The Greatest Hope | Dr. Conrad Vine

I've [music] never seen a double ukulele. clearly before. Well, that was truly beautiful. Thank you very much, brother, for [music] sharing your musical gifts with us. Thank you.

Let me just get rid of this microphone or I'm going to get feedback all evening here. And so, um, it's already Tuesday night. Isn't the time going by fast here? Uh my wife and I came for two weeks and uh we finish on the Sabbath and uh so we're already feeling kind of homesick for Maui and not homesick for Michigan but homesick for Maui. And so we've just been uh very overwhelmed not just by the waves but by the waves of love and effect come our way.

We want to say thank you one and all to everybody for your warmth, your welcome and we've just been blessed by the talents of so many people. And so tonight I'm going to talk about a topic which it may sound a bit morbid but I'm going to talk about what happens when you die. And you may say why is he going to talk about this question? The reason I'm talking about this question is the oldest lie ever told is still running through humanity and it has a profound impact on people all the way around the world. So um this is our topic.

I think I'm going to call it the greatest hope. And uh I think that today what people need as much as anything else is hope in their hearts. Would you agree? People need hope. They need a reason to get out of bed.

Um in Japan they have an expression. Anybody here speak Japanese? Um it means a reason to get out of bed. And everybody needs a reason to get out of bed. Not just to pay the bills, not just to pay the rent, but people need a positive reason to get out of bed or why get out of bed at all.

And so we're going to talk this evening about the greatest hope that we find in the scriptures. And so as we begin, invite you to bow your heads with me and invite the presence of the Holy Spirit. So shall we pray? Our dear heavenly father, we thank you for the blessings of today. Uh we thank you for warm winds and a warm sun.

We thank you for full stomachs and warm beds. Father, we thank you for these blessings of life that we simply just take for granted. Lord, as we gather here tonight, I pray that um I will speak words from your throne of grace. Lord, behind every front door, there is a story to tell. Lord, each one of us at some point, one point or another in our lives, we have said goodbye to a loved one.

I pray, Lord, that as we share the truth about what the Bible says about what happens to those who pass away, I pray that the blessed hope will rise in our hearts aresh tonight. So, thank you, Lord, for speaking through me. This is my prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. You know, um, speaking as a pastor, some things are easier to do than others.

And, um, if I were given a choice between doing a wedding or a funeral, I would always choose a funeral. And why would I always choose a funeral? Because nothing worse can go wrong. They're already dead. Sometimes when you're standing at the front, the wrong name comes out.

Sometimes you mix up the order of the service. Sometimes the musician doesn't appear. But it doesn't really matter because the bad news has already happened and at a funeral many people just kind of sitting in kind of like zombie mode anyway. Whereas weddings are fraugh fraught with with possibilities for for things to go wrong. Uh you know somebody I was at a wedding once and some um some guy put all the wedding flowers into the fridge the night before the wedding.

Those flowers did not survive to the next morning. Those roses. Um, sometimes you you marry somebody and a young man and a young woman and both of them come from blended families. So you have four mothers all deciding who walks first down the aisle during the processional. And they ask you as the pastor, they say, "Well, what's the protocol?

Who walks first?" And you look around and you decide who the most fearsome looking mother is. And said, "It's that one walks down the aisle first." And so weddings are fraught with possibility for things to go wrong. Um, I've married people and got the names mixed up at the front. I've learned write the name at the top of every sheet of paper that you're working from. Uh, make sure you've memorized it as much as possible and make sure that you speak clearly.

You know, I take I take you to be my awful wedded wife is different to be my lawful wedded wife. And sometimes if you get the vows wrong, then the people they get the vows wrong as well. And it sounds terrible. And um, these days everything is caught on camera. Uh my wife and I when we got married uh a friend of ours, he was an Azeri doctor.

He volunteered to take our wedding video for us and he said, "I can do a great job and I'll do it for free." So we took him up on his gracious offer. And when we got the wedding video some months later, we didn't feature in it once at all. In fact, you wouldn't know it was our wedding. The entire wedding video for three hours was him discussing in the Azeri language with his fellow Muslim doctors what it was like to watch a Christian wedding. So our wedding video, we don't appear in it once.

And so things do go wrong with weddings. But um death is something we all have to deal with whether we're a pastor um or not. We all deal with the reality of death. Isn't that right? We all deal with the reality of death.

And we have many euphemisms for death. Um, I'm going to share some euphemisms we have in England. We say that he's passed away or he's passed on. Do you have that with I'm here in Maui. We say that he's no longer with us.

We say he's kicked the bucket. We say he's at peace. He bought the farm. He's pushing up daisies. He bit the dust.

He's six feet under. He's shuffled off this mortal coil. He's been called home. He's deceased. He's expired.

He's passed beyond the veil. Maybe a good one for Maui is this. as we say in England, he's sleeping with a fish. And so we have many euphemisms for what happens when people die because we're very uncomfortable with the idea of death. And yet um in our journey today, we're going to go through the four stages of life.

