The Healing Word

Announcer: The Healing Word Ministry on one place is brought to you by the generous donations of people like you. At any time during today's message, feel free to send a prayer request or make a donation using the links provided. Now, I pray you will be blessed as Pastor Jack Morris delivers a message from the word of God that will encourage and strengthen your faith in him.

Pastor Jack Morris: You see, your sins were judged when you judged yourself a sinner. So God doesn't have to judge you. When you said, "Lord, I'm a sinner, save me," you passed judgment on yourself. The Lord put his arms around you and took you into his kingdom. You're saved.

Announcer: Welcome to the Healing Word, a radio ministry of the Largo Community Church. Here's Pastor Jack Morris with today's message that will grow your faith in God and lead you to a closer walk with Jesus.

Pastor Jack Morris: Now, whatever I say today, there's going to be information that will not cover it all. You see, we have what God wants us to have in the book, the Bible. We have enough. We don't have the answer to everything, but we have enough. Can you say that? We have enough. (Audience: We have enough).

So the question is, what happens right now when a person dies? Well, let me open to the scripture. I can't answer it, but the Bible does have an answer. Second Corinthians 5:6-10. Therefore, we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. Meaning right now we are in our bodies. Here we are. I see your body, you see my body. We don't see the Lord's body. So as long as we're at home in the body, we're not with the Lord visibly.

We live by faith and not by sight. Verse 8. We are confident. There it says it again. This is what the word of God is to do among other things, is to cause us to be confident. Two times. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. Paul is saying here that it's a desire on the part of the Christian, and the Christian already knows with confidence that when we leave this body, our soul and spirit leave this body, we're going to be with the Lord right now.

We're going to be with the Lord at the resurrection, but right now we're going to be with the Lord. That's why often you hear me say this person is not in this casket, that's the body they lived in. They are now in the presence of the Lord. So when you die, you're going to go into the presence of the Lord right now. Then someday your body will be resurrected, but let's go on. Let me be more clear.

So we make it our goal to please him, whether we're at home in the body or away from it, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Now, each person is a trinity. We are body, we are soul, we are spirit. The body, that's what we see, the body. That's the part that the spirit and the soul live in. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. We are also soul, Hebrew nephesh, meaning that we have a personality. We are mentally active with desires, appetites, emotions, passions.

That's where all of our emotions, passions, appetites, they come from the soul. And then we are also spirit, Greek pneuma, which means a God-consciousness. This brings us into the presence of God. The scripture says in John 4:24, "God is spirit." So thank God we are also spirit. We are made in the likeness and the image of God. So now that we have spirit, we're made with spirit, we're born with spirit, we can now have a relationship with the Lord.

The body is world-conscious. I'm conscious of you. I'm world-conscious. I'm conscious of the parking lot, my car, this building. I'm conscious of everything. That's my body allows that to happen. The soul means self-conscious. I'm aware that I'm somebody, Jack Morris. I'm aware that I have passions, I'm aware that I have joys, I'm aware that I have sad times. I'm aware of what's going on inside me.

But I am also spirit, meaning I'm aware that I have a relationship with God, that I call him Father because of the blood of Jesus, and I have accepted him as my own personal Lord and Savior. When we die, the body stays here. The soul and the spirit go to be with the Lord. Though the soul and the spirit are separated in order that we might talk about it, but they are never separated. They're always together, the soul and the spirit.

So when you go into the presence of God, when you die, the next time I have a funeral, that person's soul and spirit, the passions, the lusts, the desires, the emotions, everything about that person is now in the presence of God right now. The Bible describes death as departure, sleep, and exodus. Those are the three: departure, sleep, and exodus. Meaning that person has departed. The body appears to be in a state of sleep, but the person is very much alive in the presence of the Lord.

Here's an example: Matthew chapter 17. Jesus is on the Mount of Transfiguration. He takes with him Peter, James, and John, and he is transformed there before them. And all of a sudden there appears Moses and Elijah. Now, listen to this: Moses has been dead 1700 years. He is described in his death in Deuteronomy chapter 34. So this is not a living body. His body has been buried somewhere, no one knows where.

