What Do People Believe?
Jeremy MacDonald · Tidal Church Moncton · October 6, 2024 · What Happens When You Die? series
Jeremy MacDonald opens a series on death by weighing popular beliefs about the afterlife and asking whom to trust. Looking at Lazarus in John 11, 1 Thessalonians 4 and the thief in Luke 23, he points to the risen Jesus as our hope.
More from Jeremy MacDonald · The What Happens When You Die? series
Transcript
[0:00] What do you think happens when you die? It's a pretty big question. It's a pretty significant one. It's one that, there's lots of obviously different opinions, but your answer to that question has absolutely profound implications. And when you answer that question, it will lead you down into all sorts of different places for you, for the people around you. And so for the next four weeks, what we're gonna do here at Tidal Church is we're gonna answer that question. We're gonna answer it from a couple of different angles, and we're gonna journey together wrestling with the question about what happens when you, and when I, when anybody, when they die.
[0:48] And the interesting thing about this question is that you, because you don't think about it very often, you kind of have to go back to the moments where this question becomes kind of the essential one. You know, you think about death in particular, only at certain times in your life and in your journey. You think about death, for example, at a funeral. And for some of you, that was this last week, or that's this upcoming week. And so the answer to this question is actually really profound because of the experience that you are in the midst of, because of what you're seeing in the life of somebody else, or the loss of life of somebody else. You also think about death at other times. You think about death in particular around pain of loss. And so for some people, you know, this week has brought up all sorts of those kinds of feelings.
[1:37] And it's not that the person you lost that was lost this even recently or this last week, it's just that the pain of loss and the grief that comes with it journeys with us week in, week out, sometimes for months and years, and sometimes it never actually leaves us. And so you think about death because you think about this person that you continually miss. You know, you think about death maybe at other times, for example, when sickness strikes, you think about when it hits somebody else that's close to you, or maybe it's at your own journey. And all of a sudden life starts to come crashing in around you. And you think about this massive issue because you realize life is precious and it ends sometimes suddenly. And sometimes you see it ending and it becomes a part of the conversation.
[2:24] Or simply this, you know, when somebody actually brings it up, when somebody drags a casket onto the platform and says, "Hey, now you gotta think about it because it's a serious enough issue that we all have to deal with and wrestle with." Now this casket is empty. Just in case you were wondering, we brought it in this last week and we were super grateful to have it. But certainly forgot to mention to a number of people that it was just kind of hanging out backstage, brought up a lot of questions for folks just wandering into the building wondering what is going on. But the point is that this symbolizes, at least in our culture, and for you, you've seen a casket where somebody, or at least somebody's body was there and it forced you to have this serious conversation with yourself.
[3:12] What happened to this person? What happens when you die? Now, people bring up this conversation at all different times. In our house, sometimes it's our kids of all things. My daughter Amber is four years old. She was processing this with Chantel and I, and she said, "So when you die, you die somewhere and then you take the body and you put it somewhere else." And we're like, "Yeah, that's kind of how it works." So she's like, "So when you die, we'll take you and we'll bury you somewhere else." And we're like, "Yeah, that's how it goes." She's like, "I'm gonna be a teenager when that happens, 'cause you guys are really old." I'm like, "Hey, hold on." But she's processing it and I've processed it and you've processed it. I mean, I remember when I saw and experienced the funeral that all of a sudden this was a really personal issue because a friend of mine, no longer the grandparent or the person that had lived a full life, but a friend, somebody that died too soon, and all of a sudden death became this real question.
[4:15] And so all of a sudden the ideas and the things that I think about that you think about around those times, those funerals, it starts kind of bubbling to the surface, coming up. And these things aren't things that are, you know, are gonna sound odd. There are things that we naturally in our culture, you hear all the time, but we should qualify and wonder, are these true statements? Do we believe all of these things? You've heard things like this, that they are just in a better place. And when we get to death, there's this, perhaps this hopefulness that they're in a better place. Well, what place is that? How did they get there? What does that even mean? It brings, at least for me, more questions, but certainly culturally it's out there. Or how about this one? You've heard this one. They're looking down and watching, hopefully not all the time, a little bit terrifying.