Um before life, life itself, death, and the resurrection. This is going to be our journey here this evening. And I want to start out with this verse here. I'm from 1 Thessalonians 4. And Paul writes to the church of Thessalonica and he says, "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope." And I've officiated at funerals for people who have no hope in the resurrection.

And when you officiate at a funeral of say parents who've lost a small child in a road accident, it's not just grief, but what you see is despair. People say, "I will never see my little angel again." The heartbreak is just truly heartbreaking. See this because many people, they have no hope in the resurrection. And so Paul wrote this letter to the church of Thessalonica because he wants us to know that in the face of death, we can have hope. And when you have hope in the face of death, then death isn't as bad as it were if you had no hope.

Why is this possible? Well, this is what Jesus says in the book of Revelation. Says, "Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last and the living one. I was dead and see I am alive forever and ever.

And I have the keys of death and of hell." And that's what Jesus says to the Apostle John. And so if Jesus has the keys of death and Jesus was dead and now he's alive forever and ever, he's conquered death. Then to follow Jesus means if Jesus conquered death for himself, then Jesus can conquer death for us as well. And so we we we face death not with despair but with a sense of hope. So what are the four stages of life that we find in the Bible?

And the first stage is what I call you know before life. And we find that in the book of Jeremiah chapter 1 and verse 5. And this is God speaking to the Jer prophet Jeremiah when he was a teenager when he was calling him to be a prophet. God said before I formed you in the womb I knew you. And before you were born I consecrated you.

I appointed you a prophet to the nation. So was Jeremiah's life a random collection of random chemicals on a random planet in a random Milky Way? Uh, was it yes or no? No. Before Jeremiah was born, God knew him.

God formed him. He knit him together in his mother's womb. Jeremiah, like each one of us, we are God's handiwork, fearfully and wonderfully made. And this passage tells us here that before this boy was born, God says, I consecrated. It means I set you aside for a holy purpose.

And I before you were born, I knew you were going to be a prophet not just to the people of Israel, but to all the nations of the world. And this is a beautiful promise from God to Jeremiah. And you may apply it to each one of us as well. That we were formed by God in our mother's wombs. We were knit together by God.

We are his handiwork. And before we were born, we were known to God. And it's not just that God knew us, but before we were born, God knew the purposes that he had for us. This is what the Apostle Paul says about God's plans for us. Says, "For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life." What a beautiful uh expression that is.

We are created by in Christ Jesus for good works. And God prepared those beforehand before we were born. Before we were um before we uh you know uh enter this planet, God had already prepared a purpose for us. And that purpose described here. We are created in Christ Jesus good works.

That is God created us to be a blessing to those around us. How we are a blessing differs from person to person. But God's purpose was for us to be a blessing to other people. So uh once we move from the first stage which is before life then we move to life itself um when when we had our children um the thing that shocked me about newborn babies is you think they're fragile but they're really they're actually not fragile at all. You know when when when when the baby comes home from the hospital you carry it out of the hospital you know in the back in the seat or the car and you're watching where every foot goes.

Has anybody has any of you had that experience? like you don't want to drop that little treasure and you get them into the car and you drive home at 25 miles an hour the whole journey because you're dead scared you're going to hurt that child and then horror of horrors you have to wash the baby that first night and washing the baby you unpeel the clothes it's like getting a chicken from Walmart and and you unpeel it and there's this like gorky legs and gorky arms there and and you lift it up and you realize it doesn't fall apart when you lift it up you know and and it's kind of um you have you take very care of it. But the thing that struck me with babies is that they're kind of rubbery and but anyway, um I'm speaking as a father here, all right? My wife took better care of the babies than I did. I can assure you.

But anyway, the Bible says um about life itself. We go back to the book of Genesis, and this is the formula for life. It says, "The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being." As we said earlier on uh last uh last week, I said when Jesus breathed into Adam the breath of life, he gave himself the kiss of death because he knew the consequences of what he was doing for his own um for the plan of salvation. But in this passage here, you have the formula for life. And this is the formula for life that we find in the Bible.

It is um the dust of the earth plus the breath of life and you are a living being or a soul. Now the Hebrew is nepheshim. It means a living being. And when the animals went into the ark they were also referred to as having as being nepheshim as well. Um so uh we are a living being when the dust of the earth and the breath of life come together.

Some versions translate this nepheshim phrase in Hebrew as a soul or a living soul and other versions translate it as a living being. And the point about this is that man does not have a soul or man does not have a living being. But by virtue of creation, the breath of life and the dust of the earth, you are a living being or you are a living soul. You don't possess a soul that's separate to your body. But you when you add those two things together, that's what you get in the Bible.

You get um a living being or a living soul. And so in the Garden of Eden, God gave commands to Adam. And it says, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it keep it. And the Lord man commanded the gu the man Lord God commanded the man, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it, you shall die." And so what this verse tells us is that Adam and Eve were created immortal, but that immortality was conditional upon obedience to God. And if they chose to eat of the eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which they were commanded not to eat from then they would lose that conditional immortality and they would start the process of dying.

