Will I be with You when I die?

Well, good morning. I’m Ben. It is my privilege to share from God’s Word with you here this morning as we are continuing on in this series, Questioning God.

And, uh, before we jump into that, just a special welcome to anyone that’s a guest here this morning. And, of course, welcome those online, especially First Lutheran, as they’re worshiping with us here this morning as well. We’re in week three of Questioning God because we have questions for God, don’t we? Is it okay to—we’ve covered this already—but is it okay to ask God questions? And where do we go for answers? The Bible, right? And so we’re going to be—you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to look at the Bible today.

And we have this, uh, this question that maybe some of you ask. It’s not that big of a question. It’s just simply, God, will I be with you when I die? So we’re just going to touch on that.

What I recognize is that this is a question that some of us ask for ourselves depending on where we’re at, depending on how our health is, depending on what’s going on in our life, depending on what stage of life we find ourselves in. I know I’ve even talked to, like, a segment of our congregation that might say something like, I’m doing well, but I don’t buy green bananas anymore. Meaning they don’t know what day that God’s going to call them home, right? But the fact of the matter remains that God teaches us to number our days, and He has ordained each one of them.

We might also ask this question when there’s a loved one who becomes ill or passes. What I find interesting, what I want to focus on for just a moment, is actually just that word, with. Because that is within our human nature among the most important things that any of us can ever offer another person.

That you can offer words of encouragement, you can send thoughts and prayers, that from a distance you can do things, but there is something innately different about being with people, isn’t there? Right now, the way we’re experiencing this in my household, as now the sun is setting a little bit sooner and days are getting shorter, we like to have lower lights at night, just calming down the kiddos before bedtime, is that in particular our youngest, who’s four, he doesn’t want to even go into the next room without you. Will someone come into the kitchen with me to go get a snack? Or even better yet, for whatever reason, his internal clock is telling him right around bedtime he has to go to the bathroom, so that you’ll, you know, on most weeknights you’ll find either Stephanie, my wife, or myself sitting on a bathtub, talking with our four-year-old eye to eye, because he needs someone to be with him. Because there’s something about it, there’s something comforting, there’s something encouraging, there’s something that just settles your soul to be with those that you love.

And then here comes the all-important question, God, will I be with you? Will you be with me when I die? And of course there’s, there’s a few different responses to this. The one that we would all hope and pray for is, of course, yes. Yes, you’ll be with me.

Yes, I’ll be with you. We’ll be together. But what we recognize and what we’re going to see in scripture is that there’s also another response, which is no.

An emphatic no. No, no, I won’t be with you. No, you will not be with me.

And then there become these actually confusing responses that other Christians hold to. They might respond and say, not yet. There’s this idea, maybe you’ve heard a term, maybe not.

You’re going to learn it today. It’s called soul sleep. That when you die, you’re not with Jesus, but you’re not anywhere.

You’re just kind of existing as a soul, and you’re waiting. And then there’s also the, maybe, maybe you’ll be with me. Maybe you need to go to this place called purgatory, and you need to like kind of work off some sins, get purged of all of your unholiness before you can enter into the presence of a holy God.

There are different teachings on this. But we’re going to see here today that scripture clearly teaches that two of these answers are right. Yes and no.

And the others really have no founding whatsoever. But before we get to those answers themselves, we just have to go back to the very beginning, and where did this death, where did this separation come from? Out of Genesis chapter 3 and verse 19, it says this, by the sweat of your brow. This is God talking to Adam and Eve.

God, not only He had just given them a promise, but now here comes a curse as well. You’ve eaten of the fruit, you’ve sinned against Him, now what’s going to happen? By the sweat of your brow you will eat food until you return to the grounds, since from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.

Dust you will return. If you’re ever with us on an Ash Wednesday, you’ve heard these words. And they’ve remained true throughout all of time since the very beginning, since God created everything, that the mortality rate is 100 percent, right? There is no escaping it, that death is coming for all of us, that death is now built into things because of the sinful nature that we inherit, that we decay, that we slowly move and march towards death.