[5:03] Grandma's up there watching. I mean, listen, grandma, there's not, and I like, what do you mean by that? Why would they be doing that? Is that something that everybody does once you die? Are they like ghosts now? What do we actually believe about that? Why would they bother paying attention to what's happening down here? How does that even work? How about this one? I hear this one all the time. They got their wings and they became an angel. God needed another angel. Really? Is that how that works? I mean, angels in the Scriptures are terrifying. If you ever read in the Bible about when angels show up, it's like absolutely ridiculously crazy scary. And yet at the same time, there's so many conversations in the Scriptures about how angels came to be and where they come from and what the role is. And so is this something that we believe or just the simple question is, is their spirit actually still with us?
[5:54] And lots of people believe you go around, you ask people questions about death, that they're still with us for some reason, for some purpose. And it's that pop culture thing. In fact, Maria Shriver, who was married to Arnold Schwarzenegger for a number of years, she wrote this book, not necessarily trying to pull out truth from Scripture, at least clearly not by how this goes, but this book that kind of articulates, at least in our culture here today, this ethos of what we believe about what happens when you die. And it's a children's book that she wrote and people would read it to try to bring some level of help or you know, gentleness in the midst of difficult seasons. And so this children's book asking the question, What's heaven, it, she writes this specifically. And this again kind of captures the ethos of our day.
[6:41] It's a beautiful place thinking about heaven, where you can sit on soft clouds. Isn't that the image? I mean, really, clouds, like, just scientifically, it's impossible. But, you know, that's somewhere where my mind goes. But that's the image. And you've talked to other people who are there if you're good throughout your life, by whose standard, though, is the other question I have on that one. But that's the idea. Then you get to go to heaven. And when your life is finished here on earth, who says it's finished? Like, was it somebody with a watch saying your time's up? Like, how does that work? God sends angels down to take you up to heaven to be with Him, which would be, again, terrifying 'cause angels are terrifying.
[7:28] If that's your experience at death. And then all of a sudden you see angels terrifying. And grandma is alive in me. She's watching over us from up there. I want you to know it says the hero. And to her great grandma that even though you are no longer here, your spirit will always be alive in me. This is the culture. This is all complete garbage and not true. But that's the culture, right? That's the idea. It sounds nice. Where does it come from? You've heard this poem as well. This is another angle on this conversation. What happens when you die? Well, maybe this has been read. And this is not to be disparaging, in case, again, you had just heard this recently. But this is a common sentiment, a common poem. Perhaps you've heard it. Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there. I do not sleep.
[8:16] I am a thousand winds that blow. It sounds so nice. I am the diamond glints on snow. I don't understand that. I am the sunlight on ripened grain seems a little bit odd. I'm the gentle autumn rain, but it all rhymes. It's nice. Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there. I do not die, said Clare Harner, before her death. She did actually die in 1977. So that's unfortunate for her. But the point being is that this kind of captures the thought of lots of people, and maybe for you and maybe for your journey, because this isn't something that you want to necessarily think about. You've kind of moved death and dying, and it's easy to do in our culture, into this box that you don't access very often.
[9:04] You know, back in the day, death was always, like, really upfront and personal because you, you know, death was involved in getting your food. Like, you had to experience or you would see, or you'd smell what it meant for an animal to lose its life so that you could survive, or death, because we didn't have the kind of hospital systems that we have today, would be upfront and personal when people that you knew were dying or war. If you're in a war zone, like, death is so in your face. But in our culture, it's easy for it to not be a thing. And when that happens, the truth is that we miss out on these important conversations. And so for many people that think, oh, this isn't a worthwhile conversation, I would read to you C.S. Lewis, the theologian from about a hundred years ago, who was trying to help people understand the significance of this conversation.