And so when the serpent came into the garden of Eden, Satan um this is what Satan says to the woman says the serpent was more craft than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, "Did God say, "You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?" But this is the first theologian in recorded history. He's discussing the word of God. And um it was Satan. You know, I once read a book on the resurrection.

It was written by a professor of St. Andrews University in Scotland. It was the best defense I ever read of the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ. And the professor was an atheist. It just struck me as odd that this man could believe in the resurrection, write a book about the resurrection, and still be an atheist.

Anyway, woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, "You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die." But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die." And so, in this stage here, um, Satan flatly contradicts God. God says to him, "The day that you eat of this tree, you shall die." And Satan says to the woman, "You may eat of it." And then he says, "And you will not die." So Eve had a choice to make. Was she going to trust God or was she going to trust the lies of Satan? And tragically, she accepted the lies of Satan rather than the truths from God. And that original lie that you will not die is maybe the most prevalent lie on planet earth today.

You find this in Hinduism with the uh doctrine of reincarnation that your body may die but your soul lives on and you go through millions of cycles of life and death, life and death, life and death, life and death. One day you achieve nirvana and you achieve you become part of the cosmic nothingness you might say like a drop of water entering the Pacific Ocean. And that really isn't good news because if you believe that you're going to live and die and live and die and live and die and live and die and live and die, that means you're going to have millions and millions and millions of cycles of death and one day going to achieve nothing. I don't know if that looks like good news to you. That isn't good news to me.

The Bible says you have one cycle of life and death and faith in Jesus. You wake up not to millions of cycles of life and death, but you wake up to eternal life, no more death. So the gospel is good news. Then Buddhism is the same with their doctrine of reincarnation. Catholicism also has the idea of the immortality of the soul, the original life from Satan.

And so in the Catholic faith, when your body dies, your soul allegedly goes to hell, burned forever, or it goes to purgatory where your sins get burnt out of you, or your soul goes straight to heaven and you live forever. So, Catholicism has this idea of the immortality of the soul and so does Islam. Islam believes that you either go to paradise or you go to hellfire and that's when you die. So, your body may die but your soul lives forever. And so, in much of the world today, you find that this lie of Satan still runs.

It still has force. If you work in the animist parts of the world where people worship spirits, let's say you go to Thailand. Has anybody ever been to Thailand and outside the house you see a small like dollhouse piece on a pole? Do you ever see that? Or do you have any Thai restaurants here in town?

If you go into a Thai restaurant near the entrance, they will have um a shelf with maybe um there'll be maybe a little statue of the Buddha there and they will have a bowl of rice and a jaw stick or an incense stick and a cup of Coca-Cola or milk. And what is that for? That is not decorative for decorative purposes. In in in in the Thai culture, Buddhism is technically a form of atheism. They believe in the eight-fold path to enlightenment.

But in practice, Buddhism is the manipulation of the spirit. It's animism by another name. And those that little um that little jawstick and statue of the Buddha and the rice and and the Coca-Cola or the milk, they're actually feeding the spirits every day in order to get the spirits off their back so they can do good business that day and they can have good luck. So wherever you go in the world, that sentence from Satan, you will not die. That sentence, that lie runs throughout all of almost every part of the world today.

People accept that lie. Even in Norway, if you look at Norse mythology, uh the the um the Vikings, the Scandinavians, the Finns, the Swedes, they believe in Valhalla, bit of Valhalla as when warriors die, they don't physically die, but they go to the the hall where they they drink with other warriors. And you know, you think, well, this is a p this is a an idea from the past. When um Charlie Kirk was killed, the uh chair, the director of the FBI, Cash Appel, he tweeted and he said, "I'll see you in Valhalla." Like I read that I was astonished like the director of the FBI believes in Valhalla. This is an astonishing thing.

I'll see you in in the like the endless feast for warriors that your soul has has has has migrated from your body up into this this in this Norse mythology to this mythical place where you're going to drink and party for the rest of eternity. So this lie of Satan runs all around the world today and it has implications because if you are not going to die um if your soul is immortal then what the Bible says that the wages of sin is death. It's a lie. And if you're not going to die from your sins then you don't need a savior to save you from the consequence of your sins. And so it starts to undo the whole gospel once you've accept the idea that you're not going to die.

So, Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden. And uh the Bible goes on to say in Ezekiel 18:20, it says very clearly, "The soul that sinnth shall what? Shall die." And so, when we were created, we were given conditional immortality, conditional upon our obedience to God. But when we were disobedient to God and Adam and Eve chose to put self on the throne of their hearts rather than accept God on the throne of their hearts and selfishness replaced selflessness as the governing principle in Garden of Eden then this truth here comes about soul that sinnth it shall die. The Bible is also very clear that the only one who is immortal is God himself.

