Sermon Tone Analysis

Child dedication

Adeline Dianne Hutcherson, 10-06-17

Caius James Hutcherson, 12-07-21

Today we have the privilege of dedicating to the Lord two young members of our congregation.

Adeline and Caius Hutcherson.

Adeline will be turning five in October, and Caius is just a few days away from four months old.

He was born on December 7, last year.

Rhonda and Brian are going through all the normal new baby experiences.

And just like Mary and Joseph who brought Jesus to the temple to be dedicated to the Lord shortly after He was born, Rhonda and Brian are bringing their children to dedicate them to the Lord.

Rhonda and Brian, there are two aspects to this dedication.

The first is a recognition that Adeline and Caius are God’s children, and not your own.

You dedicate them back to God because He has given you these children as stewards.

And so the second thing is a dedication of yourselves as parents to guide your children to the Lord and protect them.

So lets first start with you.

Rhonda and Brian, do you commit, by God’s grace, to help Adeline and Caius know God as their Father and to grow up in faith?

Do you dedicate yourselves to do as the Bible commands, to “raise up” your children to follow Christ?

Do you promise to give them every spiritual advantage in your home, your church and Christian education?

Do you dedicate yourselves to Adeline and Caius to share all their good times and bad times, and to love them always?

—we do—

Before we dedicate these children, I want to turn to our church family and invite you into this service.

Will you join with Rhonda and Brian in a commitment to help these children grow up in the Lord?

—we will—

**Jason takes baby Caius in his hands (or puts his hand on his head), and prays a prayer of dedication for both children.**

**Family all sit down**

The Boy who Came Back from Heaven

In 2010 Tyndale House published a book called, “The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven.”

It was written by Kevin Malarkey about the experiences of his son, Alex, after they had recovered from a car accident.

Alex had brain and spinal cord injuries, causing him to be a quadriplegic and putting him through years of surgeries and physical therapy.

The book tells the story of out of body experiences that Alex had, and stories of when he went to heaven and saw God.

You may already know how this story goes.

After being published in 2010 the book sold a million copies and inspired a TV drama.

And then in 20011, the 11-year-old Alex told the world he had made it all up.

In 2012 Alex’ mother wrote several blog posts saying her family is not in agreement with the content of the book.

And in 2015 Alex wrote an open letter to bookstores asking them to remove the book because it was all a lie.

Here’s part of what he said,

"Please forgive the brevity, but because of my limitations I have to keep this short.

I did not die.

I did not go to Heaven.

I said I went to Heaven because I thought it would get me attention.

When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible.

People have profited from lies, and continue to.

They should read the Bible, which is enough.

The Bible is the only source of truth...”

What happens when you die?

It’s a question that humans have asked ever since Adam and Eve ate the fruit in the garden of Eden.

And it’s a subject that every human has experienced or will soon experience through the loss of a loved one, or through their own end-of-life journey.

There are three main ideas that the majority of humans believe about what happens when you die:

You turn into compost and stay in the ground forever

Your soul goes up or down — heaven or hell.

You come back again and again in a never ending cycle

These prevailing ideas of death and the afterlife are based on scientific assumption, ancient Greek myths, and eastern philosophies.

Notably, you can’t find any support for these beliefs in the Bible.

I’m proud of Alex Malarkey for pointing us in the right direction for finding truth.

Listen to the rest of his open letter:

“...The Bible is the only source of truth.

Anything written by man cannot be infallible.

It is only through repentance of your sins and a belief in Jesus as the Son of God, who died for your sins (even though he committed none of his own) so that you can be forgiven may you learn of Heaven outside of what is written in the Bible... not by reading a work of man.

I want the whole world to know that the Bible is sufficient.

Those who market these materials must be called to repent and hold the Bible as enough.

In Christ, Alex Malarkey.”

Is what you believe about death biblical, or is it just a bunch of… malarkey?

Let’s go to the Bible and find out what it says about death.

If you’re hearing this discussion for the first time, please feel free to chat with me after or send me a message (my contact info is in the bulletin).

I’d love to interact more about this.

Hope after Loss

Before we look at any Bible verses about death I want to recognize that this subject isn’t just a theological idea—it touches the core of our being.

Most of us here have lost someone that we care deeply about.

That pain of loss doesn’t go away, even if the sting lessens over time.

The Bible recognizes this reality and more than teaching doctrine, the Bible provides comfort and hope.

Look at 1 Corinthians 15:54-55

How is death swallowed up in victory?

If there is a life after death is it the circle back kind of life, or the up or down / heaven or hell kind of life?

Or is there an even better story to be told?

What makes a human?

The first question we need to ask is: do we have a soul, or are we a soul?

The answer begins in the Garden of Eden.

Turn to Genesis 2 with me:

Genesis 2:7 (ESV)

then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

Here are the scientific building blocks of a human:

dust + breath of life = living creature

That word, “creature” is translated from the Hebrew word, nephesh.

This is a word that is translated in various places in the Bible as life, person, creature, or soul.

When someone reads a translation that says, “man became a living soul,” they often think of a modern definition for soul.

But lets go back and look at the text and let it tell us what it means.

God formed man from dust, breathed in the breath of life, and the man became a living person.

Adam didn’t have a person, he became a person.

He didn’t have a soul, he became a soul.

There’s another problem if we put our modern definition of a soul onto the Bible: the Bible teaches that all the animals are nephesh—living creatures / souls.

Just look at Genesis 1:24

Genesis 1:24 (ESV)

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.”

And it was so.

God spoke and all the animals became living creatures—living souls.

I once heard a Christian speaker explain the fundamental aspects of a human using a lamp with a shade on it.

The body—skin, muscles, bones, etc—is like the lampshade, he said.

While the soul is like the light bulb underneath.

He said that the body will eventually die, but because the soul is eternal it never dies.

The only question, he suggested, is where your soul will go when you die.

The Bible never uses the lampshade illustration, but it does tell us what happens when we die.