Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] So what are you going to say about this one?
[00:00:04] A man cornered me at a funeral.
[00:00:08] It was the funeral of his deceased brother in law.
[00:00:12] And to be honest with you, his brother in law was an awful person, an absolute jerk, verbally abusive to his wife. Many suspected even more than that who was this man's sister.
[00:00:27] And this man despised his brother in law.
[00:00:32] In the final years of this man's life before he died, he just kind of isolated to himself. He didn't like people, he wanted to be alone. He retired, didn't have much and just stayed at home alone and became a very miserable person.
[00:00:49] Not only did he never confess Christ, he hated the idea of believing and submitting to Christ and rejected the gospel.
[00:01:00] And so his family asked me to preach his funeral.
[00:01:05] But this brother in law, which I was glad to do, this brother in law, this relative was in no way. He met me at the funeral home and he was in no way going to allow me to preach him into heaven, which I didn't plan to.
[00:01:23] I talked about things that this man did professionally that were very impressive and good.
[00:01:31] I talked about the fact that he was created in the image of God and deserves honor. And there was much about his life that many benefited from except those closest to him, to be honest with you. And I did not preach him into heaven.
[00:01:49] And I did not have to say that as far as we know, he's in hell right now because when I began to talk about the judgment of God, when I began to talk about hell, there was an overwhelming uneasiness throughout the room, as if everybody knew.
[00:02:09] And I wish I could have made that event something better and something different.
[00:02:17] I preached the gospel to those who were there. This man had already made his decision.
[00:02:22] The point where was the people in front of me if they would believe the gospel?
[00:02:27] And maybe you've been to funerals like that and it's just absolutely hopeless and miserable.
[00:02:36] But here's the thing.
[00:02:38] As Christians, we lose credibility when we are fake and we tell lies in the face of death.
[00:02:47] We shouldn't be liars and we should not be hokey in the face of death.
[00:02:54] And here's why.
[00:02:56] Death is the dividing line between hope and hopelessness in the world.
[00:03:03] And in the face of death, God puts us in those situations to witness what is true, what is the only hope for anyone who lives is that they would ultimately believe and die in Jesus. That is the only hope. And we must be truthful about those things.
[00:03:24] Death is the dividing line between hope and hopelessness in the world.
[00:03:31] And as we move through the book of First Thessalonians. As I said in the beginning, you could label this book End Time Witnesses or Last Day witnesses that this church that Paul has planted has grown in this city.
[00:03:48] And their witness for Christ is evident to all. But part of their witness. Paul has taught them that they should expect the coming of Christ at any moment.
[00:04:00] And so they have something to say to death. They have something to say to the end of time, where we are all headed. They have something truthful to give themselves hope and the world around them. And as believers at funerals, we have something powerful and hopeful to Witness. Notice verse 13. We first of all see that we are to grieve in a way that makes much of Jesus. This is the hope we are to display even in grief, a hope that makes much of Jesus notice verse 13.
[00:04:38] But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep. And again we read through 1st Thessalonians and we realize that much of what Paul is doing here is discipleship. The church was planted on a three week mission trip where Paul goes into synagogues and he's pleading with Greeks and Gentiles to believe the gospel. And they believe the gospel and they follow after Christ and they, they teach them as much as they can within three weeks. And then later Paul sends Timothy back to answer questions. And one of the questions that they have is what happens to those who die? You tell us to wait for Jesus to come at any moment. Well, what about our family and friends that die before he comes back?
[00:05:33] What happens to them? And notice this phrase, those who are asleep. This is a euphemism for death that's used in Scripture. They are sleeping. And it is an imagery that is meant to give us hope.
[00:05:52] Jesus uses this imagery and here Paul does, to say death is temporary. Their body in some sense is sleeping. Jesus said this of Lazarus before he raised him from the dead. That is what the term cemetery almost said seminary cemetery means.