Apostle Paul writes this. He says, "To the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light who has ever seen whom no one has ever seen or can see." So the Bible is clear that the only one who is immortal intrinsically is God himself. That we lost our conditional immortality in the Garden of Eden in the fall.

And now we are all destined to die. Anybody here think they have immortality? No. Um the older I get, the more real death come when you keep going to the doctor. Mr.

B, they said LDL cholesterol is too high. Why? Sometimes they say it's good, some say it's bad. your HDL cholesterol is too high and your LDL cholester what am I upposed to do about it? I know there's like um but um they tell you these things and they look serious tell you these things like Mr.

divine. If you don't take care of this, then we're not going to be discussing your cholesterol levels next year. We'll be talking about coffin, you know, those measurements. And so, the older you get, the more conscious you become of the fact that life is not forever and the hopes and the dreams that we've cherished through life, what's going to become of them when we pass away? And what kind of legacy are we going to leave behind us on this planet?

And so the psalmist says reflecting on this reality that the older we get, the more we focus on spiritual matters, psalmist says, "So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart." So young people, teenagers, they feel immortal. Is that right? They feel invincible. When I went to uh finished high school, I was 18 and I wanted to see some of the world. And so I had £200 to my name, which wasn't a lot of money back then in 1990.

And so I looked around the world say, where can I go for £200? I want to spend a year somewhere on £200. That was $400 at the time. I looked around and I decided to go to Israel because I could work on a kabut collective farm for free. They give me board and lodging and a stipen and they give me the Sabbaths off.

And so I decided to go and I was flying out on the third week of August. And in the first week of August 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Now, this was before the internet, this was before cell phones. So, I I was aware that there was a war brewing in the Middle East. And my mom and dad were very aware that there was a war brewing in the Middle East.

They said, "Are you sure now is a good time to fly to Israel because US has put deserts desert shield in place, that big military operation to protect um weight, Saudi Arabia and Israel and American allies in the Gulf area." And I said with the scent to invincibility of youth, don't worry about me. If there's a war, it's not going to touch me. Don't worry about it. So, I flew out a week after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. And my mom has always been a woman of prayer, but I knew she was praying for me.

And we had to wear gas masks when the Scud missiles were coming in. Um, we'd have to sit in the basement. The sirens would go off and the Scuds would come across from Western Saudi Arabia. And we didn't know whether it was high high explosives or chemical or biological or even dirty bombs, nuclear dirty bombs. And so we'd have to sit in the basement with our gas masks on waiting for the all clear.

And I'd write my mom a letter from the basement said, "Dear mom, I hope you're doing well. I'm in the basement while the air raid sirens are going off. And uh please forgive me if my writing is doesn't look neat because I'm looking at through my my gas mask, but please don't worry about me and I'll write in a month's time. And um my mom, you know, she got those letters and she was really a woman of prayer during that time. The point is that when you're young, you have a sense of invincibility, but the older you get and the more you go to your physician, the more you realize that this body simply wears out.

And there's not a lot we can do about that. We can try and delay the inevitable. But um by and large, once you pass the age of about 25, it's all a slow downhill. Apologies to anyone who is 24. Um but when you hit 25, it's all a slow downhill.

I once said it was 16 and I almost had a riot on my hands when I said that. So um anyway, what's the third stage of life? And it's actually death itself. So the first stage is before you're born, you are known to God. The second stage is life itself and the formula for life is the breath of life and the dust of the ground and man becomes a living being.

Then you have the third stage of life which is actually death itself. And the Bible describes it. And what happens in death is you have the exact opposite of what happened in creation. And so the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 12:7, when you die, it says, "The dust returns to the earth as it was and the breath returns to God who gave it." And so the body returns to the dust of the ground and the breath returns to God. And so the original formula of the Garden of Eden is simply reversed.

So you see on the screen there, the formula for life is the dust of the earth plus the breath of life gives a living being. And the formula for death is that if you have the dust of the earth and you take away from it the breath of life, what you have is nothing. That's it. You have nothing. So when we bury people, we say ashes to ashes and dust to dust so forth.

And um there was an English comedian who didn't like his mother-in-law. He kept her her ashes in a vase or a vase on his counter in the kitchen. He didn't like us when he was smoking. He dropped the ash into the ashes. You say I see she's putting on weight.

That was his way of kind of getting back mother-in-law. But um the formula here, the formula for life is on the first part. That's what happens in the creation. Dust of the earth plus the breath of life. And man is a nepheshim or a living being.

And what happens in death is the breath of life goes back to God and the body returns to the dust of the earth. and you are left with literally nothing. Now the Old Testament Hebrew word for spirit and breath is the same word. It's ruach and that is the life principle from God that you actually find this animates both animals and human beings. You see that in the story of the flood in Genesis 6 7 and 8.

