Sermon for Flinders Park Church May 2018
Back in 2006 my Dad was dying of leukaemia. He lived with us for the last six months of his life. During that time I experienced a kind of anticipatory grief because I knew that he would die soon. I found the prospect of Dad dying without knowing Jesus very distressing. He was not open to listening to any discussion about God or the Bible or the gospel. The grief went on after his death. God was good to me and warned me in advance that Dad would die soon before dad told me about his declining health. So I was coping alright until the funeral. While giving the eulogy the grief really hit me when I got to the point of saying that I would never see him again. Because my father died without giving his life to Jesus (at least as far as I know) I will never see him again. He is truly dead to me.
On the other hand, although I had God’s warning about Dad’s imminent death and was thus prepared, Dad was in total denial right up to the end. His health was clearly getting worse and he was losing weight. He was so thin I could have picked him up myself. He kept on speaking about things he would do later in the year. Even in the hospice two days before he died, he wanted me to get him a power of attorney form and was talking about how to deal with the next family event. He simply did not accept that he was dying.
Now I tell you this story because it illustrates what people who are not Christian believers often go through with regard to death. There is no hope after death and denial is one major way of trying to cope with the fact that we are all going to die. Denial seems quite prevalent. A few years ago I went to the funeral of a man who lived next door to me as a child and who lived next door to Dad for decades. Throughout the funeral no one once mentioned the fact that he was dead. They only talked about his life. This is a case of denial that death happens to us all. People act this way at funerals because they have no hope. The people left behind will grieve and they have no real hope that they will see the person who died ever again.
But we are not unbelievers. We are not people who need to deny the reality of death. This is because we are people who put our trust in Jesus Christ, who died and rose again from the dead. We have hope for beyond death. We have hope that we will see our believing relatives and friends again. So today I want to explore that hope a little.
As Christians, we are warned to avoid putting our hope in the kinds of things which other people hope in. Paul told Timothy, “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Tim 6:17). Many Australians are putting their hope in finances to give them what they want. People hope that their health will hold out or that doctors will be able to restore health. Some hope for love in a relationship of some kind. Almost everyone hopes that happiness will come their way. If it does not come today then perhaps it will be just around the corner. These are not the things which Christians are to pin their hopes on. Riches, health and lack of conflict in life are merely time-bound things. They come and go. Sometimes you can have them and sometimes they disappear. The Christian hope is far more solid.
What do we hope for? The Christian hope is described in several different ways. We hope for the glorious appearance of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13). We are to “set our hope on the grace to be brought” to us when Jesus comes again (1 Pet 1:13). We have the hope of eternal life (Titus 1:2; 3:7). We hope for righteousness (Gal 5:5). And we hope for the glory of God (Rom 5:2). But the thing the Bible describes as the Christian hope most often is the same thing the Jews hope for, that is, the resurrection of the dead (Acts 23:6; 24:15; 26:6-7). So the Christian hope is that the Lord Jesus will return, bringing grace, righteousness and glory with him, so that we will live eternally in the presence of God in new bodies that will never be sick or injured and will never die.
Our hope is not based on something temporary but rather it is hope in Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God. Jesus Christ is our hope (Matt 12:21; Rom 15:12; 1 Tim 1:1). He is not distant from us but lives in us. So Paul can say, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27). Our hope is not a vague wish that something will happen in the future. Rather our hope is based on the relationship that we have with the risen Jesus Christ, who lives in us. It is therefore not a wish but a surety. He who dwells with us and in us gives us hope because he has secured the future. So putting our hope in Christ is far more sensible that placing hope in money, medicine or other temporal things.
Jesus himself hoped for the resurrection of the dead while he waited in the grave. In Acts 2:25-28 Peter quotes Psalm 16 to explain the resurrection of Jesus. “David said about him: ‘“I saw the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest in hope, because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, you will not let your holy one see decay. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence”’” (Acts 2:25-28). This tells us that while Jesus was dead and waiting in the grave on Holy Saturday he trusted in the promise of God that he would be raised to life. He believed the word of God about him. And God proved faithful. He did raise Jesus from the dead.
