HopeLives365

Guest (Male): Now we've come to the heart of the New Testament hope. Now we've come to the comfort that can stick with us in our darkest hours. Now we've come to a way for each one of us to make it across to the other side. Jesus is coming back on mission.

Guest (Female): This is Hope Lives 365 with Pastor Mark Finley. Today's message: Surviving Death. Enjoy and remember you can always catch up with past messages and stay up to date with Hope Lives 365 and Pastor Mark by going to hopelives365.com. And now, Pastor Mark Finley.

Mark Finley: Soon after World War II ended in Europe, American soldiers set up camps in various cities for orphans. These kids had been staying alive by scavenging for food among the bombed-out ruins and bullet-marked streets. But in the camps, they finally found a place of safety. No planes would be buzzing overhead to bomb them. No enemy troops would come bursting in during the night. They were well-clothed. They had three good meals a day. They had the compassionate care of camp workers.

But amazingly, these youngsters still had trouble sleeping at night. No one could figure out exactly why. Finally, a team of psychologists studied the situation and made a suggestion. Every night, each child was given a piece of bread before going to sleep. A piece of bread just to hold. If one of the orphans was still hungry, he was given an extra piece to eat. But every child, the psychologist instructed, was to have a piece of bread to hold in their hand until they dozed off.

Soon after this, the children began to sleep well all through the night. Why? They knew there would be bread for tomorrow. What these orphans needed after all they'd been through was a confident hope they could hang on to. And you know, that's exactly what we need in dark times following the loss of a loved one.

When a loved one dies, often there's kind of a hole in our heart. There's something deeply missing. And if we have hope, that's an important survival skill. We need something we can cling to, something that's stronger even than the grave. The loss of a loved one can strike at times and in places where we least expect. It's a tragedy that won't stay quiet. It makes dark suggestions behind our back. And as the poet Thomas Gray put it, flattery can soothe the dull cold ear of death, except it never works. All of us have those moments when the big sleep, the final dark, makes us shudder. Though through most of our days, death is just an abstraction, a sign in the distance, but the passing of someone near makes it personal. It can be unsettling, disorienting.

And in the aftermath of shock and denial and anger, feelings of hopelessness can grip us. We are struck by the thought that there's nothing on the other side, that this beloved face is gone, gone, gone for good. Well, you know what? God understands our darkest doubts. We don't have to hide those thoughts from him. In fact, there are psalms in the Bible which help us to express them. Take a look at Psalm chapter 88, verses 9, 11, and 12. Here's what the psalmist says.

My eye wastes away because of affliction. Lord, I've called upon you. I've stretched out my hands to you. Shall your lovingkindness be declared in the grave or your faithfulness in the place of destruction? Shall your wonders be known in the dark and your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? Here is the echo of our deepest fears about a loved one lost in that land of forgetfulness.

Why is this despairing grief given a voice? Why is it mentioned in the Psalms? Because we need to acknowledge it. In order to get past it, we need to recognize that it's there. We need to name the affliction in order to find the cure. But we need more, of course. We need a hope, a hope that'll prove stronger than our deepest fears. We need something to hang on to. Where do you find that kind of hope? We encountered it most clearly one evening when 11 men gathered in a locked upper room to talk about their future.

Everything looked grim. Everything looked hopeless. Suddenly, an unexpected guest walked into the room. Their mouths drop. They blink their eyes. They look like they've seen a ghost. But this ghost asks them to touch him. This ghost sits down and eats a piece of broiled fish. This is no ghost at all. It's the resurrected Christ, and they can hardly believe what's happening because their amazement and joy knows no bounds.

What event animated these hopeless individuals? It was the resurrection of Jesus Christ, of course. The same master whom they had seen taken down from the cross, broken and lifeless, had risen from the dead. His tomb was empty. He was eating broiled fish beside them. That's when the black despair of the disciples suddenly gave way to exhilarating hope. And this hope would become the center of their lives. Jesus' resurrection was like a piece of bread in the hands of an orphan, tangible proof they could have confidence in tomorrow. These disciples could know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the bread of life would always be with them. They had seen Jesus conquer death itself. They finally grasped the hope of eternal life.