And you see this parallelism in this Hebrew poetry of Job there. Job says as long as my breath is in me and the spirit of God is in my nostrils. So you you have here the spirit of God and the breath of life are paralleled within this verse of Job. And that is the breath of life that goes back to God when we die. And and normally when people die they utter their last breath.

Isn't that right? I mean doctors have definitions of like being brain dead. But normally if you're sitting next to somebody in a hospital or in a um on hospice care, you know when they've passed away just by listening to someone and you you hear that last breath coming out, you hear that and then you say, "Okay, that's it." Doctor may then come and pronounce them dead, but you already know they've passed away because you've heard um their last they've given their last breath. Some cases, it's very very clear when that happens. So what happens when you die?

Do you know that you're dead? Are you float around in heaven looking down at your loved ones? Um, some people have the idea that when you die, you go to heaven. Some people say, "Well, he's looking down upon us now and uh, my mother is looking down on me." The Bible says that is absolutely not true. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 9, it says, "The living know that they will die." Is that true?

Yes or no? Yes. Then it says, "But the dead know what?" Nothing. They know nothing. They have no more reward.

Even the memory of them is lost. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished. Never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun. And so the dead know nothing. They have no part in anything that happens among the living.

They are gone. They have no further emotions. There is no hate. There is no love. There is no joy.

There is no anger. They're dead. Nothing. And so when your mother dies, she's not floating around on a cloud looking down at you. And if my mother were to die and she was looked down on me and I get a cancer diagnosis in 10 years time, she's supposed she's supposed to be in heaven.

You think it's going to feel like heaven to her watching her son go through a cancer treatment? Absolutely not. It's a mercy that the dead know nothing because it means they don't see their children going through the struggles of life. So God kind of closes that chapter and the dead are dead. They know nothing.

their joys, their hopes, their fears, their loves, their fears, their hates, their angers, their hopes, they are gone once and for all. They have no part in anything that happens under the sun. And this is where the deception of spiritualism comes in because people want to talk with their love their long- lost mother. They go to a medium, they say, "Call up my mother." And what happens is a fallen spirit appears imitating the mother. And that fallen spirit talks to them and gives them advice.

They genuinely think they're talking to their mother, but they're actually talking to a fallen spirit. And those spirits do nothing but lie. And we see this with Alexa and AI these days. You can create an AI avatar of your dead mother. you can you can um play some recordings of your mother's voice and her mother's picked software and your mother will appear on the screen and literally talk as an AI avatar and so this is a channel directly into spiritualism in the modern era because people are so desperate to have one last word with their loved ones.

uh the Psalm 146 says this when their breath departs they that is goes back to God they that is their body returns to the earth and on that very day their plans perish. So how does David describe death? Basically the conscious thought ceases. If their plans perish on the day they die, that means their consciousness and their conscious thought, their understanding that something is happening around them, all of that dies and finishes the day that somebody dies. Bible goes on to say that the dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any that go down into silence.

So, some may say that the dead when you die, you go to heaven and you join those angelic choirs with a harp and you're sitting around on a cloud. The Bible says that the dead do not praise God. So they're not floating around in some heavenly choir somewhere. Their plans perish. Their hopes perish.

They're not praising God. They are now in the grave. And there there's no consciousness left for the dead. And that actually I think is really good news that they have no further part in anything that happens um on life. So how did Jesus describe what happens when you die?

Well, he had a friend called Lazarus. Lazarus lived near Jerusalem, little town called Bethany, up four or five miles southeast of Jerusalem. Lazarus had two sisters, Mary and Martha. And for Jesus, the home of these these three people, it's kind of like his his place of refuge. He would go there when he was tired, go there when he wants to get away from the crowds.

And um he he received a note message that Lazarus was dying. And when he finally arrived there, Lazarus was dead four days later. And Jesus says to the crowd, he said, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I'm going there to awaken him." But Jesus referred to death asleep. The disciples didn't understand. They said, "But he's dead." And so Jesus goes on to clarify.

The text says, "Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death. They thought he was referring merely to sleep. And so Jesus refers to death as a sleep. And I think I mentioned this last week, but when you bury somebody in the west, what's the what's the plot of land called where you bury them? Cemetery.

And what does the word cemetery mean? It's a place where people sleep. Literally, that's the meaning of the word. It's like we have a dormatory. That comes from the French language, dormier, to sleep.

So a dormator is a place where people And a cemetery is also a place not where people die but a cemetery is where people sleep. Even the language itself tells us as Jesus said that this man Lazarus is sleeping. When you pass away, when you're buried, Jesus calls it a sleep. But then Jesus goes on to discuss the good news for those who are have fallen asleep in Christ. Jesus says, "Do not be astonished at this, for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out.

Those who've done good, the resurrection of life, and those who've done evil to the resurrection of condemnation." So, what are the dead in their graves waiting for? They're waiting for either the resurrection of life or they're waiting for the resurrection of condemnation. So, there are two resurrections that Jesus speaks about. Is that right in this verse? resurrection of life or the resurrection of condemnation.