[00:06:14] It means sleeping place the bodies in the ground, are only there for a moment, they are sleeping. But notice those who have died, their bodies have been placed in the ground. Paul says, I don't want you to be uninformed about what's going to happen in them. I know that's a pressing issue. Did they miss out on the second coming of Christ?
[00:06:38] And he says that you may not grieve as others who have no hope. And I first of all want you to notice, we are to grieve.
[00:06:48] He doesn't say, in light of those who are just sleeping don't worry about it. Don't cry, don't mourn.
[00:06:55] It's okay.
[00:06:57] No, he understands. You are going to grieve in the face of death.
[00:07:02] You're going to mourn. And the truth is, Christians are the only ones who can mourn rightly, because we understand what is coming and we understand what has happened to our loved one who has died, especially those who are in Christ. And he says, we don't want you to grieve as those who do not have hope.
[00:07:24] Now, this word hope is confident, expectation. You are waiting on something. It's not as though you're wishing something would happen. It's not as though there's this secret or mystery out there and you just hope and wish that it's good in the end.
[00:07:41] No, the Christian knows what is coming.
[00:07:44] Jesus is coming back, and the Christian is waiting for that. But there are those in this culture specifically, and people we know who don't have that hope.
[00:07:57] They're not waiting for something else. This, in their mind, is all there is.
[00:08:03] In Thessalonica, there was a common saying, I was not.
[00:08:09] Was and I am not. That's all life is. At one moment, I didn't exist. I existed. And then when I die, nothing. I just go into the ground. You've probably heard people say that, people who make light of death. What happens when you die? It's a good question to ask folks when you're sharing the gospel. What do you think happens when you die?
[00:08:33] And many people today would just say, well, I go in the ground.
[00:08:36] I don't really know. I really don't care.
[00:08:38] Make light of it.
[00:08:41] There's also folks who avoid.
[00:08:44] Is also one reason we use terminology that doesn't really stare death in the face.
[00:08:51] We'll say someone passed away because we don't want to say death.
[00:08:57] Or we'll say sorry about your loss because we don't want to say sorry they died, but they didn't really pass away, and they're not lost.
[00:09:08] If we're a believer, we know where they're a believer. We know where they are. We didn't lose them. We know their story. And I understand people say that and. And there's nothing wrong with that, but where do those things come from? We also move in to cliches when we talk about death as though we have no hope and. And as though we don't know what really happened to them. We begin to even make things up.
[00:09:36] The sort of things that I've heard at funerals about what people are now doing who have died. Well, they're on the back nine. They're in heaven playing golf with Jesus, probably.
[00:09:47] You don't know there's golf. I hope there's golf in heaven. I know there will be baseball, but I don't know about golf. There will be no soccer, but we just try to make sense of death.
[00:10:02] Time heals all wounds. The worst thing I've heard at a funeral was standing around a casket of a loved one. And someone looked at me and said, she's probably in heaven with Aunt Janice right now telling Jesus what to do.
[00:10:19] And I said, no, she ain't doing that.
[00:10:24] But why do we do that?
[00:10:26] We just make things up because we want to deal with it in this distant way. And as believers, we have something to say. And I would say this. There's a book by Randy Alcorn called Heaven, and he talks about sanctified imagination.
[00:10:45] There's things that, in our mind, we don't know what heaven's going to be like, but we can sanctify our imagination, but we have to do that with the word of God.
[00:10:56] The word of God is our authority when we think about what's coming. And this is why Paul is teaching these believers. I want you to know what's next. I want you to know what has happened to your loved one. I don't want you to have to make things up. I don't want you to be hopeless. And we see here in verse 14 that our hope is rooted in the truth of the gospel. I don't want you to be ignorant. Verse 14.
[00:11:24] For because don't be misled or uninformed. Because we believe.
[00:11:31] We believe something true and of cosmic, galactic importance. And what is that? That Jesus died and rose again.
[00:11:44] The gospel changes the way we think about death.