And what we see in this, this is I think a very simple way to sum it up, is that death is separation. I don’t know if you ever thought about it in those terms, but think, think about, and I know I’ve been there. When you get the call from the family member at the odd hour that is past 10 o’clock, it’s 11 o’clock, and the family member calls, and they let you know that so-and-so is no longer with us.

And then all of a sudden your mind starts to race through, when’s the last time that you even talked with them? When’s the last time that you saw them? What’s the last thing that they said, what’s the last thing that they said to you? What’s the last thing that you said to them? And then not only that, but then that’s when the separation begins. But then you begin to feel it more and more as time goes on, as you go through the funeral service. But then even after that, when you’re sitting at Thanksgiving, and there’s a chair at the end of the table that’s sitting empty, because they’re not with us.

When a moment of celebration comes along, that there’s an engagement, a wedding, and a birth, and there’s everyone except your loved one who’s no longer with us. That in the trials, and in the celebrations of life, now there is separation. That you no longer get to hear their laugh, that you no longer get to feel their embrace, you no longer get to hear words from them anymore, that you are now separate from them.

And for those of us that are asking this question of ourselves, God will I be with you when I die? You might feel the weight of that from the side of, I don’t want to be separate from my loved ones, that they are going to continue on without me, and I don’t get to experience these moments anymore. It’s separation from loved ones, it’s separations from this temporal world. And what’s also taking place that we don’t often talk about, but we’re going to talk about here this morning, is a separation from the way that God designed you and created you as body and soul.

That there is a separation. For those of you that were with us in Genesis, as we went through Genesis, it took us two and a half years. You remember all these verses, we’re going to look at a few, right? You have it all memorized, you remember it? God’s promise to Abraham, one of the times that he’s making a covenant with him, he’s promising him, he’s reminding him again.

Part of the promise that God gives to Abraham is this, as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace, you shall be buried in a good old age. A verse you can just go right past, right? He’s going to die, we get it. Do you notice it? You shall go to your fathers.

Where’s Abraham? Where’s Abraham? With his fathers in heaven. You shall be buried. Where’s Abraham? Buried.

Because what we often say, and I know what we mean by it, and I think maybe I’ve even said it myself, but theologically it is incorrect. That when you go forward with loved ones to a casket, and you see their remains there, and you say they’re not there. That’s not them.

No. God created you as an incarnate being. That your body is significant.

That it does matter. That he himself was willing to put on flesh, and still has now glorified flesh. Bodies do matter.

So do souls. And this is why when they’re cleaved, when they are separated from one another, this is against the order of things. Think of it this way.

If I ask you, what is your cell phone? Well, there’s this like hardware, right? There’s this actual cell phone. But if it had no software on it, if it had no numbers, if it had no ability to make any phone calls, it had no power in it, is it still a cell phone? Or is the software and the numbers, and is that your cell phone? No, these two things together. I don’t know if it’s not a perfect illustration, but just think.

The thing that animates you, your spirit and your body are the way that God designed things to be. And so already this separation is against the nature which he designed. We see this actually then come to pass.

Abraham breathes his last and died in good old age, a man full of years. And he was gathered to his people, just as promised, that he went to heaven. But he was also buried.

Separation of who Abraham was, his body and his soul, now separated. The same thing happens for his son in Genesis 35. Isaac breathes his last.

He died. His body died and was now his soul’s gathered to his people, old and full of days, body and soul. We also see this echoed in Hebrews as well, that there is this one death.

This is coming for everyone, that just as it is appointed for man to die once, after that comes the judgment. So Christ was sacrificed to take away the sins of many, and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. We’re not going to dig into that second coming quite yet.

I pray that you stick with us as we continue to go on with these big questions, because it’s too much to tackle in one day, but we are going to go there. When is Jesus coming back? What’s happening when he comes back? Right now we’re just hanging with the idea of what happens when we die, that man is going to die, and that there is a judgment that’s going to come. And so I want you to just think of it this way.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to visualize it, but right now, body and soul, you have the Holy Spirit with you, and you have the hope of heaven to look forward to because of what Christ has done for you on the cross and through the empty tomb. When you die, body and soul are separated. The body waits.