And so uh we have this hope that hope brings in our hearts because we say there is going to be a resurrection and everybody is going to be in one of those two resurrections. We're either in the resurrection of life. Some versions say the resurrection of the righteous or you're going to be in the resurrection of condemnation. But one way or the other we are going to be resurrected if we've passed away before Jesus comes again. And the apostle Paul discusses this.

He says, "I have a hope in God. I hope that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous." And so the apostle Paul have this hope in the resurrection of the righteous and also of the unrighteous. So when you stand by the graveside of a loved one who's died trusting in God as as Jesus their savior, um you don't grieve as those who do who grieve with who have no hope. You don't grieve with despair, but you grieve with the realization that one day God is going to call my loved one from this grave again, and they're going to be called um to the resurrection of life. It's not the resurrection of death.

It's a resurrection to new life, and it's not going to be the resurrection of the unrighteous. So, let's talk a bit more detail about the resurrection itself. And there's a picture from story of Lazarus in John chapter 11. I was once asked to preach at a funeral and um the person said to me, "The family doesn't believe in the resurrection, but we want you to bring them hope." Well, what am I supposed to say? So, I spoke about John 11.

I did a word by word study. John 11. If you've you never read this chapter before in the Bible, John 11, it's the story of the resurrection of Lazarus. As I said before, Jesus had three friends, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. They were two sisters and a brother.

They lived together. They lived just outside Jerusalem. Jesus would often go there and hang out at their house. They were like um a place of refuge, a home that was always open to him. And they were his close friends.

And uh when he comes to the graveside, there's many of the Jewish leaders are there. And Mary and Martha are there and they're weeping. And Martha comes up to Jesus. says, "If only you'd been here four days before, you could have saved Lazarus from dying." And so, uh, Martha says to him, he says, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." So, Martha had a hope in the resurrection, resurrection of the righteous, the resurrection of life, Jesus been speaking about, but Jesus was going to demonstrate in his ministry that he has the authority to call the dead forth from their grave. And so, Jesus said to her, and these are beautiful words, he said, "I am the resurrection and the life.

Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, son of God, the one coming into the world." And that phrase, the very first words Jesus says, "I am." Um every time in John's gospel Jesus says I am like I am the bread of life, I am the good shepherd etc. Um in the Greek it's two words. Uh if you just say I am in Greek it's am.

But the the the Greek here has two words. It's ego. We get the word ego from that. So it's ego amy. So Jesus says I I am.

And that is the the word the name. We think of it in English Jesus just saying I am. But when God spoke to Moses in the burning bush next chapter 3 and Moses said who shall I say is sent God I am that I am. That is I am God. I have no beginning.

I have no end. So when Jesus uses the phrase I am in John's gospel echo amy in the Greek he's letting us know that this is the creator of the universe. It's not just I'm doing this or I'm doing that. He's he's claiming to be the the God of the universe, the creator of the universe when he says, "I am the resurrected, the light. I am the good shepherd." And so forth.

And so Jesus asserts in in the very first thing he says here, he says, "I am the creator of I am the source of all life. and you're standing by the grave of Lazarus, but I'm the one who's given life to every living being on planet Earth. So you can have confidence I can fix problem for you. The God of the universe, the creator of all life, I'm standing beside you. If you believe in me, Martha, if you believe in me here in Maui in 2026, even though you die, you will live again because of I am the creator of the universe and I am the source of all life.

And then Jesus demonstrated his authority over death. When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound was stripped of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him and let him go." And so when when they raised Lazarus from the dead, the astonishing thing was, you think that the religious leaders would be feel happy about this and the religious leaders would say, "Oh, really? He is he is divine. He's just raised a man from the dead who's been dead four days.

But the text goes on to say that the religious leaders were so upset about this because the whole world is going to follow after him if he can raise the dead from the graves. And they went back to Jerusalem and they plotted to kill him. Better to kill this one man than have the Romans come and destroy our temple. We don't want to lose our institution, said those religious leaders. And so we better kill the son of God.

But Jesus demonstrates in this passage here, he has the authority to call anybody from the grave many years ago. It was about five years ago. Can I tell you a story about the kid that came to life in the Philippines? Oh, I'll lose track of these things. I'm sorry.

Well, there was a kid who was born. It was born seven months, two months premature. It was in an animist village where doctors said no missionaries can ever come here. The animist doctor was worshiping the spirits and manipulating the spirits and it was a teenage mom. She lost her child in child birth prematurely and the child was wrapped up and it was put on a funeral p.

It was going to be burnt later that day and the teenage mom said before you burn my child invite those Christian missionary advent have them pray with my baby. The witch doctor says no we're not going to do that. She says my baby the wish doctor says the baby was born two months premature that means soul is incomplete even if the body comes back to life soul is incomplete non saying but anyway the mother she sent a message and these two Filipino missionaries came up to that village the mother said my child is dead pray for him like Jesus raised his kid from the dead and those missionaries prayed nothing happen. And the witch doctor said, "Aha." He said, "Jesus cannot raise the dead to life. We're going to burn this child." The mother says, "No, we're going to have a meal and then we're going to pray one final time." They had a meal and as they were having that meal, that baby from the the cloth, it coughed into life.

