Right Thinking About Death and Resurrection

sharing with you the messages of how we can be there to comfort you and so you won't feel lonely anymore. innTouch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. Next on inTouch, right thinking about death and resurrection. The night before Jesus died, He said one of the most important things He said to His disciples was to prepare a place for them to come again to receive Him. And He said to them, if you were not so, I'd believe also in Me. And then He said to them, in My Father's house are many mansions, if it were not so, I would have told you. Then He said, if I go to prepare a place for you, I'll come again to receive you, and myself, that where I am there you may be also, which was His way of comforting them for the simple reason He was about to go to the cross the next day. And then He said to them, if you were not so, I'd believe also in Me. And then He said to them, if you were not so, I would tell you that I'm already being poured out as a drink offering. In Second Timothy chapter four, He said, for I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of My departure has come. And the word He uses for departure, here's the same word they would use of a ship, for example, that was being loosed from the ship, that was being loosed from the ship, that was being loosed from the ship, that was being loosed from the ship. And then He said to them, for I have finished the course, I've kept the faith. In the future there is laid up for Me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to Me on that day, and not only to Me, but also to all who've loved His

appearing. And when you think about how Paul thought about death and the things that would transpire, listen to what he said in this passage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. So, each time he's giving us a word of encouragement. And then in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, He said, for example, He says, But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. When Paul talked about death, it was always an encouraging thing. It was not some gloomy, this is the end, it's all over kind of attitude, but a sense of great confidence. And the reason is because he knew the truth that the Lord had taught him about what happens following death. And so, when you look at all these passages, and you look at His viewpoint, what we have to ask is, what is a Christian's viewpoint? Now, when it comes to the resurrection, we can all rejoice and praise the Lord one of these days, going to get a new body, we're going to look better, we're going to feel better, we're going to be better. It's all going to be wonderful. Well now, that's fine if you start right there, but if you go

back a step, then you have to face death. It's a whole different story. It isn't all joyous and happy and so forth, but until you come to the place of understanding what the Bible teaches about death, and about our relationship to Christ, and the very basic understanding of our confidence and assurance, death is a whole different story. And it's interesting how many people have different views of death, and for example, if you don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you don't even want to talk about it. Don't even talk about it. Or, if you're not a Christian, and you're not, no religion at all, well, I'm just going to, one of these days, it's all going to be over, and I'm just going to evaporate and be nothing. Big surprise coming, because that is not what the Bible says whatsoever. So, I want us to see what the Scripture teaches here, and think about what Paul thought about. When he thought about it, he says it's going to be like, I'm just, I'm released from my moorings on this earth, absent from the body, present with the Lord. He was always confident about what happened on the other side. So, I would simply ask you, would that be true of you this morning? And the first question I want to answer, I want to answer a number of questions. The first question I want to answer is, what happens when people die?

It's all going to happen to us. So, what happens when people die? Well, when you're a believer, it's very evident. Now, what I want to do is I want to answer two or three questions here, that a lot of confusion floating around in the world today, and in the church today, and I want to answer this question. That is, we ask a question, what happens when people die? The souls of believers, they die. go immediately in the presence of God. Death is just a temporary separation of the body and the soul and the spirit. If you don't believe that when you die and your heart stops beating, that you go in the presence of God, then where do you go? There's some folks who say purgatory, we come into that. Some people who say, Well, you just disintegrate, you just annihilate, that's the end of you. And so, people have all kind of ideas about where you go, but the Scripture is clear when I look at the Scripture of exactly where a person goes. And if Paul, for example, thought, watch this carefully, if he thought that when he died, he was going to do anything but go in the presence of the Lord, he would never have said, absent from the body, floating around in space, in the casket for two thousand years, no, he said, absent from the body, present with the Lord. Now, let me ask you a question.