[9:53] He wrote this. He says, it's hard to have patience with people who say there is no death or death doesn't matter. There is death, and it matters. And whatever happens has consequences. And they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter. And so here we are, we wade into a big question, a big conversation, knowing that it leads us into some difficult questions beyond just what happens when you die. Questions like, why did God let their death happen? Does this mean that this person, that their time was up? Are we on some kind of clock?
[10:40] Does God need him or her, or what's really happening here? And so what we'll do is we'll kind of walk through these big questions and we'll wrestle with them. And you should know that you've got options around thinking about what happens when you die. I'm gonna obviously present one option for you. But when you look, and when you google around or you're on YouTube or however you want to find your information on this kind of stuff, there's kind of three main thoughts and even kind of saw them referenced in our video. In our interviews with folks, what actually happens when you die. For some people, they'll say it's annihilation, it's complete darkness and blackness. This is the end. The new atheists are fairly famous for this kind of thing. In fact, there was this interaction where one of them was dying of cancer.
[11:27] And the doctor was explaining, your body is failing you. And for the atheist, he said, I am my body. I am one. And the same with my body. When my body is gone, this is the end for me. We often don't think that way, though. You know, you see somebody in a casket and a body of somebody that has passed away and you look and you don't think, that's the person. Like, there's this sense somewhere deep in our souls usually that would look at that and say, yeah, that's their body, but there's something missing. There's a spirit, there's a soul, there's something that is no longer there. It's somewhere else. But for some people, maybe for you, annihilation, the idea of just, it's all over, it's all done. We're now compost is an option for some people, reincarnation, and for much of the world.
[12:17] The idea that you would take your life here on this earth and then you would turn it into something after the fact and restart is an idea. Lots of people think that this is the nature of how reality works. You keep coming back, and people have got lots of stories and there's lots of videos about that. But for most of us and for our conversation, we think that there is this afterlife of some kind. That there's something that happens and it's worth contending with and it's worth talking about. But over the next four weeks, if we miss your question or your concern, what I need you to know is that we want to answer and respond to you. So if you have questions, anything at all, in fact, even if you wanna help us shape the coming weeks, you can send us a text message.
[13:03] This is our church number, anything about death, dying, or the afterlife. And if you text that number, we're gonna collect all of those questions and we will respond to them. We've got a team for this particular series that includes David Way, who has journeyed with all sorts of folks in their last moments. He's done funerals and he's met with families, and he's been with people as they've moved from this life to the afterlife. We've got Jeff Hoyt, who's been a pastor, but also has worked in the funeral industry and has been with many, many families. We've got Nathan Adams, who has thought and studied and searched the Scriptures around this topic. And so if you would send us a question, we would love to respond and we will record a bonus podcast that you can access at the end of this series to make sure that we wrestle with the things that you are thinking about.
[13:49] But through it all, you should ask yourself and all of these kinds of things: Who has the right to speak about death? Who has the right to give you directives or answers in this particular topic? Where have you gotten your information and your thoughts? 'Cause you've got them, like if we sat down and we talked, you would have ideas. Where do they come from? For some people, and for some of us, they come from sometimes near-death experiences or other experiences from people. You know, maybe you read a book of somebody that's experienced heaven. Maybe you've heard of somebody that had this spiritual encounter that clarified things.
[14:37] And maybe you've gone so far as to talk to somebody who says that they can talk to those who have passed on to the other side. And those kinds of experiences have shaped what you think about the afterlife. And it's not to disparage these kinds of things. Like, I have a friend actually, I pastored in Ontario and she had a near-death experience. She was actually very involved in doing seances and tarot card readings, very involved in occultish things. And so she had this experience where she had a traumatic brain injury and ended up in the hospital and she actually had a near-death experience where she knew she wasn't going to experience life in heaven, that she actually felt like as she was having this experience, it was her walking through the valley, the shadow of death.
[15:28] And she was walking to a crisis attorney in hell. And in that moment, she would've described it, this fascinating story. She describes looking up and crying out to Jesus. She knew that only in that moment He was the one that could rescue her. And she came back to the hospital room and in that moment gave her life to Christ. And when people would call her, they would call her looking for readings and seances, tarot cards. And she would tell them, she would say, I know you're looking for the truth. I am so sorry that I led you astray, but I have found the truth and His name is Jesus. And if you would come with me to my church on Sunday, I'll introduce you to Him.
