Questions About Death

Whenever we face death, even the death of a strong believer like Claude, whose faith was strong to the end, we are left with questions. So this morning we’re going to think about two questions to help us understand what has happened and what is yet to come, to help give us strength and hope in hard days and to help us know what to do.

What happened to Claude on Thursday? We can analyze and describe what went on in his body. But we’re not talking about vital signs, heartbeats, or disease. What happened to the part of Claude you can’t monitor or hear with a stethoscope? What happened to Claude, the eternal soul created in God’s image?

To know this, the only place we can turn is the Bible. On Thursday, Claude went to be with God. The Bible says that if we are absent from the body, we are at home with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8).

There is no safer place to be. God’s Word tells us, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39). Not even death itself can separate us from God’s love.

When we come face to face with the end of life, we need to remember that death is not all-powerful. We all die, so it might seem that nothing can stand against death. But there is someone greater than death!

Where did death come from? When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden of Eden, God set the curse of death on humanity. So we realize that death ravages this world not because it is more powerful than God, but because almighty God has made death the penalty for our sins.

The good news we discover in the Bible, though, is that Jesus “bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pet. 2:24).

The Bible tells us that this same Jesus is greater than death! He says, “I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Rev. 1:18). So death is not the end, because our Jesus holds the keys! Jesus is stronger than death. And this is the hope that Claude so clearly had.

Jesus said: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24). Claude heard Jesus’s words, and he believed them—he trusted in Jesus to take away his sins and became a follower of Jesus. And according to Jesus’s words, he passed from death to life.

This is the hope of all God’s people. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s last known words before being executed for treason in Nazi Germany, written in complete confidence to a friend, were, “This is the end, for me the beginning of life.”13

If Claude is with God, death is not the end. Claude will live again!

The Bible says: “Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51–52).

These weak bodies will be made new:

• No more eyeglasses, or even Lasik

• No more prescriptions

• No more cancer, no more coughing

• No more fear of the latest virus

• No more aging, frailties, limping, or pain, for God will make all things new!

A stethoscope can tell what happened to Claude’s old body. God tells us what is going to happen to him when Christ comes again!

What will happen to your soul after you die? We have all disobeyed God; we have all sinned in our thoughts, words, and deeds. “The soul who sins shall die” (Ezek. 18:4).

Claude put his trust in Jesus as his Savior. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). What are you trusting? Death comes to us all, but are we ready to meet God after we die?

What do we have to look forward to? God isn’t just transforming people. His plan is much bigger. He’s transforming the world! He is making a new heaven and a new earth. Isaiah 65:17 says, “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.”

The joy of what God is creating will be so overwhelming. We will forget the pain and sorrows of this life. Light will dawn and chase away the shadows. God knows we have tears and tragedies, and he will heal our hearts and lift the sorrows from our minds. The whole world will be made new!

The first detail we need to know about heaven is that a service like this won’t happen there. No funerals! There will be no evil, no sin, no one who hurts another, no disease, no random violence, no terrorism, no threat warnings, no AIDS, no smallpox, no congenital defects. “ ‘They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain,’ says the LORD” (Isa. 65:25).

God is making all things new. If you love God, if you belong to Christ, this is what you have to look forward to! In that new creation, those of us who know Jesus will meet Claude again.

Someone asked W. A. Criswell, former pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, whether we’d know each other in heaven, and he answered, “We won’t really know each other until we get to heaven!”14 When we see Claude again someday, we will see him as God has seen him all along, perfect and complete, shining with glory in God’s presence.

So just wait! If you loved Claude, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Donald Grey Barnhouse’s wife died when their three children were still young. They were driving to her funeral, and Barnhouse was thinking about how he could comfort his children. It was a bright, sunny day, and as they came up to a stoplight, a big truck pulled up beside them and put them in its shadow.

Just then Barnhouse had an idea. He asked his daughter, “Which would you rather be hit by, that truck or the shadow of the truck?” “The shadow, of course,” she answered. “That’s right,” Barnhouse said, “and that’s the way it is with death for a Christian. Jesus was hit by death so we would only be hit by the shadow of death.”15

This is our confidence and our strong hope.

13 Quoted in Randy Alcorn, Eternal Perspectives: A Collection of Quotations on Heaven, the New Earth, and Life after Death (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 2012), 133.

14 Quoted in Jeff Lasseigne, Unlocking the Last Days: A Guide to the Book of Revelation and the End Times (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 314.

15 Mark Hitchcock, 55 Answers to Questions about Life After Death (Portland, OR: Multnomah, 2005), 77.

R. Kent Hughes, The Pastor’s Book: A Comprehensive and Practical Guide to Pastoral Ministry (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 207–209.