What Actually Happens When You Die?

All right, welcome, everybody. And. Great to see you today, and we're gonna go deep and fast today, are you ready? You didn't come ready, but you gotta be ready because we're going there today. Hey, I gotta just quickly welcome some special guests here today, Pastor Earl and Joy Thornton, who led Evangel in the 90s. And so will you just appreciate them and welcome them here? Honored to stand on your shoulders and what you all pastored and led, and now we benefit from the seeds that you planted in good soil. So God bless you guys, thanks for being here today. All right, you have a Bible? I'm telling you, we're going hard, you gotta buckle up. Here we go. I told the first service, I said, if you wanted positive and encouraging, you should have listened to Caleb on the way here, but it will be, it will be encouraging. Here we go, in Genesis 2, the Bible says, the Lord took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. The word there is adam, which we say Adam, and put him in the garden to take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man and said, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it, you will certainly die.

Everybody say, certainly die. Certainly die. Title of the message today is, what actually happens when you die? What actually happens, I know, light and easy today. What actually happens when you die? And Adam and Eve are told in the garden of Eden not to eat from a certain tree, otherwise they will, quote, certainly die. And ultimately, is this control? No, this is a decision to trust. This is the human moral decision that we still wrestle with today. Does the creator have the right to define to the created what is right and wrong, or will the created seize the opportunity to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong? It's the moral choice of all humanity. And if you seize the right to define right and wrong for yourself, then that leads to rebellion, disobedience, and mistrust that the Bible says will result in certain death. Death is not an original part of God's creation. Death is an invader. Death is the result of human decision. And it's introduced into God's perfect creation through human decision. So Adam and Eve choose to not trust, and they choose to eat of the tree that they were told not to eat from.

And do they immediately die? No, they're driven out of the garden, and they live actually pretty long, full lives. But they certainly do die eventually. And even though they don't die physically, immediately, there is a change. There is an immediate change in their relationships, first with one another. They experience a kind of relational death. What was meant to be vulnerable and open and transparent and intimate, all of a sudden they look at each other and they go, ah, we're naked. And they experience shame of their own nakedness. There is a relational death that Adam and Eve immediately experience. They also experience a kind of spiritual death. Because the God that had come to the garden to walk with them, Eden was a picture of heaven and earth fully overlapped. God's space and our space in one space. And they would walk with God in that space. And now God comes into the garden, and because there's been spiritual death, Adam and Eve, instead of welcoming him and walking with him, they hide from him in fear. And so continues the pattern of humanity. To hide from God, to hide our sin, to hide in our shame, rather than to walk in perfect union with him.

This spiritual death was passed to all humanity. It's why in Ephesians 2, the Apostle Paul writes and says, you were dead in your sins and your trespasses. Even though you are physically alive, relationally and spiritually, something has died. So why then, I ask myself the next question, why does God drive Adam and Eve out of his presence? Why does he drive them out of the garden? Is it an angry God who sends angels with flaming swords and says, get away from me, you sinful beings? No, the reality of why God drives them out of the Garden of Eden, out of the place where God's space and human space overlap, is because there's another tree in the garden. And that tree is the tree of life. And God refuses to let man who have now eaten from the tree of knowledge and good and evil and experienced spiritual and relational death, eat from the tree of life, which would make them immortal and eternal, allowing them to live eternally with spiritual and relational brokenness. And so he removes them from that out of love in a way of protecting them and preserving them until that relationship is redeemed and they can live with him for all eternity in the full life, physically, spiritually, and relationally that he had planned. So it's actually the mercy of God that removes Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and then God sets a plan in motion

to restore them back to being fully alive in the way that he intended, which leads me to the question, what actually happens when we die? From my own theology, it was formed in the 1990s through a set of VCR tapes called Left Behind, which I'm not encouraging you to watch and form your theology around. And honestly, it just scared the daylights out of me. And I remember going to my cousin's house and we were having a sleepover that night and we were sitting and playing and we didn't know what to talk about while we were playing, so I just started to tell him about the end of the world and the antichrist and the mark of the beast and hell, fire, and brimstone. And he just looked at me very concerned. He was about a year younger than me. And in the morning, my parents woke me up and said, what did you say to your cousin last night? I said, I was just telling him about the end of the world. It's very important for him to know. And they said, well, he didn't sleep all night. He had to sleep with his parents. I'm like, that's what the movie said, you know? And I wanna give you a better theology than the American westernized version of the end of days. See, we often cope with death, even in our present day, by looking at a body and saying, they're no longer there. Or they're with the Lord, they're in a better place.

