Alright, well, last week we started this study of eschatology, the study of last things, and that's what we're continuing this morning. And I think Andy mentioned last week that generally in the study of eschatology, you can divide it up into two categories. Cosmic eschatology or general eschatology which would deal with things like the redemption of creation some more broad subject like that and then individual eschatology which would deal with the Particular future of the individual and that's that's really what we're looking at this morning the subject this morning falls under individual eschatology as it is dealing with your future particularly. The question this morning is, what happens after we die? And depending on who you are, that might sound very basic to answer. It might sound like a complicated question to answer. Might sound kind of foreboding. The unbelieving world has an answer. They know what happens after we die. Nothing happens after we die. We become nothing. We cease to exist. And the cults have an answer. They have complicated answers, answers that don't give a lot of comfort, that aren't based on any real grounding, any biblical foundation. Religions have answers, which they try to provide some comfort, but again, has no real founding. And what we have to try to do is provide an answer, what happens after we die, And it has to have a biblical foundation. We can't just try to comfort ourselves with wishes and hopes. We have to know what the Bible actually has to say about these things. And generally, I know we all know the answer to that question. There's a judgment coming. Christ himself will judge. He will make a differentiation between the righteous and the wicked. Those in Christ will be with Christ. They will go to heaven. Those outside of Christ will go to hell. Specifically, this morning, the question has to do with what happens to those who die before the judgment. What happens between death and the resurrection of the dead? The specific question this morning is what happens before the day of resurrection? What happens before Christ comes to judge? What happens before the resurrection of the dead? Where are those who have already died today? And the subject is called the intermediate state. It is called the intermediate state because it is not the final state. It is not the eternal state. After the resurrection, after the return of Christ, the righteous will be in their final state. The unrighteous, the wicked, will be in their final state where they will remain for eternity. But right now there exists a state called intermediate, between death and resurrection. So what does that actually consist of? What does that mean? And does the Bible actually have anything to say about that? Well, the reality is the Bible doesn't have a great deal to say about that. Primarily when the Bible talks about the end times, it talks about the very end of times. It points our focus to the resurrection. It points our hope to the return of Christ. It's telling us to look to the very end of things. And so that's mainly what the Bible is telling us about. The resurrection of our bodies. And so because the focus of scripture is not on the intermediate state, It's not going to answer all of our questions about the intermediate state, but it does have a sufficient amount to say about it. It tells us enough to give us a great deal of comfort as believers. To know that as believers, we will experience immediate, conscious communion with Christ after death. And it also gives a sufficient amount of warning to unbelievers that after death there is an immediate experience of torment. Just to summarize the matter, the catechism that the children use in the Sunday school, in number question 140, this is called the catechism for boys and girls, I believe, It says this, what happens to men when they die? And the answer, the body returns to dust and the soul goes to be with God or to a place of suffering and waiting for judgment. And that's consistent with what all the older catechisms and confessions have to say on the subject, all the older ones that we would reference and recommend. Of course, our concern this morning is not with the tradition of the church, but with biblical revelation. What does the Bible say about these things? And we're not gonna spend a lot of time on any one text. We're going to just try to give a broad overview of these things. And I'm gonna do that by trying to ask and answer three questions. First, what is physical death? Then, what is the condition of those who die in the Lord? And lastly, what is the condition of those who die in their sins? Now there's a lot that fits into all three of those, but Those are just the headings that I'm trying to hang our thoughts on. All right. Beginning with what is physical death? Very basic question. But I think it needs to be asked that way because we do have different kinds of death. We have spiritual death. All men are born spiritually dead, the Bible tells us. We need to be raised to spiritual life by the life-giving, the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit. There is eternal death. That is the judgment of God upon the wicked, those outside of Christ, will experience eternal death, the Bible says, the second death. But death, the death of our bodies, the death that we experience, What is that, according to the Bible? How does the Bible describe physical death? Death has a definition, clinically, scientifically, but as I understand it, it changes. As we learn more about the body, as medical science progresses, it's a moving target, somewhat. But the Bible has its own definition for what death is. First of all, it calls it a wage of sin. Death is what we have earned as a race for our breaking of the law of God. All men must die. There's this old joke, you know, that there are only two things in