[00:11:48] The gospel changes the way that we think about the future.
[00:11:53] The gospel changes the way we think about what is ahead of us, what is in front of us. And it is rooted in the truth that Jesus died and rose again. And that is the dividing line in the face of death.
[00:12:09] Do you have hope? If you do not believe Jesus died and rose again, you have no hope.
[00:12:15] If you do, you have amazing hope.
[00:12:21] Hope rooted in the gospel.
[00:12:23] In Genesis 3, we see sin comes into the world. And our Bibles tell us that through sin, death comes into the world.
[00:12:32] We in Adam decided we would live outside of God's authority, which means we have chosen death.
[00:12:40] We have chosen to separate ourselves from God.
[00:12:44] And so because of our sin, we deserve to be separated from God forever and ever. But the gospel is this Jesus died for your sin on the cross. It was Jesus who was forsaken, who was separated, who only knew God's judgment on the cross.
[00:13:06] And to prove that this sin payment was acceptable, God raised him from the dead. And here is the logic.
[00:13:15] If sin has been paid for, the curse of death can now be lifted. And it can be lifted for those who believe in Jesus. They say, my debt to God, my sin has been paid for. So now in Christ, when I believe the gospel, I'm in Christ, I'm accepted in Christ, I, I no longer deserve death.
[00:13:36] And so now there's hope for the believer. Jesus died and rose again.
[00:13:43] He was forsaken. So you do not have to be forsaken and separated.
[00:13:48] He is ascended as the victor over sin and death. A former corpse ruling and reigning, conquering sin and death. Now why is that important for those who have died?
[00:14:02] Are they separated from God?
[00:14:05] I mean, their bodies in the ground?
[00:14:09] Hold on, you said that we didn't have to be forsaken because of Christ, but now they are in the ground, they're separated from us.
[00:14:20] And what Paul is saying, and here is our hope.
[00:14:23] Even though they're separated from us, they're not separated from God.
[00:14:28] In Christ there is this hope. And before we move on, I want to be very clear.
[00:14:33] It is only through Jesus. If Jesus died for sin and you accept his death for your sin, you can be forgiven and you can be given this hope of eternal life in the face of eternal death, which is what you deserve. But it is only in Jesus, in it is because we believe Jesus and died, died and rose again. People don't go to heaven through your sentimentality.
[00:15:02] And that often happens when people die.
[00:15:05] We get very sentimental and we begin to say things that are Christless.
[00:15:11] You will know someone as the person I talked about earlier who's just a scoundrel and we all know that.
[00:15:19] But then people will stand around and talk. Yeah, he's probably watching the race with Del Senior today or driving his tractor and what's going on there. It's just sentimentality.
[00:15:31] It is only through Jesus or you even hear this, you know, he was a great guy and if anyone made it to heaven, it's him.
[00:15:43] You don't get to heaven by being a great guy or a great woman.
[00:15:48] You get to heaven through Jesus. That's his point here. It is Jesus that separates hope and hopelessness. And we must believe in Jesus. So if you're here today, you need to believe in Jesus today or we're going to be standing around at your funeral. And it's going to be these awkward conversations.
[00:16:06] We're going to be trying to make things up, to give us hope. Give us the hope today by believing in Jesus only for salvation, repenting of your sin and coming to faith in Christ.
[00:16:19] He is the only way. He is the truth. He is the life.
[00:16:23] He is the resurrection.
[00:16:26] You want to know what's relevant preaching today?
[00:16:29] You believe in Jesus, he will raise your corpse up from the ground.
[00:16:35] What other hope do you want? Believe in Jesus. This is our hope that he died and rose again.
[00:16:41] But even so. Notice the text continues. There's even more.
[00:16:45] He died and rose again, which gives us hope. But Paul says, I want to know. I want you to know there's even more hope. Through Jesus. God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep and so their body is in the ground.
[00:16:59] Where are they?