We simply say, you go to heaven or hell when you die. And the world, to try to make itself feel better, says, everybody goes to a better place. Everybody goes to heaven. That is not what the Bible says. The Bible does not declare that. In fact, the Bible does not list heaven and hell together in the same sentence. It doesn't even really use that same language. When the Bible's talking about the heavens, it's sometimes talking about God's space, but other times it's talking about the skies where the birds dwell. When the Bible uses the word hell or speaks to hell, we take one narrow description of hell in a much wider set of descriptions that the Bible uses. We often think of hell as the opposite of heaven, but the Bible's clear that the opposite of heaven is not hell, the opposite of heaven is earth. It's even the broken world that we live in right now. We have this American and western view of these places that are not biblically accurate. Like, hell is described as some place where there's some sort of a red devil with horns and a pointy tail and he has a pitchfork. And while you're there, you're on fire but not being consumed and he's kind of prodding you with the pitchfork and that's like your punishment for being bad. Our picture of heaven is that somehow we become babies again

and we grow wings and we get a harp and we sit on a cloud. Wow, what an eternity to look forward to, naked babies sitting on clouds playing harps with wings. In fact, John Eldredge described our struggle with heaven or the heavens in this way. He says, nearly every Christian I've spoken with has some idea that eternity is an unending church service. That we've settled on an image of the never-ending sing-along in the sky, one great hymn after another, forever and ever, amen. And our heart sinks forever and ever. That's it, that's the good news. And then we sigh and we feel guilty that we're not more spiritual. We lose heart and we turn once more to the present to find what life we can. So if that's not it, what is it? The Bible points to two things, resurrection and a new creation. That there will be a new heavens and there will be a new earth. We lump all this together and call it heaven in loosely speaking about the new Eden that God is creating where heaven and earth will fully overlap. And most of us don't even think about that. We just wanna know what happens right when I die. And for those who don't know Jesus, who aren't walking with Christ, the Bible doesn't actually say a lot

except that you'll go to the grave. For those that know Jesus and have walked with Christ, the Bible's clear that you will be with him when you die. There will be a separating of the material part of you from the immaterial part of you, which is not how you were intended. The end of this story is not your body going into the ground and your soul going to be with God for all eternity. You were not meant to be disembodied. For a period of time, the Bible's clear that if you know Christ, you will be with him when you die. You will have conscious fellowship with Jesus after you die. Second Corinthians 5.8 says that being separate from your body is not the final state of your eternity. The Bible says that if you are absent from the body and you know Christ, you will be present with the Lord. That's the promise, that we'll be with him. But the Bible actually doesn't say much about life after death. It says a lot about the life after life after death, about the new creation, about the resurrection. The apostle Paul writes about it in First Corinthians. He says, but Christ has indeed been raised from the dead. Amen, we know this. We're celebrating this on Easter. He's the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. First fruits means there will be more fruit or after fruit. That if he did it, there's more to come. Of those who have fallen asleep, the Bible refers to those who have died

as having fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, Adam, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man, Jesus. The Bible refers to them as the first Adam and the second Adam. One caused a schism in the relationship between God and humans. Another restored that relationship. For as in Adam, all die. So in Christ, all will be made alive. But each in turn, Christ, the first fruits, then when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come when he hands over the kingdom of God the Father, hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, all authority and all power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. Of all those who have fallen asleep or died, Christ is raised as the first fruits. What is the summary of that scripture? It says that all will be made alive, the end will come, Christ will destroy all dominion and authority and power and hand the kingdom back to his heavenly Father. His enemies will be under his feet and then he will destroy death itself. What can we take from that?