We also have hope because of the faithfulness of God. Heb 10:23 exhorts, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.” We know that God is faithful because he raised Jesus from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus is the demonstration that everything that God promised is true. No matter what happens in this life now, we can be sure that what we hope for will come true because God is faithful and he has shown that faithfulness already.
What we hope for cannot be taken away from us because it is “stored up in heaven” for us (Col 1:15). What we have here and now are things which can be taken away. Money is temporary because it can be stolen or lost; people sometimes go bankrupt. Houses can be damaged by storms or gutted by fire. Possessions can be stolen or ruined. Health can be precarious. But our hope is secure because Jesus has already experienced what we wait for. He has already been raised. That can never be undone. Since we are “in Christ”, we are sure that we will share in what he has already experienced, the resurrection of the dead. Hebrews 6:19-20 assures us “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf.” Hope anchors us to the one who has gone there before us.
But because our hope is for something in the future we need to be careful. Paul warns us: “But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently” (Rom 8:24-25). We must be patient and not expect that everything will be to our liking in the present. Don’t stop praying. However, we may be discouraged and disappointed if we expect that every disease will be healed and every problem resolved in the present life. This would give us no reason to hope for something further. It is possible to get caught up in expectations that go beyond what God has promised for this broken world. We have hope for something way beyond this broken world in which people invariably die.
“If we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently” (Rom 8:24-25). How do we get this patient endurance in hope? Hope is something which can grow in us. It is not a natural thing for people to place their hope in God. It is the result of the gospel being proclaimed (Col 1:23). The Scriptures contain examples of godly people who patiently waited and these help us to have hope. “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope” (Rom 15:4). We can “overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rom 15:13). “And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). So the Holy Spirit works in us when the word of the gospel is proclaimed and when we read about it in the Scripture so that we would have hope in Christ and in the faithfulness of God.
And finally hope is increased as the result of prayer. This is why Paul said in Eph 1:18, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you.” Because hope is not natural and because what we hope for is unseen, we need to continually be reminded of the gospel, continually put the Scriptures into our hearts, and pray for one another so that we may be able to grasp the hope that we have in Christ. This is especially important at the moment when so many people are facing declining health. Pray often for one another so that we might all grasp the hope that is ours in Christ.
So lastly I want to return to the difference between believers and unbelievers when it comes to facing death. Unbelievers are frightened by death and don’t know what lies beyond the grave. They tend to live in denial of death or resort to platitudes if pressed. Surely Christian believers do not need to live like this. Let’s look at a passage in 1 Thessalonians.
“Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4:13-18).
The Thessalonians did not know whether they would ever see their Christian friends and family again. They were worried about what had happened to those people who died before Jesus returned. But Paul assured them that they had no need to grieve like those who have no hope. Christians have hope because Jesus is risen and coming again. When he comes he will raise us all from the dead. First he will raise those who have already died, and then he will raise those who are still alive at his coming. Either way, we will be raised from the dead to be with Jesus if we trust in him.
Paul does not say here that Christians should not grieve, only that we should not grieve like people without hope. Those who die in Christ are not lost to us. We will see them again in glory. There is grief now because we must wait to see our loved ones again. But it is a temporary grief. It will not last forever. The hope we have in Christ means that we can be assured that those who have died as Christians will be reunited with us either when we go to be with Jesus ourselves or when Jesus returns for us.
For this reason, we do not have to be in denial about death. Nor do we need to fear death as if it were the great unknown. Much may be unknown, but we do know that we are held by Jesus. We know that there is hope for eternity. We know that death is not the end. We know that we do not have to cling to life if it is time to let go and stop treatment. We know that even though we grieve the loss of people we love, we will see them again. God is faithful. This we know.