[00:17:00] What's going to happen to them?
[00:17:04] Well, God's going to bring them back through Jesus.
[00:17:08] What does that mean, their bodies in the ground?
[00:17:12] Well, where are they? Notice God will bring with him.
[00:17:16] That is the point.
[00:17:18] They are with Jesus right now.
[00:17:20] This is what the Bible teaches. When we die, our body goes into the ground, but our spirit goes to be with the Lord. This is what Paul teaches in first Corinthians. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
[00:17:35] Even in Philippians, he says, I want to stay here and preach the gospel. I want to stay here and serve you. But I don't know what's better. To live is Christ, but to die is gain. To go and be with the Lord would be good too, to be with the Lord. Paul assumes when he dies and his body's in the ground, his spirit is with the Lord.
[00:17:58] We see this even with the thief on the cross.
[00:18:01] He looked at Jesus as king and Jesus said, today you will be with me in paradise. Even though your body is going to die on this cross, your spirit will be with me. Where my spirit's going, where I'm going, my person is going in heaven. And notice, he says he will bring with them those who have fallen asleep. There's future. It's not just over when they're in the ground. There is a future and is a future because of Jesus. And we want to emphasize all the way through this isn't just sentimentality. This isn't just hoping for the good. He says, no, it's because Jesus died and rose again. And it's because Jesus will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. It's not a mystery where they are.
[00:18:47] They are with Jesus, and they're coming back with Jesus again.
[00:18:53] Now, one thing we got to understand is grief.
[00:18:56] And grieving with hope doesn't gloss over pain.
[00:19:00] Some of us think that in the face of death.
[00:19:04] And I talk to people all the time, and they talk about loved ones and they say, I never grieve their death.
[00:19:10] And it's tragic.
[00:19:13] God in the scriptures calls us to lament over things that are bad and horrible and death is the worst.
[00:19:20] And we are to weep and we are to mourn in the face of death.
[00:19:24] God created the world good. Everything was under his power. And his Word that brought all life into existence. We stepped away from his Word. We brought death into the world. And so death isn't natural.
[00:19:41] People say it's just. It's not natural.
[00:19:44] It's the most unnatural thing on the planet.
[00:19:48] Death is. And some of you know that. Well, you've experienced the life and joy and goodness of this person, and then they are snatched away.
[00:20:00] And it's devastating. What's going.
[00:20:02] That's horrible. That's painful.
[00:20:06] You are meant to weep over that. And so we don't gloss over the pain.
[00:20:12] Jesus himself stood at the tomb of Lazarus right before he is about to bring him from the dead.
[00:20:21] And what does the Bible teach us?
[00:20:24] Jesus wept.
[00:20:27] Why did he weep?
[00:20:30] He saw death, which is the opposite of what God brought into the world, which is life. And it crushed his soul.
[00:20:39] The description there of Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus is that he stomped his foot in anger at death like a horse that is about to rage and go to battle. And he is angry and he is furious at death.
[00:20:57] And we should be, too.
[00:20:59] That is okay.
[00:21:01] That is good.
[00:21:03] You are leaning into the realness of. Of what it means to live in a world cursed with death. And you fill it.
[00:21:11] You should grieve. You do not gloss over your pain. The presence of someone you loved is ripped away.
[00:21:19] The stability, the security, the joy that they brought to your life is gone. And you should acknowledge that.
[00:21:28] In doing so, you are acknowledging this isn't the way God made things.
[00:21:33] God is good and God is the one who brought life into the world. But grief that ignores Jesus is hopeless.
[00:21:41] And so grief with hope doesn't gloss over pain. But grief cannot ignore Jesus, push him to the side.
[00:21:50] No. As believers, we witness a hope that we can stare death into the face, all of its pain, all of its agony, and then hope for something better and know and wait for something better that is coming. That is our witness.
[00:22:06] That's why we read things like the Apostle Paul writes in Philippians, to live as Christ and to die is gain.