If your physical body dies before Christ returns, every one of us, whether you follow Christ or not, will be raised. Eternal life and death are present but also future realities. Heaven is not ultimately this place that we just go to and everything changes but eternal life begins to live in us when we follow Christ. It begins to reveal itself in us when we follow Jesus and eternal death, the same. And so who will be raised to eternal life? Who will actually experience the very presence of God and be with him when their physical body have died? The Bible's clear that those who receive life from Christ now, today is the day of salvation. Eternity with Christ begins in the soul of the believer who follows the Lord Jesus Christ and puts their hope in him. While they are physically alive and even though they were spiritually and relationally dead, Ephesians 2 is clear, if your salvation is in Christ, if your hope is in Christ, if you've experienced the new birth, if you've gotten saved, whatever you wanna call it, Ephesians 2 is clear that you've already been relationally and spiritually resurrected. Your old life is in the grave, you have been buried with Christ

and you've also been raised with him. You've been raised to new life with Christ Jesus. The moment you repent of your sin, you turn from your old ways and you turn to Jesus for a new birth, resurrection begins. It's why the immaterial part of you goes to be with God if this body on earth should perish. Jesus gives us the same instruction in John 5. He says, very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, will have eternal life, will go to eternal life, has eternal life and will not be judged, but is crossed over from death to life. Very truly I tell you, a time is coming, a future reality and has now come a present reality when the dead will hear the voice of the son of God and those who hear his voice will live. Some of you are alive from the inside out and some of you are the living dead. Your body is alive, but relationally and spiritually, you've not been raised to new life because your hope is not in Christ. Your hope is not in him. The Bible's clear, Jesus was clear that the path. that we take to eternal life. It's not simply a sinner's prayer. It's not simply a first communion or a baptism

or some work that we do. But if we are raised to eternal life, it's because the entire arc of our life points towards Jesus. It's not a one time, it is the resurrection being lived out in your every day. It's your whole life being formed in the direction of Jesus. Eternal life starts now and it's not based on the merit of your own works or of what you've done. It's based on the merit of Christ Jesus who became the meeting place of heaven and earth and said now that same meeting place by my spirit can take place in you if you've been raised to new life in Christ. You okay? It's a lot. You have to wonder, you don't have to wonder where you stand. I asked a group of people a couple weeks ago how many of you, if you died, you know without a doubt you would go to heaven and I watched in bewilderment the look in some people's eyes going I'm not sure and I want you to know today that you can know, that you know, that you know, that you know, that you know because anyone who's in Christ is a brand new creation. Because Jesus made a way. You will not land in purgatory where there's a continued work to be done.

Purgatory is a declaration that the finished work of Jesus on the cross is not enough and we reject that teaching. The finished work of Christ on the cross, it is finished, it is done. Your soul can be resurrected, raised with him. So. So what do we know about the life after the life after death? We know that our physical bodies will be resurrected to judgment. That we will all be raised. Daniel 12 two says it this way. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth, sleep again, who have died, will awake. Some to everlasting life and others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens and those who lead many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever. In Revelation 20 the Bible paints a clear picture that we will all be raised. It says that the grave will give up all the bodies that are in it, Hades. It says that the sea will give up all the bodies that are in it. We will all be resurrected to judgment. There is a great throne. The dead in the sea and in the grave will stand before it and each person will be judged how?

According to what they have done. According to what they have done. There's multiple scriptures I could give you that say that but we don't have time. According to what they have done. What does this mean? The creator in that moment called the day in scripture, the day of wrath, the day of judgment, the day of the Lord. On that day the creator will set all things right. In order for him to give new life to his creation and because he is just he will deal with all evil on the earth. For the Ephesians 2 Christian that means that Jesus already took God's judgment and he bore it on his own body. So on that day standing before that throne your life will declare Jesus help me, save me and you will be spared judgment. For those who reject Christ the justice of God will fall on you because you've not allowed Christ to atone for your sin. You may hear that and say man is that really fair? That God would do that? Listen for the love of God to be genuine it has to run the risk of being rejected. Forced love is not love. And God allows the other to decide. He has allowed us to choose as humans. And in that choice look what we've become. The 20th century, in the 20th century more humans died

at the hands of other humans than in all history. Something is deeply wrong in our world and we know it. There is horrendous evil, there are atrocities that are committed against the innocent, against children, heinous crimes that we almost wanna stick our head in the sand and pretend don't exist but everything is laid bare before the eyes of the one to whom we must give account. And he allows us to choose. So what do we do? Acts 17 puts it this way, in the past God overlooked our ignorance but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. To turn from that old way of living and to put our hope in Jesus. He commands everyone to repent for he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. How? By Christ. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead. So what can you do today? Repent, decide. Today is the day of salvation. Now is the time to say, I lay my old life down and I put my hope in the person of Christ. We will all stand before Him. We will all stand before Him. You've now heard it, you now know it,