Can you say that this morning? Can you say that if I died today according to the Scripture, not my opinion, according to the Scripture, if I died today, I would be absent from this body and present with the Lord? That is exactly what Paul said. So, anything other than that is not scriptural. So, can you say that? Can you say with certainty? And if you said, Yes, I can, then I would ask you this question, on what basis could you say today, if I died on my way home from church, or if I had a heart attack in the church, if I died today, on what basis could you say, I can rejoice in the Lord because absent from the body, I'll be present with Him? What would be your basis for saying that? The cross, not works. The only way you and I can be sure is that we have trusted Jesus Christ, sacrificial, substitutionary, atoning death at Calvary to pay our sin debt in full, all of our sins, so that the moment He calls us, we are heaven-bound, not on the basis of anything else. So, if you ask your friend tomorrow at work, you say, Well, if you were to die today, where would you go? Well, I don't know, maybe I'd go to heaven. Well, why do you say that? And listen to their answers. Ninety, ninety-five percent of the answers most people

are going to give. Well, I haven't been a bad person. I've been as good as some church members I know. All, there's only one answer, the cross. Not my good works, the cross. And to think about this, think about the people whose relationship with God is not right and who think, Well, one of these days I'm going to get this straight. Then they see this terrible accident. One of the first things that pops in their mind is, I wouldn't be ready. So, I ask you again this morning, would you be ready? And what's the basis of your readiness? If it is anything other than you have trusted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, based on His atoning, sacrificial, substitutionary, all-sufficient death at Calvary, then you don't have a right basis. So, when somebody says, Well, what happens when you die? We go to the presence of God. Now, if that'd be true, what about these people, for example, who talk about soul sleep? And I had a big, long, two-hour conversation with someone just a couple of weeks or so ago, who just want to dress me down. Listen, when you die, you sleep in the grave till Jesus comes. Well, I know exactly where they got that from. They've taken that, for example, from First Thessalonians, the fourth chapter. And Paul uses the term sleep, but he doesn't use it to teach that because he doesn't believe it. Listen, he said, absent from the body present with the Lord.

Not absent from the body present in the tomb. And Paul didn't make any contradictions in what he said. So, it's very clear what Paul is saying in this fourth chapter of First Thessalonians. He said, I don't want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, that you'll not grieve as do those who have no rest. When he uses the term sleep here, he's not talking about sleeping in the grave. He's talking about when a person who is a Christian, when a person who is a believer dies, what happens? It's like going to sleep. We awaken in the presence of God. If he didn't believe that, he could not have said, absent from the body present with the Lord. So, think about this also. The Apostle Paul would never have said, here I am pulled in two directions, he says to the Philippians. He said, number one, I really and truly want to stay here and preach the gospel. to you. On the other hand, I want to depart and be with Jesus." Now, if he thought they were going to put him in a tomb somewhere for whether it's a hundred years or a thousand years, he would never have said that. He said, I want to die and be with Jesus or I want to stay here and preach the gospel. He said, I'm torn between those two. And so, he would never have felt that way if he believed that anything was going to be happening to him except that

he'd be in the presence of God. And so, when it comes to soul sleep, there's nothing in the Bible that teaches soul sleep. And you can look at all the verses you want to talk about, that's not there. And so, that's not true. Then what about purgatory? And I'm amazed at the people who believe that. And I believe there are many Roman Catholics who are saved. I don't question that because you talk to them, they've trusted Jesus as their Savior, they understand what it means to be saved. But when it comes to purgatory, there's nothing in the Bible that teaches soul sleep. And so, when it comes to purgatory, there's nothing in the Bible that teaches soul sleep. Now, think about what you're saying. Think about this clearly. If there is a purgatory, if you can make one statement about how it absolutely could not be true, if, for example, there is a purgatory, here's what that says. So, if you died and went to purgatory to suffer for your sins, here's what they'll tell you. Well, there's some sins that you committed that you didn't pay for in life, and so you've got to go suffer till you get those paid for. That's totally, there's nothing at whatsoever, no finality about that. It is totally untrue. Otherwise, what it says is, Jesus' death on the cross was

partial payment. I got to take care of the rest of it. It is absolutely a denial of the truth of the atoning death of Jesus Christ for the sin of all mankind. What I want you to see is these are things that people believe, and they believe them very strongly. And they're not true. You see, it's one thing to believe something, but when you start asking questions, you think, Well, I couldn't possibly believe that. But if you believe the Word of God, you cannot possibly believe it. So, then what about the people who die without Christ? They're lost. Now, let me say a couple things here. The Bible says, It's appointed the man once to die, and after this, the judgment. Now, watch this carefully. Lovingly, we have to say it. Gently, we have to say it. But truthfully, we have to say it. When somebody dies without Christ, all the preaching, all the flowers, all the money, all the praise, all the songs, all will not move them out of one single moment of eternal separation from God. Now, this is the hardest part. The most difficult part is to realize that somebody has gone to hell, torment. And they'll be in torment until the ultimate resurrection in the twenty, twentieth chapter of Revelation, when all the bodies

