"The Moment You Die"

Dear Friends in Christ,         

   Have you ever found yourself at the bedside of a person who just died?  Not surprisingly, I’ve found myself in that position a number of times throughout my ministry, the most recent one being when my dad died on January 15.  I’ll never forget the time though many years ago when I received a phone call in the middle of the night and the woman on the other end told me that a man whom I had been ministering to and who was not a member of our congregation was near death in the Salem hospital and she was wondering if I could come and be with the family.  Now normally I wake up pretty quickly under those circumstances, but for some reason I didn’t that night.  Instead, I told the woman, “I’m sorry, I can’t come because I’m babysitting my kids.”  And I hung up the phone.  Then, when I turned over to go back to sleep, those words that I had just spoken to that woman kept echoing in my brain, so I said to Marilyn, “Did I just say what I think I said to that woman?”  She said, “I think you did!”  So I hopped out of bed, got dressed, and hightailed it to the hospital, arriving just in time to not only apologize profusely to the family for what I had said on the phone but to also be there as their loved one took his final breaths.

   I’ve often times said that that is one of the holiest moments we can experience this side of heaven because according to the parable that Jesus once told of the rich man and Lazarus that we heard before in our Gospel lesson, when Lazarus, this poor beggar died, “the angels carried him to Abraham's side,” Abraham’s side being the Jewish way of depicting what we would call heaven.  So when that believing loved one dies, though we cannot see it, an entourage of angels is dispatched from heaven to escort that person into the very presence of Christ himself.

   Now there are different terms that we use to describe that moment, aren’t there?  Sometimes we’ll say, “He’s gone.”  Or, “He’s departed.”  “He’s passed away.”  “He’s passed on.”  But passed on to where?  To see what?  To hear what?  To do what?  And in what form did he pass on?  We so desire to know the answers to those questions, don’t we?  When the breathing of your spouse ceases, when the beating of the heart of the child in your womb stops, when the beeping of your parent’s or grandparent’s monitor becomes a flat line, what happens at that moment?  And what will happen to you and me when we face that moment?  For barring the return of Christ, we will all have a final moment, won’t we?  A final breath, a final gasp, a final beat of the heart.  Our lungs will empty, our blood will still.  And if you have trusted in Christ as your Savior in this life, boy, do I ever have good news for you for something wonderful is going to happen to you at that time.  For in that moment, you will be ushered into what Jesus calls in our text for today “Paradise,” which we typically call heaven, but which is not yet our eternal dwelling place. 

   Let’s spend some time this morning then talking about Paradise.  And the 1^st point that I want to make is that according to Scripture, the believer in Christ, upon exiting this world, enjoys conscious fellowship with God and with all those who have preceded us into heaven’s glory.  How do we know this?  Well, we know it from passages like Phil. 1:21-23 where the Apostle Paul writes: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far.” What Paul is saying so clearly there is that the moment we die or depart, as he calls it, we are with Christ.  Elsewhere in 2 Cor. 5:8 he says that to be away from the body is to be “at home with the Lord.”  So there will be a time when the spiritual side of us – what we sometimes call our soul – will be separated from the body and at home with the Lord.  Now at the return of Christ, there will be a grand and glorious reuniting of body and soul together again, for the resurrection of our bodies that we confess each week in the Apostles and Nicene Creed will take place at that time.  The Bible speaks about this numerous times and we’ll be talking about it a lot more at some future time in this “Homeward Bound” sermon series I’m currently preaching.  But for right now we want to focus upon what happens the moment we die.  And that is the instantaneous transfer of our soul or spirit into Paradise. 

   This is the promise that Jesus gave to the thief on the cross in our text for today, isn’t it?  He said, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”  Now obviously that man’s body would not be with Jesus in Paradise, but his soul would.  When Stephen the first Christian martyr was being stoned to death for his faith, he looked up to heaven and saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God and he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”  And I have no doubt that that is exactly what Jesus did.  In fact, I believe that is why Jesus is described in that passage as standing at the right hand of God rather than sitting there.  He was standing up to receive the spirit of Stephen into his heavenly kingdom and welcome him home to Paradise. 

   Paradise then is what we might call the first stage of eternity.  It is not the final stage which the Bible calls the new heavens and the new earth.  We’ll talk about that in some of my future sermons too.  But for today, let us understand that Paradise is simply the gathering place of the saints until Christ returns to usher in the final stage of eternity.  It is the heaven that the thief on the cross and Stephen went to and that Paul longed for and that Jesus ascended to when he left this world behind. 

   Now unfortunately movies, cartoons, and novels have done us a great disservice by depicting a rather unappealing version of Paradise.  They portray a vague, shadowy existence of knee-high fog banks and floating spirits, an ethereal world of halos and harps that basically consists of a never-ending worship service.  Such descriptions of heaven have caused some people to lose interest in it, to even proclaim that it might…well, it might be boring to be there.  For who gets excited about an eternity of sing-alongs?  So surely there’s got to be more to Paradise than white robes and nebulous spirits.  And I’m here today to tell you that yes, there most certainly is.  So let me spend the rest of my time this morning exploring with you just some of the things that are waiting for us there, based upon what God tells us in his Word.