and now you are responsible for what you do with it. We will all stand before Him and some will stand alone and others will stand covered by the blood of the Lamb that cleansed them from unrighteousness and protects them in that day. After that judgment, what will take place? Some will continue on the trajectory that they're already living today, a trajectory toward eternal death. Second Thessalonians says it this way, God will provide rest for you who are being persecuted and also for us when the Lord Jesus appears from heaven. Most end of times scripture revelation here is written to a persecuted church. They're saying, God, we're following you and the Romans are dipping us in tar and burning us on poles at their parties. When will your justice come? It's sometimes hard to see the justice of God in the comfort of American culture, but this was written to Christians who are persecuted, beheaded, crucified upside down, killed, and there's a reassurance, God will make all things right. He will come with His mighty angels in flaming fire, bringing judgment on who? Those who don't know God and on those who refuse to obey. The good news of our Lord Jesus, they will be punished with eternal destruction forever separated from the Lord and from His glorious power. God has given us the kindness of allowing us to decide.

Some people view this trajectory towards eternal death as completed when somebody goes to hell. Hell is the Greek word in the New Testament for Gehenna, and I could go into a long description of Gehenna and how that was a very real place in early Israel, but New Testament descriptions of this place come almost exclusively from Jesus in Matthew 5, Matthew 10, and Matthew 23. And here's how Jesus describes this place. He says, sin is serious, and it sets you on the trajectory towards Gehenna. He says, don't fear people who can harm your physical body, but fear the one who has the power to throw you into Gehenna. He says, the systems of our world that propagate injustice and murder and oppression of the innocent will be held accountable by the fires of Gehenna. It's a picture of what God will do to the evil of the world. See, eternal death and punishment is an ongoing continuation, an increasing measure of a life that is separated from God. The Bible uses metaphors and imagery to show us what this is like. One of them that most would be familiar with is the image of fire. Why is fire associated with hell or with Gehenna? Because fire has a purging quality. Fire has a purifying element to it.

And Malachi 4.1 is clear that God will purge his new creation of all evil. In fact, we read about this in Revelation 20, again, when the Bible talks about a lake of fire. And this is where we don't adhere to a theology that says there will be a devil that's poking you with a pitchfork and that will be your punishment. Or as I've heard people foolishly say, I'm gonna go to hell and party with the devil. The Bible says that in the lake of fire, all evil, the devil and his demons and all the evil systems of the world, the dragon, the beast, and the unholy trinity and revelation will all be thrown into the lake of fire where evil will be, it's the consumption of all evil. It will be eliminated. It's where even death and the grave itself are thrown into the lake of fire. That is the place where death dies. It's good news. They are all destroyed with death in the grave in the lake of fire. The secondary image is that of darkness and destruction. If fire is God's purging the world of evil and his response, then darkness and destruction are the hell that we choose. See, the uncomfortable reality is that in our human nature, we actually love hell. We love to live our lives separate from God

and seizing right and wrong for ourselves. See, darkness is the, hell is the reality of eternal, irreversible separation from God. Hell is choosing to be cut off from God. We choose hell every time we choose sin. We choose hell every time we choose selfishness or pride or rebellion or saying God doesn't know right from. from wrong, I define it. And that place and that decision is always accompanied by remorse, sadness, and weeping. But the good news is that hell is locked from the inside. It is a decision that you choose. It is a lock that you turn, and today you can make a new choice. Our present world is the result of humans getting what they want. Trauma, war, assault, human trafficking, destroying the innocent, racism, betrayal, isolation, corruption, starvation, abandonment, manipulation, moral confusion, addiction, greed, murder, rage, revenge, self-worship, despair, chaos. Hell is a continuation of the worst of our present world without divine intervention or protection. And if the most widely accepted theory about hell is true, then this is a place of eternal conscious torment. What is the greatest possible punishment? Being prodded by a devil with a pitchfork? No, the greatest possible torment is to continue to exist but permanently lose your reason for existing.