The soul, as we’re going to see, is with Jesus. And there will come a day when body and soul reunite, and they are in their presence of the Savior. But I mentioned there was two answers to that question.

God, am I with you when I die? Well, let’s first look at this. What about the unbeliever? Because for those of you that have been around, you know that we’re going to say what Scripture says. What I notice is interesting is that not only do believers recognize there’s a difference between believers and unbelievers in death, but those that are around believers or non-believers during death can notice a difference as well.

There’s a good number of years ago that I was at a funeral with my wife for her grandmother, her dad’s mom, and we’re there at the wake mourning the loss of her grandmother. And while at that wake, her mom gets a phone call that her dad is passing in a hospital. So we leave one wake, one visitation to go to a hospital for another grandparent of hers, a very faithful man, each of these faithful people.

We go there, and they’re pulling support away from him, and he’s breathing his last. And I was reminded of this moment by my mother-in-law just a week or two ago as she told me, I don’t know if you know, but there was a nurse that came up to us after all that transpired, after my wife’s grandfather took his last breath. And the nurse came forward to the family and said, you’re believers, aren’t you? Yes, not only are we believers, but we’re Lutherans, so there’s bonus points.

So they were a Lutheran too. But she said, I can tell. You can tell in these moments, in the way that people grieve, that they grieve and they still have hope, that there is something different about the way that they grieve.

Because if you’ve ever been at a funeral of an unbeliever, there isn’t a place for hope. And if there’s an unbeliever, and you ask a pastor, if you ask me, or Pastor Tim, or Pastor Eric to do the funeral, we don’t have the ability to preach an unbeliever into heaven, to go back and rewrite their history that they would have belief. Because this is what it says in Scripture.

We love John 3 16, but we don’t like to talk about John 3 18 too much. I mean, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. But you get forward to 18, it says, whoever believes in him is not condemned.

That’s great! But whoever does not believe is condemned already. He has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. That as you heard Pastor Tim preach about last week, that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

That no one comes to the Father except through him. That Jesus himself is the resurrection. There is only one way.

And to not believe in him is to actually already be condemned here in this world. To still be dead in your trespasses and your sins. Moving forward in that same chapter, it says this, whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.

Yes! This is what we cling to, this we hope to as believers. But whoever does not obey the Son, and what is it to obey the Son? To believe in him. Shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

Now it’s uncomfortable, but I love you enough to tell you the truth. That there is no such thing as some would like to believe as, well, if you don’t believe, then you just cease to exist. There’s a term for that, annihilationism.

Well, if you don’t believe, then you’re just gone, right? No, no, no. The wrath of God, what? Remains on him. This is actually what we see Jesus actually also teach his disciples and those gathered around him as well.

As he tells a story, not a parable, a story of a rich man and another man named Lazarus. Not Lazarus who he raised from the dead, but a different Lazarus. It’s curious that he actually uses a name.

This poor man Lazarus died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. Sounds similar to Abraham with his fathers, Isaac with his fathers. This man, Abraham’s side, to be in heaven, to be in the presence of Christ.

But this rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. Separation.

That there’s separation between body and soul. There’s separation from us and our loved ones. There’s separations from us and this temporal world.

But there’s also, most devastatingly, separation from God. And this place of waiting, this place of hell, this place of Hades before a final judgment is to come. And for those that don’t yet believe, that don’t yet, have not yet received that gift of faith in Christ and all that he’s done for you in and through his death and resurrection, I love you enough to tell you that this is what awaits you.

This is what awaits those loved ones. And for those that are believers, that you have family members just as I do, that you might not have talked to about this. And you might push it off and you might not like, that’s really not my place.

That’s really uncomfortable. You’re not supposed to talk about, you know, politics. You’re not supposed to talk about religion.

And man, I don’t want to seem judgy. But there is a judgment coming for them. And to love them enough, to love your neighbors enough, to love your families enough, to find tactful and loving ways to say, I care about you enough, that this is what awaits those that don’t believe.

And what a gift it is to know that your loved one believed. Amen. It’s an amazing gift when you know, when you’ve been bedside, when you’ve been, when you’ve worshipped with your family members who then go to be in glory, there is a rest and a peace that comes over you knowing that all is well.