One of the men who found the Christ tomb empty that forgettable morning was Peter. Listen to how Peter describes the impact of that discovery recorded in 1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 3. Peter says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Notice what Peter says. The resurrection gives birth to a living hope.

It can make it happen even in the darkest hour. So that's the first thing we need to acknowledge when the memory of a loss of a loved one suddenly overwhelms us. There was one person who conquered death itself. You know, sometimes when we feel so discouraged, so disappointed, when that emptiness is gnawing within us, when tears fill our eyes as we think of the loss of a dead loved one, we remember that the grave is not the end. Death is not a dark hole in the ground. It's not a long night without a morning.

Jesus went into the grave and Jesus came out. He is the resurrection and the life. And the disciples were witnesses of the risen Christ. They wrote down what they saw and heard and touched. And their testimony can give us hope. The resurrection takes us to the river. It takes us to a place where we can believe in the other side. We can believe that there's a better place. But then there's another issue. How exactly do we get to that other side? Just how do these mortal bodies make it into the next world?

The resurrection of Christ takes us to the river. But how do we individually get across? Here's where things can get a bit fuzzy for some people because human beings have tried all kinds of do-it-yourself methods of getting across that river, the river of death. They've tried putting together different kinds of bridges. It started back in the time of the Greeks with the philosopher Plato. He believed that the world of ideas has a reality all of its own. Ideas, he said, exist independently of what they describe, and they're unchanging. Plato also talked a lot about the soul as man's essence. He pictured it as something like the ultimate idea, something unchanging and eternal.

Plato, of course, had a great impact on later thinkers. His image of the soul as something immortal imprisoned inside the body came to dominate church thinking in middle ages. So as a result of that, many people began to think there's this immortal essence, this soul that just leaves the body at death. People began to think that there was this immortal soul that could just naturally survive death and float to the other side. They imagined something inside the human body that wouldn't decompose.

For a while, theologians debated whether the soul might reside in the liver or the heart or some tiny gland. We think about that today and smile, don't we? Later in the 19th century, spiritualism became quite a fad in many European cities. People who'd lost a loved one were persuaded to attend a séance. A medium there would invoke departed spirits and claim to speak to that mother or father or child, someone who had been laid in the grave. Communication with the other world seemed for a while like a great way to bridge the gap to get to the other side. One of the spiritualists said, "There is no death in the graveyard." This was Sir Oliver Lodge, a great English spiritualist. He said, "There's no death in the graveyard because I often talk with the dead. They communicate with me."

And you remember the story of a Bishop Pike in the '60s? His son had died tragically out in the deserts of Israel. And Pike came on the air, national television, talked about the times he's communicating with his son. Yet the Bible does not teach that the dead can communicate with the living. In fact, you look at the book of Job. Very clearly it says his sons come to honor and he knows it not. It clearly says the dead shall never return to their own house. Well, if it's not Plato's idea, the soul that leaves the body at death, if it's not this idea that spiritualism where the dead can appear and talk to the living, what other possibilities are there?

You know, more recently, the idea of reincarnation has come into vogue. It used to be simply a concept of Eastern religions and philosophy. But more and more people in the Western world are accepting the idea of reincarnation. They say maybe the other side is right here. Maybe we just come back as someone else or something else. People have begun to try to remember past lives. They try to make connections across the centuries. For a while, the new age of channeling and soul travel seemed like a way to transcend death.

But all of these man-made bridges run into one basic problem. Death is just too deep and wide for our puny efforts. We can imagine all kinds of bridges when death is an abstraction in the distance. But when it gets up close and personal, our imaginations fail us. That immortal soul seems to get very hazy. The medium starts to sound like a con artist. Reincarnation starts to seem implausible. Why do people who remember a past life always seem to remember somebody very famous? But most importantly, the people who witnessed the resurrection of Christ, the writers of the Bible, don't speak of death as something that we can just float across or step around on our own.