[00:22:15] To die is gain. Why I get to be with Jesus. And in the face of death and suffering, we witness that hope.
[00:22:23] Where Paul would say, oh, death, where is your sting?
[00:22:27] And some of us know death has a stinger, and it hurts and it's painful, but its point is it's not eternal.
[00:22:38] And so we stand around at funerals with hope.
[00:22:42] We stand around at funerals weeping.
[00:22:45] We stand around at funerals and we preach the Gospel.
[00:22:49] Some of the most powerful sermons I've ever heard are standing at the casket with the husband, wife or parent and tears flowing and them saying, but she's with Jesus.
[00:23:06] He's with Jesus.
[00:23:08] That's when life gets real.
[00:23:10] It's sanctifying because it embraces the realness of life while at the same time embracing the realness of the Gospel.
[00:23:21] And so we grieve to make much of Jesus.
[00:23:24] And the way we grieve is with hope. We stand up and we say, yeah, they're a sinner.
[00:23:30] This is my relative. I know their sin. I experience. We don't. We don't make them out to be a saint or sinless or perfect.
[00:23:38] But we stand there and say, because they believed in Jesus, they are with him now.
[00:23:42] And we turn around and we say, let me tell you about Jesus.
[00:23:46] Let me tell you about the hope that we have in Jesus as Christians. And what is that hope? It gets specific, beginning in verse 15. The hope we have in Jesus includes resurrection, rapture and reunion. Notice verse 15. For we declare to you, we announce with authority by a word from the Lord. Now, again, this is discipleship. Paul is passing down teaching that came from Jesus to the apostles and. And now to the church.
[00:24:16] And here is the authoritative word that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord. Now, this word, this phrase, coming of the Lord, it is the perugia. I don't use a lot of Greek words around here, but it means this coming, appearing or visitation.
[00:24:36] And so by the authority of Christ, we who are alive, and we don't die.
[00:24:42] We are waiting for a moment when Jesus will appear and he will visit the planet again.
[00:24:51] In Acts 1, the disciples stood there and they saw Jesus taken into heaven. And then they were told by a messenger, just as you see him going, he's going to return.
[00:25:04] And so we wait for this coming of the Lord. Those who are alive, but notice his point here. We will not precede those who have fallen asleep. Your relative, your loved one, your friend who has died and Their bodies in the ground, they get a head start.
[00:25:21] They didn't miss out on what's coming.
[00:25:24] Your hope is they. They're going to be a part of this too. They didn't miss it. Verse 16. For the Lord himself would descend from heaven with a cry of a command.
[00:25:36] Now, what's interesting about this cry and throughout the rest of scripture, even revelation, Matthew points to this.
[00:25:44] This is this cosmic, not just announcement, but declaration of what is new from Jesus. The same way God created everything with his word in the beginning, Let there be light.
[00:25:59] Jesus will step from heaven with a command and he will say, let all things be made new.
[00:26:07] He will command it.
[00:26:08] He will command what he has paid for in his death and his resurrection to happen on the planet. And all things will be made new. There is an announcement of this. Even with the voice of an archangel and the sound of a trumpet, there will be a declaration that the king has come.
[00:26:30] That is the picture that is going on here. We read of the parable of the bridegroom in the book of Matthew and we think about this midnight cry. A lot of the songs, gospel songs that I grew up on, there's a midnight cry that's going to happen. And here comes Jesus.
[00:26:45] That's what he's describing. Here, out of nowhere, there will be this cosmic siren that goes off and the planet will shake as Jesus asserts his authority in the world again.
[00:27:03] And notice what will happen.
[00:27:05] The dead in Christ will rise first.
[00:27:09] Jesus will command those who are dead to come from their graves. And at that moment, their spirit, who is with him now, will be reunited to that body.
[00:27:20] And that body will be made new. And that body will come out of the vault. That body will come out of the coffin. That body will rip holes in the ground as they come forth and follow Jesus.