It raises this question for me. I’m kind of curious. And we do call and response.

I’m gonna give you permission. You could, I want to hear your answers. What do you think is the best part of heaven? What is it? No cell phones in heaven.

Absolutely. Yeah. No social media, no cell phones, no interruptions whatsoever.

All the soft serve ice cream you can eat. Calories don’t count anymore. You’ll see, you see your childhood dog.

Well, actually, I don’t know. We don’t, I don’t know. Actually, scripture, maybe we’ll cover that one in a different question.

Do you have pets in heaven? I’ll leave, I’ll leave that for Pastor Tim. He can tackle that one. When we think about the best part of heaven, what I’m trying to get to is, you might know the Sunday school answer, but when we think about heaven, often where we go in our heads, maybe it’s just me as I get to see my grandparents.

I get to see my loved ones. I get to see my children. I pray that by faith, they will be there one day that we think about these other relationships and don’t get me wrong.

My goodness, these are significant relationships. They’re gifts from God to us that we would have those relationships. And for all those that do believe will be there and that you will know them.

Yet those things pale in comparison with the best part, which is to be with Christ. And I know that sounds like a Sunday school answer, but hang with me for just a few minutes. To be with Christ, not just this Jesus Sunday school answer, but Christ, the one who was willing to put on flesh for you.

The one that knew you before the foundations of the world were laid. The one that has known you intimately, that knows every detail of your life, knows every triumph, every trial, and every sin. The one who’s willing to put on flesh for you.

The one who was willing to go to the cross that you and I deserved and was willing to stretch out his arms and breathe his last breath for you. That he could call you his own. That you could be with him forever.

That since the beginning of time, that his plan was that he was going to lay down his life for you. Fully knowing you, fully loving you, unlike any other relationship that we could even fathom. That all perfect, all loving, all righteous God would embrace you.

It is impossible for our minds to grasp fully the beauty of being in the presence of your Savior and of your Lord. And this is what Paul points to. This is what we have the hope of while we await the judgment, as we await the second coming.

We recognize this, that there is not a not yet and there is not a maybe. For those that are believers, there is a yes, an emphatic yes, that you are with God and in you are with Christ. Paul says this in his letter to the Philippians in chapter one.

He says, for me to live as Christ. Everything is Christ. Everything about what he does.

A persecutor of the church. Those who wanted to kill Christians. Now everything, every breath that he breathes, his entire mission is to bring people to Christ.

But if he dies, that is gain. And he says, if I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose, I cannot tell.

I’m hard-pressed between the two. Should I stay here and do fruitful labor? Should I continue to live Christ, bring people to Christ? Because really what I want to do is, I want to what? I want to depart to be with Him. And Paul already saw it, because that is far better.

He echoes this in his letter to the Corinthians. He says, so we are of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord.

For if we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. That our ultimate resting place, our ultimate home.

Yes, and we will get there. New heavens and new earth that’s yet to come follows a judgment. But as we close our eyes in this life and open them in the next, it is really to be at home, to be with Christ.

The clearest and most pointed story, I think, that shows this beyond its shadow of a doubt. Many of you are familiar with, but let’s go ahead and take a look at it. It comes out of Luke 23.

Jesus has already been persecuted. He’s already been tried. He’s already been flogged.

He’s been now nailed to a tree, and he finds himself between two criminals. One of the criminals who were hanging, railed at him saying, are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us. But the other rebuked him saying, do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.

You can already tell this thief has something amazing going on by the power of the Holy Spirit. First off, he’s in the presence of Jesus. But now by the power of the Holy Spirit, what he’s coming to is repentance.

He recognizes the wrong of his ways. He recognizes the due penalty of his ways, and that by the power of God, before his profession of faith, he’s being led to repentance. And then come these amazing words.

Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus said to him, truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. Immediately.

Not someday. Not after some waiting period. Not after being cleansed in purgatory.

No. Today you will be with me in what? Paradise. To be in his presence that very day.