of unbelievers come out of the grave and united with the Spirit the soul, and then judged for all eternity for their works. Because, you see, when a person dies without Christ, they go to torment. But the final judgment is not at that moment, because the judgment is going to be perfectly accurate as to the way we've lived our lives and what that judgment incurs. That's why you can't say to somebody, Well, I know there weren't a Christian, you know, I've had to deal with this many times as a pastor and every pastor does. Well, now, I'll say, Well, tell me about your husband's, about his relationship to God. Well, he was a good man. You can't be good enough to escape torment if you've rejected Jesus Christ. That's a hard thing to have to tell somebody, but it's the truth. And you cannot afford to mislead somebody into thinking that because they did this and because they did that, for example, or they will say, Oh, I'm not sure about all that, but I know he's going to be all right. Well, I don't have the heart to go any further than that. But the truth is, they're not going to be all right. It's important that man wants to die, and after this, the judgment, in other words, when we breathe our last breath, we either are going to go to the presence of God or torment. And no kind of reasoning and sermons and theology and doctrine and false belief and all the things that go on, none of that's going to work. The Scripture says, if you confess with your mouth Jesus

as Lord, believe in your heart, God raised Him from the dead. You understand what that's about? Thou shalt be saved. Listen, God the Father placed all the sin of your sin, my sin, the sins of the whole world, all the way back to Adam, He placed the guilt and the penalty of all the sin of all mankind on the only person who could bear it, and that is the sinless Jesus Christ who is the Lamb of God. All those sheep and bulls and goats and so forth that were sacrificed, all that He says is a foreshadowing of what? Of the day Jesus Christ died on the cross. The Bible says the veil in the temple was rent from top to bottom, so now man has access to the Father. So therefore, all that's happened over all these years, our access to God is through His Son, Jesus Christ. Now, God put all the sin of all mankind on the one person who'd never sinned. And who killed Jesus? Romans didn't kill Jesus and Jews didn't kill Jesus. The Father killed Jesus. It was His Son whom He sacrificed for your sins and mine, therefore, when we come to accept Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, we are accepting God's gift of His Son as the only final, real, adequate, and substitutionary, vicarious, sufficient sacrifice for your sins and mine. He put all that sin on Jesus. Listen, this is what makes rejecting Jesus Christ so horrendous. He's the only person who can get you to heaven. He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one

comes to the Father but by me. He wasn't boasting, He was stating the truth, stating the fact. So, when you reject Jesus, you reject the Father's gift to die for your sins. And when you reject Jesus, no one else can pay for your sin. Now, watch this. Who else can pay your sin debt? Let me tell you why no one else could. Because everybody else has sinned. We all have our sin. So, Jesus, the only perfect, sinless Son of God, paid your sin debt in full, period. When you receive Him as your personal Savior, you are made eternally secure based on His death at the cross as payment for your sin, all right? If you ignore that, who bears your sin? You have to bear it. You say, What about my good works? I'm glad you asked. Because your good works are absolutely useless when it comes to your having an acceptability before God. That's why He sent Him. You say, What about this resurrection then? What's this all about? Well, the Bible says there's going to come a day when God's going to call the end of it all. And He is going to bring it all to light. And there'll come a time when the Lord Jesus Christ is coming in the air and these resurrected bodies of ours will be caught up