Here is Moses. He does have some kind of body. It's a, we'll call it a spiritual body, because that's what the Bible calls it. I don't know the material, I don't know about that new body that we have between death and resurrection, but Moses had a body. He wore clothes, he could talk. Moses and Elijah appeared to talk to Jesus about Jesus' departure. Jesus is now going to go to the cross and he is getting his last information, his last assignment.

He is getting ready now to go, and Moses and Elijah appear to get him ready to go into Pilate's judgment hall and to go through crucifixion and then to cry out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Moses represents the law. Elijah represents the prophets. Meaning that both Moses and Elijah in the Old Testament and all the prophets talked about the coming of Jesus. Not the coming of Jesus only when he was born in Bethlehem, but the coming of Jesus when he comes in the clouds of glory on resurrection day.

There are over 300 scriptures in the Old Testament that Jesus is coming again the second time. There are over 330 scriptures in the New Testament that Jesus is coming again the second time. So Moses and Elijah are there to say the law has been fulfilled, the prophets have prophesied, the prophecies have been fulfilled. Jesus will now go to the cross and bear the sins of the world so that that second time when he comes, there will be a great resurrection and we will go to heaven to be with him forever and ever.

That's your hope, that's my hope, that's the blessed hope of the church. This past week, some, one of our brothers here in the church met me and he told me, he said, "Pastor, there was a time that it worried me." He's using my own words now, but basically this was it. He said, "This death, this resurrection, where we're going to be, what's going to happen, and what's going to come in the land among the nations."

He said, "But you know, I realize now it's God taking care of me, protecting me, blessing me, that I'm his child. I don't worry about those anymore. I'm just happy in Jesus, I'm taken care of." You see friends, God's going to take care of you and he's going to take care of me. Now, listen to this: it says in First Corinthians 15:38, "But God gives it a body as he determines." And that's where he leaves it.

I don't know what kind of body Moses had. I don't know what kind of body, the physical part, that Elijah had. They had bodies that could be seen, they could be recognized. I suppose that when we get to heaven we will intuitively know everybody, I'm not sure. But they recognized him, they heard them talk. It was a special kind of body that they had. Then it says on in the 40th verse, "There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies."

Then we go on to verse 44: "If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body." Friend, when you die in Christ, you're going to go to heaven immediately. I talked to a lady that her husband died and that man was a dear, dear friend of mine, and I asked her, I said, "Do you go to the cemetery very often?" She said, "No, I rarely go because he isn't there." His soul and spirit, his emotions, his loves, his appetites, his personality, the real person isn't there.

He's in heaven. Revelation chapter 22, the last book in the Bible, last chapter of the book of Revelation. "Behold," Jesus says, "Behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book." So there it is. It starts out by saying "Blessed" in the beginning, "Blessed" at the ending. No other book in the Bible, Old or New Testament, begins by blessing you if you know it, blessing you if you don't know it.

Obviously you are blessed because it's all the inspired, infallible word of God. But he wants you to know there is a special blessing. Jesus will come and when he comes, only those who are in the grave and those who are alive in Christ are going to hear the loud command, the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God. They're just going to disappear. Off they're gone. Parking lots are going to stay filled downtown.

People say, "Where are the people coming to get these cars?" The trains are going to be half or two-thirds empty taking people home from work. I hope there are that many Christians around that they'll go up in the rapture when it comes. And friend, if the rapture takes place and about a dozen of you show up here on Sunday morning for worship, I'm not going to be here to tell you that the Largo Community Church, just going to church doesn't do the trick.

You have to come to Jesus and give your heart to Jesus and know him as your savior, as your personal Lord and Savior. Jesus says, "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know what day your Lord will come." Then he goes on to say, "Behold, I come like a thief. Blessed is he who stays awake, stays awake spiritually, growing in Christ, seeking God, loving God's people, working for the Lord."

Friend, whatever you're going to do for the Lord, you better get going and get it done. Whatever God has called you to do, and every person has a call to some kind of ministry. It may be a ministry here in the church, I would be happy if it were, but it may be a ministry in your home, where you work. You may not have an office in the church at all. That's immaterial. The thing that we must do is to follow the Lord Jesus Christ and to be all that he'd have us to be.

Now, I'm going to move quickly. We're living in an age of uncertainty. The nations of the world are now congregating and orchestrating, moving into the connections that they want to be in with other nations. They're getting ready for the end time. They don't know it, but they're on God's time clock and God is moving them like on a chessboard, setting them up for the Lord Jesus to come.