Guest (Female): You're listening to Hope Lives 365. We'll be right back. And if you like what you're hearing, we invite you to check out our website hopelives365.com. There you can find many ministry resources, encouraging messages, and even a link to our Hope Lives 365 YouTube ministry. And of course, an opportunity to sow into this valuable ministry. Find out more by going to hopelives365.com. That's hopelives365.com. And now back to Pastor Mark Finley.

Mark Finley: Paul tells us very clearly, 1 Timothy chapter 6, verse 16, that God alone is immortal. See, the Bible mentions the term soul 1,600 times, and it never mentions once the term immortal soul. In fact, the Bible says in 1 Timothy chapter 6, verse 16, that only God is immortal. In the New Testament, people fall asleep after death. Death is mentioned as sleep 53 times. They don't go into some other conscious state. James chapter 4, verse 14 says, "For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away." Ecclesiastes chapter 9, verse 5 says, "The living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything."

And then, of course, when Jesus is talking about the death of his good friend Lazarus, he says to his disciples, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." And the disciples say, "Well, Lord, if he's sleeping, he's going to do well." And Jesus says, "I go to wake him up out of sleep." And when Jesus comes to the home of Mary and Martha and they're weeping, and one of the sisters says to Jesus, "If you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died." And Jesus said, "He shall rise again." And Martha, she says, "I know he'll rise in the resurrection at the last day." She didn't expect that he'd go to heaven immediately. She expected he'd rise on the last day.

And then Jesus calls, goes to the grave, and he says, "Lazarus, come forth." Jesus doesn't say, "Lazarus, come down." Now if anybody could have written a book on heaven, it would have been Lazarus, because here he had been in the grave four days. But you know, if I was Lazarus and I was up in heaven and Jesus says, "Come back," I'd have said, "Nothing doing, Lord. I am not coming back to that old wicked world. I'm not coming back to that sickness and suffering and heartache and hatred and bitterness and death. I want to stay up in heaven."

But you know, Lazarus, where was he? Jesus tells us. He said, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." Jesus was talking about death as a sleep. See, all of our efforts to build a bridge from this side are doomed to failure. We just can't build eternal life out of human materials. We can't get there starting from here. So what does that mean? Are we fated just to sit back on the bank and stare longingly across at a better world? Was the resurrection of Christ just meant to tease us, to give us a hope that can never be realized? Certainly not.

The New Testament writers, these same New Testament writers who stare death squarely in the face, also offer us a spectacular hope, a spectacular climax to the human journey. The eyewitnesses of Christ's resurrection also saw and heard an angelic message about the future. Luke tells us about it in the first chapter of Acts. The disciples are witnesses of Christ's ascension into heaven. And in Acts chapter 1, verses 10 and 11, the scripture says, "And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, 'Men of Galilee, this same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you've seen him go into heaven.'"

The Christ who conquered death is coming back. That's what the disciples came to know. He wasn't going to leave us on this side. He was coming back all the way. He was going to make the resurrection happen all over again for all believers who've fallen asleep.

Listen to the Apostle Paul share this great hope in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verses 16 to 18. "For the Lord himself—the Lord who? Himself—shall do what? Shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trumpet of God." That doesn't sound like anything secret, does it? He's going to come with the voice of the archangel, come with the trumpet of God. "The dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words."

Now we've come to the heart of the New Testament hope. Now we've come to the comfort that can stick with us in our darkest hours. Now we've come for each one of us to make it across to the other side. Jesus is coming back on a mission. His mission is to lead us across to the other world. Death is the last enemy which shall be destroyed. Jesus is going to break open the tombs. Jesus is going to raise up the sleeping dead, and we can see our lost loved ones again. Jesus is going to take us to a place where we'll always be with him.

When the memory of a lost loved one suddenly overwhelms you, remember that. Remember when you feel lost and alone. Remember that. Remember when you feel strengthless. Remember that. The bridge has come from the other side. We can't make it on our own. The ultimate answer has to come from outside of human experience. That's how we can transcend our natural boundaries. The resurrection of Jesus Christ takes us to the river. The Second Coming of Jesus Christ takes us across. That's what the New Testament tells us.

