Confidence In Our Glorious Future (Part 1)

In our fallible human minds, we have a great tendency to view everything from our extremely limited personal experiences. One of the many reasons that we must continually and faithfully and diligently and earnestly read and study our Bibles is to have our minds and hearts transformed by the words and concepts and principles that it contains. We will constantly struggle with the proper understanding and application of Scripture because we use our personal experiences to interpret and apply the Bible.

For example, if my upbringing was one of being extremely frugal, where me and my family had to watch every penny, then my mindset is going to struggle with properly applying the outrageous generosity that is taught in portions of Scripture and I will easily be able to justify my position because of my experience. If my upbringing was one of attending church services every time the church doors were open, tithing every week, and using nothing but the King James Version of the Bible, these personal experiences will greatly impact how far I can allow myself to embrace God’s grace when others do not hold these same traditional beliefs and practices.

Whether we agree or not, our beliefs are entrenched in certain patterns by our personal experiences, and we have to wrestle with passages of Scripture that do not perfectly fit with these accumulated and solidified personal experiences. We are more rigidly stubborn in certain conditioned beliefs that we will admit – to our own spiritual detriment and even to the point of thwarting the Holy Spirit’s work in the church.

That being said, personal experience can be wonderfully used by each of us in many beneficial ways. We simply must be extremely cautious in ensuring that our personal experiences are in 100% agreement with the Bible in its full and proper context, and we must allow Scripture to be our go-to response instead of allowing our personal experiences to be that knee-jerk go-to response in any given set of circumstances. In other words, we can never allow ourselves to be guilty of letting personal experience take precedence over Scripture – which is in direct conflict with what we studied last week to look at the things not seen as opposed to that which is seen.

Turn with me in your Bible to the Book of 2ndCorinthians.

2 Corinthians 5:1-8

Let’s pray.

Obviously, none of in this auditorium or watching the live stream have personally experienced death. We have all been deeply touched by the deaths of those we love but have not as of yet personally experienced death. But we have allowed faulty notions and bad teaching and even personal coping mechanisms to influence our understanding and beliefs about physical death.

I try my best to be compassionate with people who have experienced the death of a loved one, but I feel like I am one day going to explode if I see another post or hear another person state that heaven has received another angel when a person dies – especially when that sentiment comes from someone who claims to be a believer. Humans do not magically transform into angels when we die. You are treating God’s Word like a book of fairy tales when you believe such nonsense. Our world is overflowing with nonsense today. We do not need to add more to it.

I understand the need for comfort and assurance when a loved one dies, but let’s be comforted and assured by the truth of God’s Word instead of the falsehoods of secular thinking.

In the passage we just read, the Apostle Paul gives us one of the most encouraging truths on physical death. If you add this passage to 1st Corinthians 15, we can rightly surmise that the Corinthian church had some messed-up ideas about what happens when a person dies. This is still a problem today, so we will spend some over the next few weeks sorting out what the truth of Scripture has to say, instead of allowing our human desires and fanciful wishes to shape our thinking.

There are three primary aspects of encouragement and comfort that Paul gives us in our passage:

1. We will one day possess a much superior form of habitation, or a much superior body.

2. The giving to us of the Holy Spirit guarantees our future heavenly existence.

3. Physical death means being in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I will only be dealing with the first encouragement this morning – the future reality of a new and glorious body.

2 Corinthians 5:1

Paul has already called us earthen vessels, or clay pots, but now he calls us tents. Paul wouldn’t survive as a televangelist in our time. Calling his audiences clay pots and tents would not charge everyone up and encourage them to empty their wallets into the offering buckets. If you want to make it big in a TV ministry, you need to make sure everyone believes that they are destined for greatness in this temporary life on earth, and that isn’t clay pots and tents.

So, as we left off with last week – “while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (4:18), because of that truth, “we know” – we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down.