And they run unwrapped the baby and the mother was overwhelmed with joy. And um pretty much the entire village said we want to be baptized today as Christ because the witch doctor said the child is dead but Jesus has the authority to call the dead back to life again. And so that was a story that was one of my own missionaries was involved in that the Philippines a few years ago. I know that in the mission field God raises the dead to life because that's sometimes the only way you can break through the forces of darkness and the hold that we have people lives. doesn't always happen obviously but sometimes God in his mysterious ways does these things because this is the only way that the gospel can go forward people can be liberated fear of the spirits when Jesus himself rose from the dead apostle Paul said it was with power the gospel concerning his son Paul talking about the gospel of Jesus who was ascended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be son of God with what power according to the spirit of hol holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.

And that word power in the Greek is dunameus. What word do you think comes from dunameus in England? Dynamite. Exactly. So that that word is dynamite.

Now let me ask you the question. If dynamite goes off in your life, is your life ever the same again? No. So when Jesus rose from the dead, it was like a dynamite explosion. That word is power, but it's like a dynamite explosion.

And so when the resurrected Jesus comes into your life, there is a change. Which means that when you follow Jesus Christ and you say, "I'm going to follow him," there is a change in your life. Your life looks different. Your values are different. Your principles are different.

Your hopes, your fears are different. And so when Jesus was declared son of God with dynamite power by his resurrection from the dead, that's an indication of the dynamite that Jesus wants to go off in our lives. Now, some people may say, well, what about the thief on the cross? Remember the thief on the cross? And he said, Jesus, he says, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

And and then it says, it's on the screen. It says, then he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus replied, truly I tell you, and do you see the little comma in red there? Today you'll be with me in paradise. Now, if your Bible version says, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." Does that mean that Jesus was promising that he and the thief would be in paradise later that day?

Is that what it means? Is that what the grammar? Truly I tell you, today you will be with me. Yeah, that's what he's saying. That's if you put the comma there.

also shift comma truly I tell you today comma you will be with me in paradise that means I'm telling you today but sometime in the future you're going to be with paradigm so where you put the comma fundamentally shifts the meaning of that sentence you know grammar matters look at those two sentences there let's eat grandpa or let's eat grandpa what's the It's a comma. It's like a breath, like a momentary pause. Like grammar matters. Okay, grammar absolutely matters. And in this case, when Jesus spoke with the thief on the cross, the good news for us today is there is no comma in the Greek language.

So when we add the comma uh if you add the comma um truly I tell you today you will be you'll be with me in paradise you cannot argue that Jesus was telling him that that very day they were going to be in paradise because that requires a comma after the word you after I tell you but there is no Greek in the in the Greek there no comma in the Greek language so we add the comma and it has a profound theological significance but it doesn't exist in the Greek language and we know knew that Jesus did not go to paradise later that day after he died with a with the with the um thief because on resurrection morning uh two days later he died on Friday he rose on the Sunday Jesus said to Mary Magdalene do not hold on to me because I have not yet ascended to the father so we know that Jesus did not go to heaven on the day he died as some people say with the thief because two days later he said to Mary Magdalene don't hold me because I have not yet ascended my father. And so that verse that people use here, there truly I tell you, comma, today you will be with me in paradise. Now you know how to respond to that. There is no comma in the Greek language. And by adding the comma, you fundamentally change the meaning of the sentence.

Just like grandpa is grateful, there is a comma in this sentence here. So what happens in this fourth stage of life? the resurrection. The Apostle Paul describes it thus. He says, "Behold, I will tell you a mystery.

We will not all die, but we will all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, this is the coming of Christ. And the dead will be raised what? Imperishable. And we will be changed.

For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality." I say, "Praise God for that." that when Jesus comes again, those who are alive and who are faithful to him, they will be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. And this mortal body puts on immortality and this perishable body puts on imperishability and we are changed so that we are now fit for eternity and our mortal bodies have now become immortal. I think that's really good news, don't you? Like this the the coming of Jesus is not just the blessed hope. I would say to you, it's our only hope.

It's our only hope. It's what keeps us going in dark moments. And what about the resurrection of the wicked? Why does God raise them again at the end of time? We find the answer in Revelation 20:12.

It says, "And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened." Also, another book was opened, the book of life. That was the Lamb's Book of Life that we covered a few nights ago. And the dead were judged according to their work as recorded in the books. And so the reason God raises the wicked, their graves in the resurrection of the wicked um for the final judgment, it's so that the entire universe knows that when God chose made a decision who is fit for eternity and who is not fit for eternity, everybody understands that God's judgments are true and just. Nobody can ever question those judgments again.