To be one made in the image of the creator who no longer images the creator God into the world. Listen, since God is love, he pays us the compliment of treating all our actions as significant. Hell fits within the paradigm of God's loving nature because he allows us to choose. Wes Hough says it this way, God won't force you for eternity into the presence of God that you spent the whole of your life resisting. C.S. Lewis wrote it this way. He said, hell is God honoring human freedom to choose an existence independent from their creator. If eternal life is for those who say, God, thy will be done, then eternal death is God saying to those who have rejected him, thy will be done. At the end of the day, God is right, God is just, and God will do right by each person. What can you do? Anchor your hope in Jesus. Share with others about the hope that you have. Make a seat for somebody else at Easter. Tell everybody else why Jesus has saved your soul. Save them from the eternal destruction, the trajectory of their life that they're on right now. Because after the judgment, some will experience eternal death, but others will continue on the trajectory of eternal life. 2 Thessalonians 1 10 continues.

It says, when he comes on that day, he will receive glory from his holy people, praise from all who believe, and this includes you, for you believed what we told you about him. You believed what we told you about him. Randy Alcorn begins to paint a picture of what eternal life for the rest of eternity is gonna look like. He says, where our minds rarely go is to the eternal state where we'll spend eternity, where we'll live forever after the culminating event of human history that's linked to Christ's return, our resurrection. We'll reign over a resurrected universe centered on a resurrected earth. That is the destination. We will reign. Like Adam and Eve ruled and reigned in the garden, we will reign with Christ. In a resurrected universe centered on a resurrected earth, what will we do? We will eat and drink and work and play and worship and discover and invent and travel and experience culture. Civilization will be resurrected, including human cultures with distinctive ethnic traits. The splendor of the nations on display. God will come down and he will live with his people. See, eternal life is where the image bearers of God will rule and reign in resurrected bodies in a resurrected creation.

If you're unsure what this looks like, then I just wanna close today with the last two pages of your Bible, which if you've never read them, this'll bring hope to your soul. It says this in Revelation 20, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared and the sea was also gone and I saw the holy city of the new Jerusalem, which the Bible always refers to as the dwelling place of God, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. I heard a loud shout from the throne saying, look, God's home is a- among his people. He will live with them and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. And there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever. And the one sitting on the throne said, look, I am making everything new. And then he said to me, write this down for what I tell you is trustworthy and true. And he also said, it is finished. I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. To all who are thirsty, I will give freely from the springs of the water of life.

All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings and I will be their God and they will be my children. He took me in the spirit in verse 10 to a great high mountain. And he showed me the holy city Jerusalem descending out of the heavens of God. It shone with the glory of God and sparkled like a precious stone like jasper as clear as crystal. The 12 gates were made of pearls, each gate from a single pearl and the main street was pure gold as clear as glass. I saw no temple in the city for the Lord God Almighty and the lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of sun or moon for the glory of God illuminates the city and the lamb is its light. The nations will walk in its light. The kings of the world will enter the city in all their glory. Its gates will never be closed at the end of the day because there is no night there. And all the nations will bring their glory and honor into the city. Nothing evil will be allowed to enter nor anyone who practices shameful idolatry and dishonesty, but only those whose names are written in the lamb's book of life. Then the angel showed me a river with the water of life clear as crystal

flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb. It flowed down the center of the main street. On each side of the river grew a tree of life bearing 12 crops of fruit with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations. No longer will there be a curse upon anything for the throne of God and the lamb will be there and his servants will worship him and they will see his face. And his name will be written on their foreheads and there will be no night there, no need for lamps or sun for the Lord God will shine on them and they will reign forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever. Verse 12, look, I am coming soon, bringing my reward with me to repay all evil, all people according to their deeds. I am the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes. They will be permitted to enter through the gates of the city and eat the fruit from the tree of life. Outside the city are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idol worshipers and all who love to live a lie. I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this message for the churches. I am both the source of David and the heir to his throne. I am the bright and morning star. And so the spirit of God and the bride of Christ,

his church, says come. Let anyone who hears say come. Let anyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life. He who is the faithful witness to all these things says, yes, I am coming soon. And we respond, amen. Come, Lord Jesus. May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's holy people. Amen. What was lost in Eden is restored in a new creation. This is the embodied reality that we can experience, walking with God in a world full of the best that we know and absent of the worst that we know. It's a kingdom where Jesus has triumphed over all. It's a kingdom where everything is new. It's a kingdom where the nations of the world are healed. It's a kingdom where God's space is our space. It's a kingdom where God is home with us. It's a kingdom where the glory of God illuminates the world. A kingdom where we will rule and we will reign with him. It's the kingdom of our God that will never fail and will never end. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.