[16:15] And she would bring dozens of people. We just knew when they came in with her. We knew the story, we knew how it would go. And so near-death experiences are fascinating and they're interesting and they have profoundly shaped people's faith. But if that's the only place that we get our information on the afterlife, we should be cautious because that can be led, that can lead us astray. It's not necessarily the truth. We have to check it. The other place that we find lots of understanding about the afterlife is religious men. And it's usually men, if you look throughout history, it's men. Now, sometimes these men are terrible men and will say or do things to lead people astray from the truth. I'm saying it as a religious man standing on a platform with a mic telling you that you should be cautious about anybody that stands with the authority of saying they have answers.
[17:04] You should check it and test it. Because for centuries, and I'm not saying just the Christian faith, but of all faiths, religious men will sometimes lead people astray on some of these really important topics. You should be cautious of religious texts. And it's not just the Christian Scriptures, but there's all sorts of texts that you can look up that have got responses and answers about the afterlife. People have been wrestling with this for thousands and thousands of years. And so you should wonder and test them and whatever you open up, wrestle with what is true. And then naturally what ends up happening is people have their own rational thought. This is the move of the day. Well, I'm gonna trust, I don't wanna trust anything else. I'll trust my own mind and my own brain.
[17:50] And the danger is that that often leads people to thinking, well, if I haven't experienced it, if I can't rationally sort it out, that it doesn't actually exist. And again, a hundred years ago, this theologian, G.K. Chesterton, fascinating character, was dealing with this in this rejection of any kind of spiritual life, any kind of spiritual afterlife. And he wrote this about this, for those that are wrestling with this from a rational mindset: Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials. Even if I believe in immortality, I need not think about it. But if I disbelieve in immortality, I must not think about it. And for some of you, that's been the journey. I just want to put that off to the side. I don't think it's true. And you've actually closed yourself off to something that is profoundly true.
[18:38] So who has the right to speak about the things on the other side of death? I would tell you that in my experience and in my journey of all the people and all of the writings about the afterlife, there's only one person I would trust. There's only one person that I would put my faith in, in the midst of all of this. Because for all of history and all of the writings, every person, every person that has said they have an idea about what it's all about has succumbed to death itself. And no matter what they have said has not changed the fact that eventually they have no longer walked the earth with us. Save for one person, one person who not only predicted His own death and burial, but He predicted that He would defeat death itself.
[19:34] He talked about death as if it was a foe to be vanquished. He talked about death as if it was more than just the moment that the lights go out. He talked about death as if it was the scourge of the earth, but it was one that He had come to destroy. And then He proved it by not just predicting His death and His burial and His resurrection, but being the one to actually pull it off. The only person that I would ever trust, and this is me saying it, this is up... You gotta figure this one out for you. But the only person I would trust to tell me a story about what death is all about and what happens when you die is the person that says, I will defeat it, and then actually does it. It's the resurrected Messiah, the one person who has changed the course of human history.
[20:22] And in particular, it hinges on this one particular moment in the New Testament. We have it clear from the authors. The reason that we have the Christian faith is not because of the Bible, it's because of the resurrection, the event itself of Jesus actually rising from the dead, being seen by all sorts of people, the eyewitnesses that came to witness this character, this person because of His resurrection. That's the cornerstone of what we believe. And because of that, we do whatever He says and believe everything that He has called us to as Christians. And so if you're here and you're, or you're watching or you're listening and you're wondering, my answer to you, what happens when you die is to start with a conversation with Jesus.