Because if people question the judgments of God, you have the seed of sin and you have the whole sin problem taking place, right? Wicked will be raised from the dead that final moment of judgment. And then what happens to the wicked after that? Bible says this. and death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.

This is the second death, lake of fire. Anyone whose name was not found in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire. So, you may die your first death um here in Maui. Um but um ultimately, if you're resurrected in the resurrection of the righteous, you are being raised to eternal life. Praise the Lord for that.

But if you die here in Maui and you die apart from God without faith in Christ as a sinner, then you'll be raised at the end of time for final judgment. But then after that you go into the lake of fire which is the called the second death. It's not called um this not called death pain or torturing or suffering. It's the second death once and for all final destruction of the wicked. You say well I don't want that to happen.

Well if the doctor cuts out from your lungs tomorrow. You want to take that cancer home on a nurture right or would you rather that cancer in I want that. So the only way that God can protect our universe is when sin um is eradicated once and for all. That involves death those who reject God. The Bible says, "Blessed and holy are those who bear in the first resurrection and resurrect the righteous.

Over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ. They will reign with him for a thousand years. When those thousand years are over this beautiful image you see on the screen, this is one of the most precious scripture speaks about when the righteous come down new Jerusalem, new heaven, new earth. You read there it says, "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth." So unfortunat that moment and Michigan will be no more in that moment. But God is going to create a new heaven and a new earth.

Says, "For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride and born for a husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, The home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them and they will be his peoples and God himself will be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more. Mourning and crying and pain will be no more for the former things have passed away. Isn't that a beautiful picture of the new heavens, new earth? That everything that causes pain in this world is going to be no more. God's going to wipe away every tear from our eyes.

It's a beautiful picture of what go God has in store for those who are faithful to him today. And so the Apostle Paul in conclusion, our time is up. The Apostle Paul says this, "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. We declare to you by the word of the Lord that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.

For the Lord himself with a cry of command, the archangel's call, the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. and we who are alive, who are left, be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore, encourage one another with these words. These are beautiful words.

And when Jesus comes again, he's going to call the righteous from their graves with the voice of the archangel, sound of the trumpet of God. And those who have died trusting in Christ will be called from their graves. those who are alive when Jesus comes again be caught up together so that we meet our Lord in the air and we are taken from this planet of suffering. That's a beautiful promise in scripture. It means that you know you do not need to grieve at the at the graveside of a loved one.

You know that one day Jesus is coming back to call them from that grave the promise of eternal life. So our last screen here is this tonight. It's a question that Jesus asked Martha, but it's a question he asks us tonight. Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.

Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die." Then Jesus asks her a question, and it's a question that we he asked of us tonight as well. Do you believe this? Do you believe this? And she said to him, "Yes, Lord. I believe that you are the Messiah, the son of God, the one coming into the world.

And in response to that, Jesus raised her brother Lazarus from the dead. That question of Jesus to Martha is a question we can ask tonight. Do you believe this? If you believe that one day we'll hear the voice of the archangel, hear the trumpet of God, we'll see Jesus coming in the clouds of glory with myriads and myriads of angels. He's coming to raise all of those who died with faith in him and save those who survived earth's final crisis.

Then you would then we can live with hope today. We live with hope. That's the blessed hope. It's our only hope. We're not going to have an altar call tonight, but I just want to leave you with this question.

Do you believe this? If you believe this, then we face death not as a as the ultimate enemy, but death is a beat enemy. It was conquered on Calvary, was conquered on resurrection morning. Death may have a sting, but it's not the end of the story. If we believe what Jesus said here, I am the creator God.

I am the resurrect and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. If we believe this, this promise of Jesus, we have the promise of eternal life. You believe this?

I believe it. My prayer is that we can all believe this promise of Jesus. And when he comes again, he's coming for me, coming for you. Amen. Let's close with a word of prayer.

Our heavenly father, we thank you tonight for these promises of Jesus. Father, I thank you that in a world of sorrow, a world of cancer, in a world of aging and dementia, in a world where our bodies age and no longer function as they did. I thank you, Lord, that we need not dwell on the downsides, the fine, sometimes what feels like the inevitable. I thank you that we can see beyond the grave. We can see beyond the grief.

We know that one day Jesus is coming for his own. And I pray Lord as we prayed earlier this week that every member, every person whose head is bowed here tonight that they will indeed believe these promises of Jesus. Doesn't cost any money to believe this. We don't have to sacrifice any. We simply have to believe in our heart.

When we take Jesus at his word, our names are enter into the lamb's book of life. And we know, Father, that when Jesus comes again, he's coming for everyone here tonight. I pray, Lord, that when Jesus comes in the clouds of glory, he's going to come for everyone who is present here tonight. All those who are watching online. Father, in a world of suffering, fill our hearts tonight with the blessed hope, the only hope, the name of Jesus, we ask.

Right. We're not here for the next two nights, but we are back here on Thursday. And uh, Brother Ernie, Sister Kim, what is your