The terminology that Paul uses is worth noting. The earthly tent which is our house is again, a reference to our physical bodies. Our bodies are temporary houses, or shelters, which are extremely limited, flimsy, and only offer a small measure of protection, for our souls. The Greek for torn down means to lay flat on the ground, indicating that this tent is no longer functioning even in the limited capacity that it temporarily offered. But what is probably more noteworthy is that Paul says, “if” – if these limited and temporary shelters are torn down. Why would he say, if instead of when?

Paul was anticipating the return of Jesus even in his lifetime. We won’t take the time to look at all of the passages this morning, but Paul was clear in his writings that he preferred to continue to live until Jesus returned to meet him in the air. If that could not happen, his next choice was to physically die as soon as God saw fit to take him, and his last choice was remain in the flesh for a lengthy period of time before physical death. Paul loved to preach and teach and witness and minister to everyone who would listen, but he did not want to remain in the flesh one minute longer than he was going to be used by God for His plans and purposes. And I get that.

Paul’s reasoning for this is found in the next three verses. The language he uses seems a bit mysterious. He writes of being “clothed with our dwelling from heaven”, that he would “not be found naked”, and that “we do not want to be found unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life”. What does all of that mean?

The context includes what Paul has already taught about the believer’s resurrection (4:14) which also includes, as I have already alluded to, focusing on what is not seen (4:18). We also know from 5:8 that when a believer is absent from the bodyhe or she will be with our Lord. So, in an overly simplified explanation Paul is referring to the timing of receiving his glorified resurrection body, which does not happen immediately upon death but when this bodily resurrection takes place.

With the time we have left this morning, hang in there with me and let’s see if we can put some things together that will help better clarify what Paul says here.

I’ll begin by putting a verse on the screen behind me. We will turn to this passage in a moment, but I just want you to see this specific verse first before looking at another passage.

“Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51). Notice here and in the other passages that we will look at, how Paul uses the term, “we”, which points to what I mentioned a few minutes ago that Paul desired to remain in the flesh until Jesus returned to get him. Paul is saying that not everyone will experience physical death but that some will remain until Jesus comes to gather His church, meaning those who are truly saved but are still physically alive when Jesus returns.

We will look at more in 1st Corinthians 15 in a few moments, but first turn with me in your Bible to the Book of 1st Thessalonians.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

If, like me, you believe in a pre-tribulation rapture of the church, this is the primary passage from which that teaching comes from. But there are those who do not believe in a rapture, so if that describes you, please hang in there with me because that debated point in this passage does not impact the connection, I am making to our primary passage back in 2nd Corinthians.

What I will focus on is how Paul teaches that the dead in Christ will rise first and then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

First, recognize that Paul uses the terms asleep and dead interchangeably. They are different Greek words, but they have the same meaning in the context in which they are used in this passage. In Paul’s day, saying a person is asleep in this context is similar to us today saying someone has passed away – it’s just a kinder and softer manner to say that someone has died.

The people of the Thessalonian church were concerned about their brothers and sisters in Christ who had died. The resurrection of the dead was difficult for them to comprehend, so Paul encourages and comforts them with this truth. He does not want them to be uninformed or ignorant on this issue, and he doesn’t want them grieving in the same manner that unbelievers grieve who have no hope of seeing their loved ones again.

So, Paul says that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord (again using, “we”, to indicate his desire to still be alive when Jesus returns), will not precede those who have fallen asleep. Will not precede them in what sense? If to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, what could Paul be writing about? There is no such place as purgatory and no such thing as soul sleep – you will not find such teachings or even the hint of such teachings in the Bible. So, what does this mean?

1 Corinthians 15:35-58

We could obviously camp out with these verses for many weeks to glean and unpack everything that Paul is teaching, but I just wanted us to see how Paul is teaching about a bodily resurrection of the saints of Christ, those who believe in, trust in, have placed their faith in Jesus Christ. And Paul is adamant about there being no confusion as to what kind of body he is writing about.