[21:12] And fortunately, Jesus talked about death quite a bit actually, but He talked about it very differently than we do usually. He talked about death almost in this kind of chill, easygoing way that He kinda lowered the temperature to the death conversation. We would sometimes feel like this is like the ultimate thing. And for some reason Jesus was pretty passive about the whole thing. In fact, if you look at the example of His friend Lazarus, He uses particular language that the early church, that the Christians immediately after the resurrection would pick up and use to describe what happens when you die in John 11. This is what happens. Jesus with His disciples knew that His friend, His very good friend Lazarus, was not well and then knew in a moment that Lazarus was no longer with us.
[22:10] But Jesus said, is it this way? He said, our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but now I'll go and wake him up. To which His disciples said, well, Lord, 'cause of course they don't understand this moment, Lord, if he is sleeping, he will soon get better. Like you don't have to go wake him up. He'll probably wake up on his own. But they thought that Jesus meant that he was simply sleeping, but Jesus meant that Lazarus had actually died. He had died and was buried and they put him in the, like, he was done for, that was it. But Jesus, when He talks about death, Jesus talks about it like that. He was asleep. I'll just go wake him up.
[22:57] The New Testament is filled with these examples of the early church picking up this language. Paul actually affirms this exact idea in 1 Thessalonians. This is what he says. Now, we do not want you to, speaking to the church in Thessalonica. We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters. Now picture this, it's a congregation, it's a group of people gathered together. Paul's trying to articulate faith in Christ. What does this mean for us in this day? And explaining this to a gathering of Christians, he says, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, same conversation, so that you will not grieve like the rest who have no hope.
[23:42] You see, there's something about the hope that comes from within the movement of those that look to Jesus, that there is hope because of what Jesus did on the cross and what He actually accomplished. You see, sometimes we think that the moment of Jesus's death and His crucifixion was simply about the forgiveness of sins. And then we think that that just means that He's paid the price for the wrong things. Like it's this list of things that I've done wrong in my life and like Jesus paid for that. But it was so much more profound. Sinfulness and death is actually much larger than just a list of things that I've done wrong, that you've done wrong. And so when Jesus conquers death and sin, He's actually reordering the entire world.
[24:36] And the early church understood that although there is less and no hope for those apart from Christ, that those of us that carry the message of Jesus, that we've got all the hope and that we desperately want the world to know, we desperately want you to know that those who are asleep, that you don't have to grieve. He goes on, he says this, if we believe that Jesus died and rose again. So also we believe that God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep as Christians, therefore encourage one another with these words, which brings the obvious question, why Jesus?
[25:22] Why Paul, why early church refer to death as sleep? Because people who fall asleep wake up and people who die in Christ wake up. That's the hope, that's the transformation that happens that Jesus defeated death itself. And so it's not the end of the story. We still grieve and we honor the fact that it's sad and that we miss people. And that's understandable. We put people in caskets, we put them in the ground. Of course it's terrible. But when somebody's in Christ, the conversation's completely different because we know that's not the end of the story. The story is so much bigger and it's so much greater. And this is the hope of the resurrection.
[26:09] And it's so much even bigger than just the defeat of death, of the moment of turning off and and going into the afterlife. There's so much more to what Jesus has done for us. And we live our lives expecting to uncover new graces and new things from Him each and every day. But at this moment to realize what happens when you die in Jesus, it's this great freedom knowing that it's not the end. Now for lots of Christians, then there's all the extra questions that come from that. Well, what actually happens? And we're gonna take these few weeks, we're gonna talk about the actual moment and what happens. We're gonna actually uncover and talk about what heaven is really like.
[26:57] It's surprising actually. But a lot of times in the Scriptures when we read about heaven, we discover that there's actually this future reality where God is gonna change this earth back into His original hope and plan, and that Jesus is gonna bring His reign to this earth, that we're gonna experience this kind of physical resurrection. That's a profound thing for us to celebrate. And but between now and then, that we still have this experience and we still can call it heaven, but it's not quite that final hope that we're hoping for. It's instead this paradise, this experience with Jesus. And we know it to be true again, not because I'm saying it, but because the resurrected Messiah explained this on the cross to the person next to Him that acknowledged who He was because he knew that he was being, there's two thieves on either side of Jesus on the cross.