life that are certain, death and taxes, but it's not even accurate because some people don't pay their taxes, and they get away with it. But everyone will die. Everyone must die. Why must men die? Well, like spiritual death and like eternal death, it is the wage of sin. It is what we have earned by our breaking of the law of God. It is a consequence of sin. It is a judgment of God upon us for sin. Death is what mankind has earned. And we hear of people speaking of doing the right thing, of earning favor with God, of hoping to be good enough for heaven. But when the Bible talks about what we earn, it is death. It is that consequence, that punishment, as it were. The wages of sin is death. In Genesis chapter 3, We see this first spoken of. Well, in Genesis chapter 2, we see the threat that the man that God created, if he should eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Obey and you will live disobey and you will die and then in Genesis chapter 3 beginning in verse 17 God is Adam has already broken the law He's broken the command not to eat of the tree of knowledge and good and evil. He's brought the curse upon himself and upon the human race. And here God speaks to the man. And he says, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and you have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face. You shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return. We want to know why the world is the way it is, why there's war, and why there's difficulty, why the ground is difficult to till, and why we suffer illness and weakness, and this is why. Sometimes we give that basic answer. Well, it's a fallen world, and this is where that answer comes from. we eat and it's it's it's difficult to provide for ourselves and Eventually our weakness and our sickness and our illness will bring us to the ground. We will die We will become dust Adam was made to live and to serve God He was warned that to sin to break the commandment that God gave him was to earn for himself death And that's what happened. He died spiritually and he died physically and all of Adam's descendants everyone die physically. Because sin entered the world through one man, through Adam. And death through sin. So death spread to all men because all sinned. All sinned in Adam. Adam stood here as our covenant head. He stood as our representative. And so we sinned in Adam. I mean, that's why we need Christ. We need Christ to be our representative. We are born in Adam. We die. we are born again in Christ through faith. Sin and death are connected together in scripture in a way which is undeniable. So we have this constant reminder through illness and weakness, through watching people die, through watching people grow old, through watching ourselves grow old, we're constantly reminded that we will die, and through experiencing our own eventual deaths, we are reminded that we are under the curse of God by nature. Why must we die? Why must anyone die? Because we are sinners and the wage of sin is death. And the Bible also describes death as our enemy. Death is our enemy. Man was not made to die. Adam was put in the garden to keep it. He was put in the garden to live. Obey and live. And yet man does die because fallen man is born in sin. You and I are born in Adam in sin. So we are sick, we grow old, and we die. Our bodies stop working. It ends our fellowship with the ones we love. It takes from us the good things of this world that we were created to enjoy. And you see people who face death with a kind of bravado that has no foundation. They're not afraid to die, they say, and yet men are afraid to die. Look at the way people face death. There's an ignorant zeal sometimes. There's a foundationless bravado. But death is not a natural part of life. Men fear death. They know that. They know that death is not natural. They know that there's a judgment to come after death. Men don't like to think about death. They don't like to talk about death. When I say that people fear death, it's not some survival instinct like you find in animals. A cat runs away from a dog because it doesn't want to be killed, right? Men don't fear death in that same way. It's not evolutionary, right? Men don't want to see death. We don't want to see a dead body. We don't want to be reminded. We don't want to talk about it. We go out and try to do evangelism. We say, you are going to die. You must die. And people think we're being mean and cruel to them. But you'll find people saying some of the most inappropriate things, the most intimate things in public life, but they'll use euphemisms for death. Nobody dies. They pass away. They're just not with us anymore. And sometimes, even in the church, we'll use terms like that, and I'm not arguing against that, because we use it to be gentle. We use it... to be kind to those who are grieving. But we do have to recognize that what's going on in the culture is that it's an avoidance of the recognition that men must die. And for us, who are believers in the truth, we do have to guard ourselves against any unbiblical thinking about death. We have to remember it is our enemy. We don't just pass into some mystical non-existence. We die. And we have to face that reality and understand what that means. People don't like to be reminded that there is a cemetery waiting for us somewhere. But we know that. That's how we come to Christ. We have to face death eventually. We come to Christ because we recognize that we must die while the world is busy avoiding such realities. with pseudo-bravery, with hopes and wishes, or some kind of nihilism that says, well, what will be will be. Everything's pointless, and let's get what we can today, and enjoy our lives today. But we, as the church, must be willing to see death for what it is, and thank God in Christ that he has taken the sting out of death. It is the