When believers receive their new glorious heavenly body, it will be completely different from what we have now. Getting back to why I started this sermon as I did, our personal experience with bodies must not influence or impact our thinking about the imperishable and immortal bodies that we will inhabit through eternity.

The scoffers and the mockers do not accept a bodily resurrection because the fact that physical bodies decay, some are consumed in fires, some are blown to bits in explosions, some are lost at sea, etc. Paul calls these mockers and even believers who think this way, fools. Then Paul explains the vast difference between our physical bodies, these tents, and our glorified spiritual bodies to come when Jesus returns.

Paul first uses the analogy of a seed versus the full-grown plant or tree that grows from that seed. One plants a small seed in the ground, and you don’t just get a larger version of that seed that grows out of the ground, but you get something that doesn’t even begin to resemble that seed, nor does it function in the same manner as the seed. The analogy is that when we die, our physical body in whatever condition it was in at death, will not resemble or function in the same way as our resurrected body.

One small example but by no means the full and definitive example, is Jesus when He was raised from the dead on the third day. At times people did not recognize Jesus and then at other times they did recognize Him, sometimes from one moment to another. Mary did not recognize His form or His voice at the tomb and then she did recognize Him. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus did not recognize Him for hours and hours, then they did recognize Him.

Jesus also vanished from one place and appeared in another place. Jesus walked through walls. Yet Jesus ate physical food. It is clear that our resurrected bodies will not require food to continue to exist or to function properly, so it seems that these bodies will be able to eat for the simple pleasure of eating. The last thing that we could speculate about is from the fact that Jesus ascended into the clouds with this resurrected body – just shot up into the air.

Paul adds to this fact of how different our resurrected bodies will be by simply pointing out how different physical bodies are even now in the natural realm. He mentions mankind, animals, birds, fish, the sun, the moon, the stars as all being different from one another but still being bodies of various kinds.

When we die, our physical body perishes but our resurrected body will be imperishable – it will never get sick, never get tired, never get wounded, never get cut or burned, never feel pain, and never experience sorrow.

Our physical bodies are dishonorable but will be glorious; they are weak no matter how physically fit you are, but they will be powerful; they are natural but will be spiritual; they are earthy but will be heavenly; they are mortal and die but will be immortal and never die. Flesh and blood will be no more, and sin will be no more.

So, here’s the point that Paul was making back in 2ndCorinthians. Those who have died in Christ will get their resurrected bodies slightly before those who are still physically alive when Christ returns. When Paul writes of being unclothed and naked, he is imply meaning that until this time on God’s calendar, the dead in Christ do not yet have their resurrected bodies – they are spiritually alive and present with Jesus at this very moment in some kind of glorious form that the Bible is silent about, but they do not yet have these resurrected bodies that all believers will one day inhabit.

Whenever you see the terminology that the dead in Christ will rise first, this is what it means – they will be the first to experience these incredible, amazing indescribable bodies, just slightly before those who are caught away by Jesus will get theirs. They’ve been waiting longer, so I don’t think those who are alive and remain will mind.

Back in 2nd Corinthians, there is more to unravel, but that will have to wait until next week – and yes, I am planning to continue on through our passage next week on Mother’s Day. We will spend some time recognizing and honoring our mothers, but the sermon will continue in this passage we began today.

One last thing. Unbelievers will also receive a resurrected body, but theirs will not be received until the Great White Throne Judgment after the Millennial Kingdom, that is described in Revelation 20:11-15. These resurrected bodies are also eternal, but they are designed to endure eternal punishment for the ultimate sin of rejecting Jesus Christ as Lord.

The Bible tells us that those who are damned and condemned to such an eternity choose to reject Jesus, and thus God is righteous and just in unleashing His eternal wrath upon them. But the Bible also says that whosoever will, may come to eternal salvation by repenting of their sins, confessing with their mouth Jesus as Lord, and by believing that God the Father raised Jesus from the dead.

The choice is yours, but this incredible offer is not forever.

Let’s pray.