[27:52] One of them was able to articulate who Jesus was. And because of that, we get this story in Luke. He says, the thief says we deserve to die for our crimes, but this man hasn't done anything wrong. And then he said to, said, Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom, understanding and knowing who He was dying next to, Jesus replies, I assure you today, today in the moment, you will be with Me in paradise. This is the hope. And we believe it because Jesus actually pulls off the resurrection. That in that moment, in that excruciating moment of death for the thief on the cross, that what happened when he died is that he got to experience what it was like to be with Jesus in paradise.
[28:49] And this is the hope of the church, the New Testament Christians, those that we carry the mantle today, for those of you who have put your faith and trust in Christ. Paul wrote this to the church in Corinth again explaining this, "Yes, we are fully confident and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord." He talked about this struggle because he understood that we had things to do. He has things to do, Paul talking on this earth. And yet there's this hope that he is yearning for, knowing the promise of what happens when you die. And so for you, for me, the question is, what do we do with that?
[29:39] What do we do with that kind of hope? Still lots of questions, still lots to wrestle with, still lots to process, and we'll go there, absolutely. But to start, we have to remember that it's Jesus that speaks to what happens when you die. It's Jesus that gives you the hope of eternity. It's Jesus that sparks then, even for Paul, is understanding that although we yearn for what comes after that, we know that we have responsibilities and things to do here. And for you in this moment, it's, would you fully align yourself with this resurrected King, knowing that it makes all the difference in the world?
[30:31] And so what we wanna do as a Tidal Church is to walk through the Scriptures and these stories and this understanding so that you can be confident, not just for your own journey, but for those around you that you need to bring this kind of hope to, because the world needs this hope. The world needs this understanding. The world needs Jesus. Amen. So in a moment, I'm gonna pray and our team, we're gonna respond together and we'll spend some more time talking about the moment of death, and we will have an extended opportunity for people to respond. And so if you know somebody that desperately needs to put their faith and trust in Jesus and they're not here, I would say you should bring them next week.
[31:18] But if you're here and you're hearing this and you're realizing for the first time that Jesus is the one you need to put your faith and trust in, you can do that here in this moment. You can join with me in prayer in a moment. And at the end of our service, we have a prayer team. They always come up, they've got some extra resources for you. We would love to put those in your hands because we want you to know what happens when you die can be clear, can be assured, but it also can change everything for you right now. And then for all of us, let our hope be in Jesus, knowing He's the one that answers these questions for us all. And we look to Him and to Him alone. Would you join me in praying? Heavenly Father, it's wild to think that thousands of years later after Your death, burial, and resurrection, that we can still come together in this way and share this story, and it can feel fresh and new for our day and for our culture.
[32:16] Because this message is still relevant, because so many people don't understand and know that it's You. It's You that brings the hope. So Lord, I pray for each and every one of us who have already called You our King, who have already looked to You for salvation, who have already have the hope of heaven in our hearts. Would we be the kinds of people that would be so desperate for our world to know that we would do whatever it takes to go the distance to bring people to You so that they could know the hope that when we fall asleep we get to wake up and we can wake up with You. But it's only because, as Paul affirmed, that we've become Christians, that we've looked to You for our hope. And God, for those that are in this room today and this sparks or reminds them or brings back a faith of old or maybe reminds them of a story they heard growing up or just even for the first time shakes them a little bit, I would just pray that every single one of us in this space right now listening to my words would be able to say the words in our hearts, "Jesus, I trust You, and You are my King and You are my hope.
[33:41] And You are the one that I give my life to." And Lord, we know that in a moment, as You did with the thief on the cross, You promise us that You will come and offer us this eternal life that starts now. It changes everything for us, but it starts now. And so for anybody that is praying that prayer, even for the first time, Lord, I pray that You would soften their hearts and that You would respond to them and draw them close to Yourself, that they would identify, that they would step up and pray with somebody here at the front later, that they would acknowledge the fact that they desperately need You. And that as a church, this will always be the place where we can look to You for all things.
[34:26] And Lord, Father, I pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.