last enemy to be defeated, and Christ will be faithful to do that. Death is the wage of sin, and while we do not grieve like those who have no hope, there is a reason that we hope for the resurrection. Death is our enemy. And death, according to scripture, biblically defined, is a separation of the body and of the soul. What is the nature of death according to scripture but this unnatural separation of body and soul? We might not be able to medically define death, and that definition might constantly be changing, But whatever else it is, it is that separation of body and soul. It's described that way in Ecclesiastes 12 verse seven, and that's a good example. You have Ecclesiastes 12 verse seven. It says this, the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. So this sounds very much like what we read in Genesis chapter three. You are dust, and to dust you shall return. But it has the added detail of what becomes of the soul or the spirit. And we're using those terms interchangeably, they mean the same thing. We are made of body and soul. So I wouldn't make any distinction between the term soul and spirit. So the dust returns to earth as it was, the spirit returns to God who gave it. And this is important. This is another, this is an important element that's added here. We are composite beings. We are composed or made of both body and soul. The body and the soul belong together. And so when the Bible tells us that the body returns to the earth, it becomes dust. To dust you shall return. But the soul returns to God. Something unnatural has taken place there. There's the separation that shouldn't happen. For us to be whole persons, whole human beings, we need both body and soul. When Christ became incarnate, he was given both a body and a soul. The man Christ Jesus is in heaven today with both a body and a soul. And so at death, when there's that separation, That's a separation that shouldn't be. But this also tells us something about the continued existence of the soul. The body returns to dust. The soul returns to God. It means that the soul does not die with the body. The soul continues to exist. We do not cease to exist at death. Death is not a cessation of existence. There is a distinction to be made between body and soul after death. And that is establishing that very important point of that persons do not cease to exist at death. Remember Jesus responding to those who denied the resurrection. He said that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He said, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. I am. That is in the present tense. He is the God of those men now. Presently. He is the God of those men, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are now presently dead. Their souls continuing to exist. Their bodies at the time when Jesus said that were in the grave. Jesus also said, and do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. That was Matthew 10, verse 28. The body can be killed. The soul cannot be killed. When you die, your soul does not die with your body. The soul, the body returns to dust. The soul does not become dust. But an important point. It is not because the soul is inherently indestructible. And this is something people have thought in the past. The pagans have thought this. That the soul was some sort of divine, had some sort of a divine essence. It was like God. That the soul had always existed. The soul would always exist. Could not be destroyed, not even by death. Because it was of some higher spiritual substance than the body. The body, its base. The body must break down. The body necessarily will die. But the soul, because it came from heaven, it will go back to heaven. That kind of thinking. But that's not the case. It can't be the case. The Bible says only God is immortal. God alone has immortality. He alone exists necessarily in and of himself. He's the creator of all things that have come into being. The soul continues to exist. You as a person continue to exist after death only because God wills that to be so. And that's what the text in Ecclesiastes said, the spirit returns to God who gave it. God made your soul. It is not eternal. God created your body, God created your soul. And the body, just like your body is sustained by God, the soul is sustained by God. If God took his hand away from your soul, It would cease to exist just as much as your body would, just as much as anything in creation would. But as we have seen, the body dies, the soul continues in some state of existence. But the question we have to answer is, what is that state of existence? In what condition do the souls of men exist from death until the resurrection of the dead? Because at that point we know that the soul is then reunited with the body. But what until then? And it is also at this point that we have to make a distinction between the wicked and the righteous. So we've made a distinction between the soul and the body after death. Now we have to make a distinction between the righteous and the wicked after death. So, second point. What is the condition of those who die in the Lord? Well, whatever questions we might have about the intermediate state, whatever questions might remain when we're finished with this study, whatever mysteries might surround the state of the soul between death and resurrection, one thing we know for certain, that those who die in the Lord go to be with Christ immediately. Today, Jesus said to the thief on the cross, you will be with me in paradise. He did not say, I am telling you today that you will be with me in paradise. He said, today, you will be with me in paradise, as in, you will be with me today. And that distinction has been made because there are cults that try to make a differentiation there. They try to add a comma after today and say that Jesus was trying to tell him, this is the day in which I'm telling you that you'll be with me. But no, he's telling him on this very day, you will be with me in paradise. It is an immediate transportation into the presence of Christ after death. The hope of the believer in the state between death and resurrection is that we will be immediately and consciously with Christ where he is. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, 8, that to be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord. And there again, you see the distinction between the body and the soul after death, the continued existence of the soul after death. So that the soul is in a bodiless condition, and in that bodiless condition, away from the body, Paul said, He is with the Lord. Well, where's the Lord? Where is Christ? What did he tell the thief? He's in paradise. Today you will be with me in paradise. The paradise of God. Heaven. So immediately upon our deaths we will be taken to heaven with Christ. Now, there is a theory that states that a believer, upon his death, enters into a kind of sleep, a soul sleep, a suspended animation. The idea is that you die and you lose consciousness. until the day of resurrection and And the thinking is that it's like going to sleep where you don't you're not aware of any interaction with the world around you you're not aware of any passage of time and then a day of resurrection comes and That's the very next thing you're even aware of But it seems to me that that would really stretch the meaning of being with the Lord How can we be properly saying that we're to be with the Lord if we're not even aware of that? if we're not even aware of any kind of conscious communion with him. No, we have a conscious communion with God. We are with Christ and aware of our being with Christ. In fact, the condition of those who die in the Lord is said to be one of greater communion. Paul said that it is better than what we have now. A good example of this is in Philippians 1. In Philippians chapter 1, Paul is facing the very real possibility of death. He's in prison, he is facing the potential of execution, and he's writing to the church. And he says this, let me see. Being about verse 19 he says yes, and I will rejoice I For I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation, and I hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now, as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose, I cannot tell. I am hard-pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. Again, we see another example that to depart from the body is to be with Christ, immediately to be with Christ. His desire is to depart and be with Christ, verse 23. But there's something else here, and that is in the expression that he makes of the condition being gained. To live as Christ To die is gain. Now how could Paul say that? And there's a danger sometimes. We're very familiar with a text like this, and we kind of read past it, and we miss details. But how could Paul say that if he was expecting to go into non-existence? How could Paul say that if he was expecting to go into a state of unconsciousness? Right now, Paul's life is one of communion with Christ. He prays without ceasing. He is an ambassador for the Lord. He's preaching. He has communion with the church of God. He has been caught up to heaven and allowed to see things which are unlawful to speak of. He can say that to live is Christ. But we're supposed to believe that a state of unconsciousness or non-existence would be better than this. Right? No, of course not. That's foolishness. The communion that we will know in the intermediate state is greater, far better, Paul says, than anything we know now. We know communion with Christ. We serve him. We have fellowship with his church. We can pray. We have the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. And yet, at death, there is a gain. There is something far better. One thing we do know, one way that we do know that it is far better is that we will see God. Adam knew God face to face. He communed with God by sight and not merely by faith. And since his fall, we are an exiled race. We've been banished from the presence of God. Even we who are born again, we walk by faith and not by sight. But upon our deaths, we will be with Christ, we will see Him, and we will walk by sight. And that will be far better. You know, we know that God hears us when we pray, and yet sometimes we just have to open up God's Word and read the promises. And that's all we have. That's all we can depend upon. Because it doesn't feel like God hears us when we pray. We know that God is faithful to forgive us and yet that sense of God's forgiveness just isn't there and so we have to open up God's word and read that he is faithful and just to forgive us for our sins. When we confess our sins. We know that we're to be anxious for nothing, that He is with us in trouble. His Word literally says that, and yet we are anxious. As if we don't know, His Word doesn't say that, and as if we haven't learned by experience. Has He ever destroyed you? Has He ever abandoned you? And yet we continue to become anxious, to fret over things. And so we walk by faith, we open up God's word, we read those promises, and we trust that. Because the sense of God's love, the sense of God's presence, the sense of forgiveness is not always there. And so we just have to trust what he has actually said to us until the sense returns. But, after death, We will see him. We will be with him. We will hear his voice. I'm so thankful to have God's word. I'm so thankful to have the scriptures for those times when there is not that sense. But it will be far better to be with Christ. The fears that we experience, the losses of assurance, the waxing and waning of our own desires, that will all be gone. All of this will end when we see him as he is. The condition of those