But here s the number one reason I think we need to take a month to talk about death and the afterlife--

Transcription

1 This is not my joke, but this is true Public Speaking ranks as the number one fear of people. Higher than even death. That means, that a funeral, you d rather be in the casket than the one giving the eulogy. We are going to four weeks and talk about death. Why because it s the most common thing in the world, and we hardly talk about it. Did you know that according to recent studies one out of one people die? It s true. Unless Jesus comes back first, everyone of us here is going to die. And we don t like to talk about that fact. It makes us uncomfortable. It gives us anxiety. When we surveyed you, about 1/3 of you said that thinking about death gave you fear, anxiety, or uncertainty. So, we should talk about it. But here s the number one reason I think we need to take a month to talk about death and the afterlife-- 1

2 What we think about THEN changes how we live NOW. (Eschatology affects our orthopraxis). Theology deeply affects our practice. How we live. How many here have ever played poker? Hands up. Whew, good thing you re in church. ;) Okay, but if you ve ever played poker (or any card game or board game) and there s no money on the table, no stakes, you play with a certain amount of lackadaisicalness. If you lose, no big deal. But if you ve played with money on the table, knowing there s a chance you could walk out of that game with less money or more money than you walked in with, then all of the sudden the atmosphere changes. The stakes are higher. How you play affects you ll leave that game. When we talk about death, heaven, hell, the afterlife we are talking about some of the highest stakes there can be. We re talking about eternal, everlasting, forever-long kind of consequences. 2

3 Again, what we believe the afterlife dramatically affects what we do in our present life. Let s talk about some current beliefs about the afterlife in America. 2

4 Religious or not, you probably think death is not the end. This is true across the majority of cultures across the whole of human history. There has long been a sense that death is not the end. 3

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6 82% of those who believe in the afterlife, say it s only spiritual. Not physical. (This to me is a massive concern; and a big reason why I wanted to preach on this; a solely spiritual afterlife is not what Jesus taught; or what the Bible teaches; but we ll get there). 5

7 The soul continues on, but moves from body to body. This is prevalent in eastern religions. But can also happen in Christianity, where people confuse RESURRECTION with REINCARNATION 6

8 This is tied in with the idea that Well, they were a good person, so they ll go to heaven. Back in the Spring, we conducted the REVEAL study on you as a congregation. Here s a question that piqued our interest. The question was: 7

9 What percentage of you agreed with that statement? 8

10 That means about half of you you re playing at a low- or no-stakes poker table. You think that folks can deliberately reject Jesus and still be okay on the other side of death. When the stakes are this low, why bother with evangelizing? Telling other people about Jesus? And what does this reveal about what we think about Jesus words about being the only way to the Father? About salvation being through grace alone, through faith in Jesus alone? So, let me give you a road map of what we ll be talking about these four weeks. And let s lay down some ground rules for our conversations as well. First, road map: 9

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12 Okay, some ground rules for our conversations over the next few weeks: 11

13 The Bible is a library of documents written by a variety of people of their experiences with God. The Christian church agrees that these 66 documents are authoritative, speak the truth, and should not be added to by any other source. The founder of Christianity Jesus of Nazareth experienced death, descended to hell, and then CAME BACK TO LIFE. So we may want to pay attention to what He has to say about the whole afterlife thing. 12

14 None of us are dead. Yet. So, beware of anyone who tries to tell you This is what the afterlife is like for certain, no question, absolutely. 13

15 When we start talking about things like this, we are venturing into conjecture, best interpretation, and our own opinions. Christians throughout the centuries have held a wide variety of opinions and interpretive differences that all within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy and historical teaching. My job as your teacher is let you know where the boundaries are; but there s a lot of room within those boundaries. So if in your conversations, you run across someone with a different opinion than you, take a deep breath and tell yourself it will be okay. Paul tells his protégé Pastor Timothy this: 14