[00:27:35] Those who have believed in him that he calls at this command, tombs, cemeteries, catacombs, they will obey Jesus and give up their debt.
[00:27:48] Then what about us? Verse 17.
[00:27:50] Then those who are alive and who are left will be caught up. The word means to be seized or snatched quickly. This is where we get the idea of rapture.
[00:28:01] We will be caught up together with them. Those who have died in Christ, we here will be caught up in the clouds, notice to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.
[00:28:14] I know there's all kinds of eschatology and debates. Does this happen before a great tribulation? In the middle of a great tribulation, after a great tribulation? I believe all this happens at once.
[00:28:27] I Believe all of this happens at once, right before a thousand year reign of Christ. And some of you are flipping in your MacArthur study Bible right now and going, oh, ignore that till after church.
[00:28:41] Here's the point, let's get to the point.
[00:28:44] And it is that we know this is going to happen and we wait for it, we expect it, we're ready for it, we get our lives ready for it. One of the things in the New Testament is if you know Jesus coming back, you better act right, you better live out the gospel.
[00:29:01] But you're also hopeful. What Paul is doing here is not debating end times. He is being pastoral.
[00:29:09] There are people who are weeping over the graves of their loved ones. He said, I want you to know this isn't the end of the story. Jesus is going to come back and there's going to be a squall from heaven and the dead in Christ are going to rise. They're going to be a part of that.
[00:29:25] Now we can go over here and we can debate all the other stuff, but I want you to know and I want you to be hopeful and I want you to be ready for this moment and I want you to grieve with hope because of Jesus. They are with Jesus and at the command of Jesus. They will be resurrected by Jesus and together they will be united. To us and Jesus. This is all about Jesus. It's not a cosmic, Christless fairytale. It's about Jesus and what he has done and what he is doing and what he will do. And because of Jesus, we have hope that the greatest bonds and fellowship and friendship and family that we experience here, death cannot take them away.
[00:30:13] Do you understand that?
[00:30:16] We live this life waiting for the things that we love the most to come to an end.
[00:30:25] You ever sit around table with your family and go, I wonder how many more years we have left.
[00:30:35] I wonder how many more years we have left.
[00:30:38] Maybe it's a specific person. I wonder how much more time we have left with them.
[00:30:43] Or you're even like me. You're the worst case scenario person.
[00:30:47] This is great. When's it all going to come to an end? Something horrible is going to happen tomorrow.
[00:30:53] And we were waiting for it to end. That's how most of us live here now.
[00:30:58] When is this going to stop?
[00:31:01] But in Jesus, what we are doing now is only tasting something that is coming.
[00:31:09] We're getting a glimpse of it now. Something better and glorious is coming. We're not waiting for this to end.
[00:31:17] We're waiting for it to get better in Jesus.
[00:31:21] When we and Our loved ones with resurrected bodies experience love and fellowship that we only get a glimpse of now, a glimmer of now.
[00:31:32] This is the glimmer. The glory is coming.
[00:31:37] And this is drawing us to the glory in Christ. If we are in Christ, the bonds that we love the most can't be broken. And the truth is, you will see here, touch that person again.
[00:31:55] That is the hope that we have.
[00:31:57] Your mom, you will hold her hands again. If she is in Christ, you will look into her eyes again.
[00:32:08] You will hear her voice again. You will hear her laughter.
[00:32:13] Your dad, who you thought was Superman, and then his body was shot through with chemicals to kill the cancer, and you thought, how in the world could that happen to that man?
[00:32:27] Guess what?
[00:32:28] If he's in Christ, all that strength will be resurrected and it'll be even better.
[00:32:35] I often think about my granddad.
[00:32:39] The most humble, really the strongest man that I've ever been around. Worked in tobacco most of his life.
[00:32:46] His hand, it was one of those. I don't know if we got anybody with handshakes like this anymore, but you would shake his hand and it would bring you to your knees. He didn't even mean to do it.
