you.