But the Apostles also emphasize something else about survival skills in the end. They tell us that it's important to be ready for that return of Jesus. They ask us to make sure that event doesn't come as a terrible surprise. How can we get ready for that all-important crossing? How can we get ready for the Second Coming of Jesus? Jesus Christ is coming again to take us to the other side. But in that final journey, there's a lot of baggage in this life that we can't take with us. We have to depart empty-handed, fully surrendered to Christ. Nothing we've accumulated on earth will be deposited in our bank account in heaven. No bags allowed, not even carry-ons. There isn't room for grudges, for any scores to settle, for any secret habits, for lies.

There's no room for bitterness, no room for anger, no room for lust. The writer of the book of Hebrews gives us some excellent advice that relates to being ready for Christ's return. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1 and 2, "Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us. And let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus—looking unto Jesus, looking unto Jesus—the author and finisher of our faith."

Traveling light's the key. That's an all-essential survival skill. We can all travel light as we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, as we keep learning from him. He'll let us know if any baggage is getting in our way. He'll let us know if there's something we need to let go of. Are you ready for the ultimate survival?

Are you ready to leave this planet when Christ appears? Now remember, nobody's perfect. We all make this journey as forgiven sinners. We all have our dark moments of doubt, despair, and anger. God simply says, "Don't turn these moments into permanent baggage. Don't stuff them into a suitcase that you carry around with you all the time. Don't let them disappoint you so that your heart becomes hardened with bitterness."

Remember what Jesus says. 1 John chapter 1, verse 9, "If we confess our sins—if we do what? If we confess our sins—he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." We can come and be very open with Christ. We can come and confess specifically our sins. You know, in the Old Testament, if a person had sinned, they would have to bring their lamb.

And according to the book of Leviticus, they would have to put their hands over the head of the lamb and confess the specific thing that they had sinned. Their confession could not be vague. If a person got angry with their brother, if a person had bitterness in their heart, if a person's mind was filled with lust, if a person's heart was filled with selfishness, they would have to put their hands over the head of that lamb and pray, "Dear Lord, I got angry with Joe. I got angry with Peter. I got angry with Mary or Joan. Forgive me for my anger." And at that moment, the sin as they confessed it would be transferred to the lamb.

And that lamb would become guilty vicariously, symbolically for that person's sin. And that person would have to take a knife and stab it through the throat of the lamb, blood dripping out on the sand. And then some of that blood would be taken into the sanctuary, into the holy place, and sprinkled before the veil, where and behind that veil was the law of God.

What does all this symbolize? We come to Jesus and we confess our sins. We come and we believe that our sins—the guilt of that sin, the shame of that sin, the condemnation of that sin—is transferred to Jesus. And by his shed blood on the cross, we are forgiven. And as Christ died and was resurrected, he ascends to the sanctuary above. And there, before the broken law of God, he holds up his wounded hands and says, "Father, I know John or Mary or Joseph, Alice or Joan. I know they've sinned. But Father, my blood covers their sin."

The blood of Christ will cover every sin that we confess to him. Tell Jesus where you failed. Ask him to forgive you. Tell him about the mistakes you have made over and over again. His heart is open for you. He is there to forgive you. He understands. He's been through the blood, the sweat, and the tears on this side of the river. He knows all about it.

He's not a God who's far off. He's a God that's very close. He can sympathize with human weakness. He can become your savior and your high priest, your representative before the Father. Would you like to say, "Jesus, I come. I come to you right now"? The book of John chapter 6, verse 47 says, "Him that cometh to me, I will never cast out." As we come to him with open hearts.

Guest (Female): You've been listening to Hope Lives 365 with Pastor Mark Finley. We hope you've enjoyed today's message and remind you that you can find more in our many ministry resources at hopelives365.com. And you can support this ministry by going to hopelives365.com/donate. And now a final prayer from Pastor Mark Finley.

Mark Finley: Father in heaven, we thank you that one day we can see Jesus. One day we can live with him forever. One day death will be no more. One day the grave will be a thing of the past. One day the long night will give way to the glorious morning. So, Father, help us cling to the hope of your soon return. Help us know that you are coming to take us home. In Jesus' name, Amen.