[00:32:58] And all the stories that he would tell and lung cancer took that away.
[00:33:07] I'll never forget the moment I walked into his house and he was in a wheelchair.
[00:33:11] It was like a dream.
[00:33:13] It did not make any sense to me.
[00:33:16] And you know what? In Jesus.
[00:33:19] In Jesus. And because of Jesus, he will be resurrected and we will be reunited and those hands will be stronger than ever. And those stories in Jesus are going to be better.
[00:33:33] That is the hope that we look for. That friend, that child. Their presence brought you overwhelming joy. You will experience it again in Jesus. And so what does Paul tell us to do here? This sermon has application points. One application point, and it is this. Therefore, encourage one another with these words.
[00:33:55] It's applicable. We don't stand around and wonder what's going to happen.
[00:34:01] We talk about what's going to happen.
[00:34:04] Resurrection should be a part of our vocabulary as a church.
[00:34:08] When we talk and people are sick and people are dying, we talk about resurrection. We don't do it in a callous way.
[00:34:17] We don't do it in, hopefully an awkward way. Sometimes it may be, but with care and kindness, we remind one another of resurrection. We remind one another of end times, what Jesus is going to do. The word encourage means to come alongside.
[00:34:36] To come alongside one another. This is one of those one another commands in scripture. You can't obey most of the New Testament directives to believers without other people.
[00:34:48] You've got to love them, you've got to forgive them, you got to serve them, you got to consider them. And here you got to remind them of resurrection, remind one another of resurrection. That's the hope that we have in Christ. And we show up at death with. With these words. We speak them to one another. We say things that are true about death and the future and the afterlife.
[00:35:11] And a lot of people ask me what to tell their kids when death comes. And for some reason, as parents, and I've probably done this too, we just think that's a subject.
[00:35:25] They're not going to have to deal with it till later in life.
[00:35:29] And so often it's not.
[00:35:31] They're young and now they're at the funeral home and death is staring them in the face. And parents say, what do I? What do I say?
[00:35:41] And as best you can, you tell them the truth.
[00:35:44] The Bible talks about death from the very beginning.
[00:35:48] The Bible talks about Jesus dying. You're not gonna be able to share the gospel with them until you explain death to them.
[00:35:56] But you know the hope Christians have.
[00:35:58] Resurrection, rapture, reunion. And as best you can, you explain that to your kids.
[00:36:07] It is a privilege for us as pastors often to do funerals.
[00:36:15] We're called into families, lives. And there's just a bond there when you've done that.
[00:36:20] And it's often a joy to talk about folks in your church and to talk about the irony of their life, their quirks, and to try to capture their personality.
[00:36:31] And the greatest joys in our life are then to tell people there and they're with Jesus relatives who are sitting there with no hope. And we say, whoa, whoa, you should cry, you should grieve. But this person, because I knew them, had hope in Jesus.
[00:36:49] That's one reason some of you need to plan your funerals. I know I get a lot of flack for that. Every detail of my funeral is planned out. Go to Google Docs type funeral. It's right there. Everybody's speaking, every song, time frame for everybody. It's all right there because I don't want y' all to mess it up. I want to get it right.
[00:37:09] And you need to make sure Jesus is preached at your funeral, whatever you got to do to make sure that happens.
[00:37:17] And there are times where we're just there, just be there, just be there for one another.
[00:37:22] But let's make sure we're not just being there, we're serving, we're loving.
[00:37:28] And every now and then there needs to be a whisper.
[00:37:32] You know she's with Jesus.
[00:37:34] You know he's with Jesus.
[00:37:36] You know they're coming again with Jesus.
[00:37:40] And every now and then, we stand in those hopeless moments and it's hard to know what to say.
[00:37:45] But as last day witnesses, we know what's true.
[00:37:49] And in Christ, for friends and families who die in Christ, we know what we're going to say about this one.