who die in the Lord is also one of perfect holiness. Thomas Watson wrote that sin brought death into the world and death shall take sin out of the world In Hebrews chapter 12 verse 23 there is the statement Well, let me just read I wrote it down here, so let me just read this whole verse it says but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the Living God And that's the phrase I wanted you to notice. The spirits of the righteous made perfect. The writer's talking about heaven, but no sinful thing can exist in heaven. That's why Adam was cast out. Because sin cannot exist in God's presence. His eyes are too pure to look on iniquity. No unclean thing can stand in God's sight. And that's also the reason that in Leviticus and in the law we have this extensive, these extensive qualifications for the priests. You know, they make sacrifice for their own sins. They make sacrifice for the sins of the people. They purify everything with blood. The temple had to be built in a particular way. They had to dress a certain way, and it's not because God just liked things a certain way. I mean, there's something that we learn from that, that we are to approach God a particular way, that we are to worship God the way that He commands to be worshipped. But the thing that we are to take away from that is that God is holy. No one just saunters into God's presence. We are sinful. God is holy and we are, by nature, unholy. And so purification for sins has to be made and it is not simple. It is not easy. Everything had to be purified with blood. God cannot be approached without perfect righteousness, without perfect holiness. We are righteous by virtue of the work of Christ. And we don't have the temple, we don't make all the sacrifices. Christ has done that. The Lamb of God has come and he has taken away sin. He's done what the bulls and goats couldn't do. They could only do symbolically and ceremonially. He's done what only they could picture for us and tell us that needed to be done. We are righteous by the virtue, by the work, the obedience of Christ. We are counted righteous, though we are actually sinners. But in heaven, we will be made actually holy. Perfect in holiness. We will be morally and ethically pure. We will be perfect. And it must be that way or we could never be where Christ is. This is why the Roman Catholics have their doctrine of purgatory. They teach that you must go somewhere before you go to heaven in order to have the remaining sin in your life, and you know you have remaining sin in your life. That's the great struggle, right? Indwelling sin in the believer. And so they teach that you must go somewhere in order to be purified before you go to heaven, and that takes a very, very long time. 1 John 3 2 says we know that when he appears, when Christ appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. Now this is talking about the second coming, but I think the general principle here is fitting. When we see Christ, we will be made like Christ. So we have no need of purgatory. We have been counted righteous and when we made actually righteous But it is not because our souls are Actually righteous there again a caution We can think that our body is bad and our soul is good that Our soul is the part that desires God, and our soul is the part that's born again, and it's our body that we're fighting against. And so, at death, we're just freed from the body, and now we can live to Christ as we always wanted to, but that's not what the Bible is saying. Your body, as well as your soul, is united to Christ. Even in the grave, your body is united to Christ. That's why there is a resurrection unto life. The soul is freed from indwelling sin in heaven not because of the inherent goodness of your soul, but because of the sovereign work of your God. He will make you pure. He will free you from indwelling sin and make you fit for heaven. He will make you like Christ, perfect in holiness, and he will keep you from falling from that perfection. There is no danger that, like Satan and the demons, we will someday fall from our state. So we have no need of purgatory to purge us from remaining sin. Christ has borne our sins in his body on the tree, has taken away our guilt, and he will take away the presence of actual sin. And that must be part of what Paul was saying when he said that to be with Christ, to depart and be with Christ, would be far better. The great and difficult work of our lives is sanctification. It's working through that indwelling sin. It's living to Christ and putting to death the deeds of the body. And we pray and we feel dull and hard-hearted. We come and worship and we're distracted. We talk about things like this and our minds are in other places. We teach and preach and do evangelism and our hearts are cold. And that's shameful. It shouldn't be that way. It is indwelling sin. But in heaven, immediately after death. We will know what uninterrupted communion with Christ is. We will know what it is to be able to love Christ with our whole hearts, minds, strength. Something we don't know for a moment. We will know what it is to think on the things of Christ without the pollution of the things of the world, the distraction of the things of the world, without being drawn away with the anxieties and the loves of the things of the world. Our best acts now are stained with sin. We need to repent of our repentance, one of the old writers said. We're carried away. by lusts or surprised by sin. We have pride and passion, anger. We know, we know very well what it is to say with Paul, oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me? But thanks be to God, he has promised to do that, to deliver us, to complete the good work that he has begun in us. The condition of those who die in the Lord is also one of rest. Although the soul never dies nor sleeps, the Bible does speak of the death of believers as falling asleep. And at least in the New Testament, that term is only used to believers. The wicked are never said to fall asleep. The grave for the righteous is like a bed. The grave for the wicked is like a prison. One reference is 1 Thessalonians 4.13, but we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep. 