   First of all, Paradise is a place of perfect harmony.  When we think of the original Paradise, which was the Garden of Eden in which our first parents Adam and Eve lived, we find a prototype of the Paradise to which we will go when we die.  And one of the first things we note about the Garden of Eden is that it was a place of perfect harmony.  For starters, Adam and Eve lived in harmony with each other.  They never argued.  They never said an unkind word to the other.  They never pointed out each other’s faults and flaws because they had no faults and flaws.  They never lost interest in one another.  Instead, they enjoyed a harmony with each other that has never been equaled or duplicated since then and never will be until we enter the real Paradise.  But there’s more.

   They also enjoyed perfect harmony with nature and especially the animals.  When God brought the animals to Adam to name, Adam didn’t cower in fear when the lion or wolf or Tyrannosaurus Rex was standing in front of him.  In fact, things were so naturally harmonious in the original Paradise that the Bible tells us man and animals were both vegetarians.  They didn’t kill and eat one another.  But there’s still more.

   Adam and Eve also enjoyed perfect harmony with God.  They walked with him in the garden in the cool of the day.  They enjoyed sweet fellowship with him.  He was their best friend.

   But as I think all of us know, sin changed all of that.  It ruined and destroyed all that perfect harmony.  For once Adam and Eve committed that first act of rebellion, the Paradise they once enjoyed was lost.  And all of a sudden we find them blaming one another for what went wrong and nature no longer working in harmony with them and we find them hiding from God rather than walking with him.  But God’s promise to his faithful and believing children is that one day the Paradise that was lost will be restored and we will be able to enjoy that sweet fellowship with him and that perfect harmony with others that is so noticeably absent from our world today.

   Then a 2^nd thing we note about Paradise is that it will be a place of joyful labor.  Prior to the Fall, Adam found great fulfillment and satisfaction in working the soil.  But once sin entered the picture, he was told that the ground would no longer cooperate with him as it had once done.  Instead it would bring forth thorns and thistles and Adam would now have to work by the sweat of his brow to get it to produce anything.  And times have not changed since then as so many people today find no joy in their jobs, no contentment in their careers.  But once we enter Paradise, all of that will change, my friends.  In Rev. 7:15 we read of those who are there that "they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple.”  Exactly what that service will consist of we can’t say for sure, but one thing we can be sure of.  It will be an eternal delight to stand in the presence of our great God and Savior and be able to serve this One who loved us so much that he did everything possible and everything necessary to make this Paradise that we are enjoying a reality for those who are there.

   Then a 3^rd thing we note about Paradise is that it will be a place of sinless living.  The image of God with which Adam and Eve were originally created will be restored in all its beauty and glory.  In fact, so much so that we will completely and forever lose both the desire and the ability to sin.  Imagine that!  No more lustful thoughts; no more hateful words; no more cursing, no more lying, no more putting other things ahead of God or putting other people down, no more envy, no more jealousy.  There won’t even be anymore temptation to sin in heaven because the source of all that temptation, Satan himself, will have no part and no place in our perfect Paradise.  Instead, according to Rev. 20:10 he will be banished from our presence forever for he will ultimately be thrown into the lake of burning sulfur where it says he will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

   And then one more thing that we want to note about Paradise is that it will be a place of perfect knowledge.  I base that upon I Cor. 13:12 where the Apostle Paul writes: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”  Every time I read that part about a poor reflection in a mirror, I think of certain antique mirrors that I’ve seen over the years that because of their age give a very fuzzy or incomplete reflection, which is a great description of what life on this earth is so often like.  When a baby dies, when a tornado wipes out an entire community, when a tsunami wipes out an entire region, when those who are evil prosper, when our justice system fails, when our marriage falters, when our children rebel, we have questions, don’t we?  We wonder why it happened.  We wonder how it happened and how we will ever be able to recover from it.  We wonder where is God in all this.  Our list of questions is endless.  But the good news that I can share with you today is that the day is coming when all our questions will be answered and all our doubts will be laid to rest.  Then we shall see face to face, Paul says.  Then we shall know fully.  But you know what?  When that time comes, I seriously doubt that we’ll even be concerned about what happened to us in this life, for we will be so overwhelmed and enthralled by what awaits us in Paradise that all those questions that once seemed so major to us here will all of a sudden seem so minor there.

   So my friends, in the light of all we’ve talked about this morning, picture your loved one walking into that kind of life when they died.  And then picture yourself walking into that kind of life when you die.  Paradise: a place of perfect harmony, a place of joyful labor, a place of sinless living, a place of perfect knowledge.  And rejoice that you have a Savior who loved you so much that he lived for you, he died for you, and he rose for you, just so that all of that and much, much more could be yours to enjoy the moment you leave this world behind. 

Amen.