together with Him in the clouds and the air. Now, let's read a couple of verses here because I think it's very important. When He says to the Thessalonians, for example, He says, We don't want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep. And remember we said it doesn't mean that they're sleeping in the grave. That's His, just His terminology of how we go to sleep at night, wake up the next morning. If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who've fallen asleep. Now, watch this. I say this again on purpose because it's a big issue with people. If He's going to bring me with Him and my physical body's going to get resurrected, then I thought I was in the grave. Doesn't make any sense at all. So that there's no soul sleep. You die, you're in the presence of God, you're in torment. And the sixteenth chapter of Luke that you know so well, the rich man and Lazarus. Remember what Jesus said when He told that story. And the rich man died and in torment. And you remember what happened. The Scripture says that here's the rich man and he's crying out to God, Well, send somebody and just dip their finger in water and come touch my tongue. Well, I think you use, Jesus used such a terminology. He said He was simply trying to emphasize the fact torment is

torment. This isn't some nice condo somewhere. It's torment. And when a person dies without Christ, they go to torment. In the twentieth chapter of Revelation, when the Bible says that when the great white throne judgment comes, what happens? He's going to resurrect the bodies of the dead all over this world. You say, Well, what about years and years and years ago? Let me ask you a question. Do you think it's a problem for God to raise bodies out of the sea and out of the fish and out of the earth when He created all of that to begin with? He has no problem with any of that. And He says there will come a white throne judgment in which every person there will be a lost person who rejected Christ. And you say, Well now, if I've already died and I'm in torment, what's this judgment about? This judgment is about the degree of punishment that person will experience for all eternity. You say, You mean to tell me that you believe that people are going to suffer for all eternity? That's not even a good question. Ask this question, What does God say? And He says, Once that person goes to hell, there is no escape, and that's why He gives a story. You see, there are parents who'd say, Well, you know, if I live a godly life, surely my kids are going to be okay. Not necessarily. And especially if you live an ungodly life, then you have set

the pace for them. So, what does the Bible say? When a person dies, they either go to torment or they go in the presence of God. When the child of God dies, we go in the presence of God. And then, and then when the, and then when Jesus brings forth the judgment for believers, what happens? Then we are rewarded for our good works. And for all eternity we will enjoy the rewards that God gives us as a result of how we lived out our lives. The unbelieving judgment receives not a reward. They spend eternity suffering according to the way they lived out their life. So, there is no escape. You say, Well, why all this emphasis on death? Because it is inevitable. And every person should be prepared to die. And there's only one way to prepare. And that's not going to church. The church is important. Not reading the Bible, very important. Praying, very important. The essential thing is that you, by an act of your will, ask the Lord Jesus Christ to forgive you of your sins, accept the fact that He went to the cross in your behalf, paid your sin dead and full, and that you're trusting in Him as your Savior. And you're believing that you are forgiven of your sin by accepting Him as your Savior. And when you die, you will be in the presence of Almighty God. There is not another, not a single nothing as a substitute

for that. So, I'd ask you a question. Are you ready? There's only two answers to that. Yes, I am. No, I'm not. You say, Well, I have another answer. Mine's maybe. Maybe what? The only thing, the only reason you can say maybe is maybe because maybe I'm wrong. No. The Bible is christically, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven. What about it? Have you ever placed your trust in Jesus Christ as an act of faith? Have you ever, have you ever, have you ever, have you ever given your will at some point in your life where you said, Lord, here's my life? Doesn't mean you've lived a perfect life, but it means you settled your eternal estate while you were here. There is no soul sleep. There's no annihilation. There's no purgatory. There's none of that. We live and we die. For the life that we've lived. We die out of Christ, without Christ, and suffer eternally. The penalty of the rejection of the Son of God.

Now, watch this. It isn't all those things that you do and didn't do that make you miss heaven. It's the rejection of the Son of God, Jesus, the sacrifice. That's what will cause you the loss of eternal life. And it's my prayer that you'll give serious thought. You say, Well, I'm going to think about one of these days. There are probably a lot of people in hell today who said the same thing. And I would ask you to be very honest with yourself. Are you prepared to meet the God who made you and gave you life and gave you opportunity? Are you prepared to meet Him, having rejected His Son and done it your way and rebelled against the love of God? Father, I pray the Holy Spirit will sink these truths deep into every one of our hearts. I pray for those who have been putting it off and making excuses for not dealing with their relationship to You. I pray, Father, that You'll make them very miserable, that when they lie down to sleep, can't sleep. When they try to concentrate on other issues, they can't, until they deal with the most important issue of all, their personal relationship with You through Your Son, Jesus Christ. And I pray this in His name, amen.