16 So, if you want to have a deep, good, friendly conversation about soul sleep, universalism, annihiliationism, the rapture, the millennium I m your guy. If you want to fight and create constant fiction look elsewhere. Okay, let s take a look at our passage for this month and give you some background on it. 15

17 Some translations said, Don t want you to be ignorant. Steve thinks I should call this sermon, Don t be dumb. The Bible has lots to say about the topic of death, the afterlife, resurrection, etc. We have no excuse to be ignorant, uninformed, dumb. This is important stuff. 16

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22 Paul hits on a lot of topics in this passage. What happens immediately after we die. Does anything happen after that? What happens when Jesus will return? What was Jesus resurrection all about? How should Christians grieve the dead? So, let s talk about the background and history. Jesus spent His ministry proclaiming and revealing His Father s rule and reign on earth as it is heaven. Jesus called this the Kingdom of God it was His primary message. First century Jews were expecting a messiah a new kind of King to come and establish this Kingdom of God. But they expected that this messiah would do it by force. By war. Instead Jesus was a new kind of King one who died for sinners, who experienced the totality of human suffering and temptation, and died on a cross. Messiah s aren't supposed to die. But dead people aren t supposed to be resurrected either. And yet Jesus was. And so everything that Jesus had said during His ministry - about being one with the Father, 21

23 about the kind of Kingdom that the Father was establishing through Jesus these were vindicated in Jesus resurrection. When Jesus was resurrected, His followers, the disciples, still thought that Jesus would be the kind of king who would then declare war on Rome and Greece and establish this Kingdom through force. We see this in Acts 1. Jesus has been resurrected, He s giving His disciples some final lessons. And then the disciples ask: 21

24 In other words, are you final going to be the kind of messiah we were expecting all along? Jesus says, 22

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26 Okay, so Jesus isn t establishing an army. He s establishing witnesses, people who have seen what Jesus has done, heard what Jesus has said, lived how Jesus has lived, and will then tell and show others the same things. (Disciples!) Then what happens? Next verse: 24

27 This is what the Christian church has called The Ascension. I think it would be less confusing if we called it The Enthronement. In our creeds we say that, Jesus sits at the right hand of throne of the Father. It s a fulfillment of the vision of Daniel 7 in which says: 25

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29 So in Acts when the disciples see Jesus going towards the heavens on a cloud, what they are describing using the best language they can is this moment. That Jesus, the Son of God, Son of Man, is seated on the throne with God the Father, as King of the Kingdom. The everlasting Kingdom. But, if you re a disciple standing there watch Jesus disappear behind a cloud, there s a problem. A pretty obvious problem. Jesus is king and given authority and dominion and all that. But Jesus is gone. Panic! But wait, we ve got to keep reading in Acts. It says, 27

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31 And here we are introduced to Jesus Second Coming. The idea that Jesus has gone; and that Jesus will return. This is a big turning point in Christian theology. Everyone assumed that when the messiah came, it would be a one-and-done-thing. But God for some reason loves to work slowly and He loves through people, and so instead of sending the messiah to auto-magically make the world a better place, He sends us Holy Spirit to empower us human beings to be ambassadors, witnesses, the body of Christ and the presence of God to the world. We re not supposed to wait around for heaven; we re meant to be the ones who reveal heaven here on earth. But, as we work towards having God s will be done on earth as it is heaven, we still have an eye to the sky because we are expecting Jesus to come back. Jesus will come back and fulfill the Kingdom, bring its work to completion. Destroy Satan and death and evil finally. In Biblical language this is called -- 29

32 The coming; the arrival; the presence. And this becomes a large, over-riding theme of the New Testament. If you lived in a city of the Roman Empire, you knew all about Parousias. They were when army generals, regional governors, or sometimes even the emperor himself would come to your town. How many here have ever seen or been a crowd that saw a sitting President? It s a big deal! 30