He has called, God has called, he sent his only son into the world, he has sent missionaries, he has built churches. What more can God do to help people to come to Jesus and be saved? He can't do anymore. He's getting ready to get you and me out of here, to take us away because he loves us and he's going to protect us and he's going to keep us. This is the age where anything goes. I'm talking about America. Anything goes.

The stakes are very high. Things are extremely, extremely critical. There will be a day when America will not be the supreme nuclear wealthy nation that it is now. It will become a subservient nation. You're living on the high horse now, enjoy it while you can because America has had opportunity after opportunity. I mean the radio, the television, the Christians were out there. Jesus said, "Be the light of the world. Be a city on a hill."

And we're just sort of passively moving along, not stirred. Waiting on what, I don't know. But Jesus is coming. This country has been spared all these years because this country, more than any other country of the world, has sent out more missionaries, built more schools, more hospitals, more churches than any country in the world. That's why God has blessed America and brought it to where it is today.

But right now, we're just so laid back and whatever the state says and votes in, whatever the government, federal government says. And Christians coming to me, "Pastor, the Bible is old, it's out, we need to move up and become modern." People talking to me, I can't do that. Jesus is coming. This is his word. We must abide by the word. And by the grace of God, I'm going to preach it, I'm going to teach it.

I'm not going to be part of this age that anything goes. No. Great Britain is preparing to leave the European Union and the consequences are going to be extremely serious. ISIS is wreaking horrible torture on people in the Middle East and in other places of the world, even in the United States. Russia is on the march. We've never seen anything like what is happening with Russia like in the Ukraine since Hitler and Nazism.

North Korea now has bombs that are strong enough, that are as strong as the bombs that were dropped on Japan in the World War Two. Friend, that's why Jesus says, "Wake up. Wake up. It's time, it really is time." The future may look bleak in the midst of much chaos, but God has an ultimate plan. And in Christ, you are going to escape it all. Yes, you're going to escape it all. It's not going to touch you.

You see, your sins were judged when you judged yourself a sinner. So God doesn't have to judge you. When you said, "Lord, I'm a sinner, save me," you passed judgment on yourself, the Lord put his arms around you and took you into his kingdom. You're saved forever and forever. And the purposes of these messages are to bring clarity and understanding and to establish and stabilize your faith.

In Titus chapter 2, verse 13: "Looking for that blessed hope." It's not something to be afraid of or scared of or worry over. If you're beginning to feel that way, then talk to the Lord because he loves you and he doesn't want you to worry. He is letting you know, "I'm going to protect you and I'm going to get you out of that terrible, terrible thing that's coming upon the earth." It is a blessed hope.

Looking for that blessed hope and glorious appearing of the great God and our savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. But we're going to go to heaven and when we get to heaven, we're going to give an account of what we have done in this life. The way we've lived, the way we've acted, the way we've behaved. Everything, everything, everything is being recorded. We're not going to be judged for our sins, we're going to be in heaven forever and ever with Jesus.

But we are going to be judged how we have lived after salvation, after we've been saved. How we've lived the Christian life. Some people are just living like they're going to live forever. But some people are going to get great rewards. I think of people like Dick McGee. He really opened up Ethiopia. He didn't build any churches there or do any preaching. He's not a, he wasn't a teacher, he wasn't a preacher.

But God used him. He took the message back to his pastor, and Pastor Blair went into that country and all those souls were saved. Now, surely that man and those men are going to receive a great reward. But the reward, the reward is based on faithfulness. It's not going to be based on how many churches you built or how many souls you saved. It's based on: have you been faithful in what God has called you to do?

Have you been faithful when you put your hand to a ministry? Have you stuck with it with a passion, with a love, and with a motivation born of the Holy Spirit, or is it just something that you felt like you'd like to do? No, God's going to open that all up. That's all going to be exposed. All of it. Nothing is going to be hidden, nothing is going to be in secret to the Lord.

That man or woman that janitored the church and cleaned the carpet, feeling that God called them to do that, and they did it faithfully, not complaining, if they did it faithfully, they're going to get a reward just like Pastor Blair, every bit as great, just like Dick McGee.