Which I hope offers comfort and assurance. It has nothing to do with his track record in church. How much did he go to synagogue? How much of the scripture did he have memorized? Who was the pastor that baptized him? What grade did he get in confirmation class? What serve team was he on? What was his giving record? Like that stuff didn’t matter at all.

Those fruits are the fruits that follow faith. But to be in paradise with Christ is to profess faith in him. To be gifted that faith by the Holy Spirit.

And that we see clearly in this text that that is all that is required. Because Jesus has already fulfilled all the requirements of the law. That we might be his children.

And for you this day, I have a few takeaways. Because I recognize a message like this does speak to different audiences. For those that are believers, my prayer for you is that you have confidence in the assurance that you have.

That in facing death, because of Christ, he has conquered it. You do not have to worry one bit that there is peace and calm and confidence. Because all that was required is accomplished in Christ.

Now for the unbelievers, you need a sense of urgency. You need to hear these words that that because now is the time to repent and trust in Jesus. Because if you don’t, there is separation coming your way.

And that’s because scripture says it, not because I say it. Scripture tells us that there will be separation. There’ll be this temporary separation.

Then the final separation that comes. And that no, there is no such thing as ceasing to exist. That God has created every person to be an eternal being.

And there is only one of two places that each of us will rest. And then for us here this morning as a church, hear this as well. That God is calling you to boldness to proclaim Christ.

Because of what I just stated, everyone you know has an eternity. Everyone you know will go one of two places, yourself included. And no matter how you feel about it, if it makes you feel a little uncomfortable, a little bit queasier, like you’re not sure what to say, trust that the God by his Holy Spirit will give you the words that you need when you need it.

And hear this too, that the fruit of that conversation is not dependent on you. God asks you for faithfulness. He doesn’t require you to bear fruit.

He is the one, as you abide in him, as you trust in him, as you faithfully obey him, he is the one who’s ultimately going to draw his people to himself. Using your words by his grace and by his Spirit to bring those who are far off so that they can be his children as well. And one last thing, as we circle back to this question, God will I be with you when I die? I want you to hear this as well.

He’s with you now. It’s not something that you have to wait for. Now, yes, the experience of being in his presence and eternity is different than now, but he has himself has promised that he is with you now.

In Matthew 28, after the end of the Great Commission, he has these words, and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age. And so that comfort and confidence and assurance that you will one day be with him should be comfort, confidence, and assurance that he is with you now. With you in your suffering, with you in your pain, with you in treatments, with you in job loss, with you in persecution, with you in temptation.

He is with you because he’s promised to be with you. And there should be great comfort found in He’s with you when you have conversations with those that don’t yet believe. He’s with you when you doubt.

He is with you here and now to encourage you, to hold you close to him, so that one day you will be with him and you will be his. So here in these next moments, I want to invite us into a moment that we might be able to ourselves rest in Christ, just as surely as Christ is risen from the dead, that he has now ascended and is right at the right hand of the Father and is in his glorified body. So I light this as what we recognize, we call the Christ candle, that just as this candle is lit, that we recognize that Christ is alive, that he is with us.

And because he is alive, that we can have confidence that our loved ones who have now fallen asleep, that they rest in faith, that they are in the arms of their Savior. And so that’s, if you didn’t notice, we do have some candles up front here. And we want to create just a moment of reflection because these believers, these loved ones, are part of the family of faith and the family of God.

They are worshiping here this morning as well. Now they’re just worshiping with Jesus in eternity. And for those that have lost loved ones, in faith, I want to encourage you this morning to reflect on them, to reflect on their faithfulness, and most importantly, reflect on the one who they place their faith in, their confidence, and their assurance.

And that you might be able to come forward and simply light a candle in memory of them. And recognizing this, that just as you light this candle, that points to the fact that just as Christ’s candle is lit, just as he is alive, that they are alive as well. Not because of their works, not because of any of their doings, but because of the faith that was gifted to them, that they are surely alive just as Christ is alive.

So you can come forward to one of these candles, just as I am now, and recognizing that I know that my Uncle Dan, that my Aunt Connie, that my Grandma Gracia, that my Grandpa Tom, that my Grandpa Ken, and my Grandma Adi are all in glory right now, worshiping their Savior. Amen.