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35 The same would be true of the Parousias in Rome, but more so. If it were the emperor, this was royalty. Some would even consider divinity. And if you were a recently conquered city, this Parousia was in order to establish your town as part of the empire, an extension of Rome itself. Well, early Christians took this language and co-opted it for Christ. Jesus, who is right now the King of the Universe, who current has ambassadors all over the world (you and me); establishing colonies across the nations (through the church we re a colony of heaven! We re like embassy s of heaven; the ground we re standing on isn t American Ground; it s the ground of heaven itself!). And one day King Jesus will make His own Parousia on earth; His grand return; the second coming of Jesus. So the 1 st Century church they start making preparations. They start telling everyone they can that the Kingdom of God is here and one day soon, the King is coming back! And for 1 st century Christians, most of them thought it would be within their lifetime. They thought the return of Jesus would happen any day. Any moment. And when Jesus returned, that means that we would receive resurrection bodies just like Jesus, that there d be no more death, pain, sickness, tears, agony. 33

36 But then something terrible started happening. 33

37 Imagine the confusion this would cause. You re a first century Christian. You thought that Jesus was going to fully establish His Kingdom in one step. But then you learn, no He came once, ascended and was enthroned in heaven, sent His Holy Spirit, and is having the church serve as embassies and ambassadors, until Jesus will come again. And, you think, there s no reason to think that Jesus will wait more than a few years. And then your mom dies. And then your friend. And your neighbor. Maybe it s sickness; maybe it was a farming accident; maybe it s persecution. And then, oh no, you get sick. And you don t know if you re going to get better. And Jesus still hasn t returned! And remember- most people had a pretty negative view of the afterlife. 34

38 Gentiles believed that when you died, your soul went to Hades. Not a place of punishment like Hell; just a place where you existed pointlessly and endlessly. It wasn t pleasant. And there was absolutely no such thing as resurrection. Early Judaism didn t believe in an afterlife. Read the Book of Ecclesiastes; it s pretty convinced that death is the end. And some first century Jews felt the same way. You died. That was it. Goodbye. Other Jews held to some sort of resurrection. But again, Jesus kinda broke expectations. So what if Jesus was the one person who was ever going to be resurrected? Or if what if the only people who would get new bodies for the New Creation were just those who were alive when Jesus returned? So there began to develop a fear that for all those who died before Jesus Parousia that it was game over for them. They wouldn t see Jesus Return and therefore wouldn t get to experience the fullness of Jesus Kingdom. That s why our passage in 1 Thessalonians starts the way it does-- 35

39 So when Paul is writing, he is primarily trying to answer this question. What happens to those who die before Christ returns? Are they stuck there? What s their existence like right now? And those are the questions we will begin to answer in the coming weeks. Let me leave you with a couple of takeaways. 36

40 Thinking and talking about these things matter. Death and the afterlife are an unknown. But the more we refuse to talk about them, the more anxiety we will have about it. And our beliefs about the afterlife definitely change how we live today. Or, to put another way, how are you living today? Are you living like death has been defeated? Like you will experience resurrection? Are you living afraid of death, persecution? Living like Jesus may not be victorious over death after all? Secondly -- 37

41 We have no excuse to be uninformed about this stuff. Don t be ignorant. Don t be uninformed. You, as a group of Christians with resources and the ability to read, if you are ignorant and uninformed, that means you are squandering the good gifts that God has given to you. I want to let you know about some resources. 38

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43 Available next week. Okay one more take away -- 40

44 What if you know that the President was coming to your house tomorrow? Or, you know, at least your favorite President? Or celebrity crush? Or the Pope? Or the Duck Dynasty guys? You would start making preparations right? And what if that person told you and I want to meet as many of your friends as I can! You would start telling everyone, right? That s a taste of the sense of urgency that the 1 st century church had about Jesus returning. It could be any moment, it will be awesome, and Jesus wants to include as many people as possibly so get telling people! And the 1 st century church passed that urgency onto the 2 nd century church onto the 3 rd century church right on down to us. So, are we living like Jesus could show up tomorrow? Because He could. Let s pray! 41