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 fallen asleep. So if the soul does not sleep, as we've already established, what does that mean? What is sleeping in Christ? Well, in a very real sense, the bodies of believers do sleep. They are not conscious, though the soul remains conscious. But there is also a real sense in which the souls of believers rest. Revelation 14 13 says and I heard a voice from heaven saying write this blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on Blessed indeed says the spirit that they may rest from their labors for their deeds followed them. Now the book of Revelation was written during a time of intense persecution. It was written to churches which were experiencing intense persecution. They were, it was very probable that they would be killed for their profession of faith or that they knew people who were being killed for their profession of faith, for their testimony. And here the writer is saying those who die in the Lord are in a blessed condition. They're not lacking. They are resting from their labors of life. And we have a picture of this rest in the weekly Sabbath rest. Under the old covenant you had a seventh-day Sabbath, that seventh-day Sabbath, look back at the rest of God resting from his work of creation. and look forward to the true Sabbath that was to come in Christ. We rest in Christ. We rest from our work. And that's what we do now. We rest on the Lord's Day, on the first day of the week. We rest in Christ. We remember the work that Christ has accomplished on our behalf. We also look forward, we look forward to an eternal Sabbath, to a heavenly Sabbath, And I say this because what we experience on the Lord's Day is a picture of what we experience in the intermediate state. It's a picture of what we experience in heaven. Sometimes you've got these very odd images of people floating on clouds and playing harps or something equally as strange, but what do we do? What is the Sabbath? What do we do on the Lord's Day? We don't play harps. We don't sleep all day. What is that resting from labor? It's resting from our worldly employments. We're not slothful. We're not resting from all work. We're commanded, we're welcomed to come into the presence of our God and to worship, to rest from worldly work, worldly enjoyment, to think about Christ for a day. to spend our work in the labor of Christ. And that is how we will spend our time in heaven. That is how we will spend our time in the intermediate state. We will rest from the world. We will rest from the world's persecutions, from its distractions, its ideas, and its problems, its politics. Even the things which are fine and good and lawful, but which have a tendency to draw our affections away from Christ, away from our first love. In heaven, we'll be able to enjoy good and lawful things. We'll be able to enjoy creation in the new heavens and the new earth, but with renewed hearts. It won't draw our affection away from Christ. It will assist us in loving Christ. So in heaven our communion will be uninterrupted. We will have true rest. Believers do fall asleep, their bodies rest in the grave, while their souls enjoy a Sabbath rest with Christ. But I think there's also said that they fall asleep because the sting is taken out of death. There's not a fearful expectation of judgment for the believer when the believer dies. Even if it is something that is a real evil that we face, it takes people we love away. We suffer illness and weakness, but we do not grieve as those who have no hope. We know that Christ has conquered sin and death. And so for us, it is falling asleep in Jesus. All of this, if properly explained, should sound very good. This should sound like you should be feeling much like Paul. I'm torn between the two things. To stay here, I know there's work to be done, and I want to be, but to be with Christ would be far better. But there is a reason that scripture That is the reason that scripture sets these things before us. It sets it before us so that we don't grieve like the world grieves, that we have comfort. But the condition of those who die in the Lord is also an incomplete condition. It's not the final state. It is the intermediate state. It is not the eternal state. The intermediate state between death and resurrection is not the eternal state. It is not our final state. Life in this world for the believer is good. To live is Christ. We serve Christ. We commune with Christ. But to be with Christ at death is far better. Good, better, but there is a best. The progression. Of good, better, and best means that there is something incomplete about the intermediate state. One thing is that we are in the intermediate state awaiting the resurrection of the dead. We are composite beings. We are composed of parts. And we know that in our bodies. We see that we have a heart and arms and legs. But we are also made up of body and soul. We need a body and a soul. So much so that Paul describes this as being naked, to be without a body. 2 Corinthians chapter 5. It's not 2 Corinthians chapter 5. Yeah, sorry, I'm in 1 Corinthians. Yes, 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 beginning with verse one. He says for we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed. We have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened, not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. See what he's saying here, that if the body dies, And he expects it to die. It's a tent. Our body is a tent. It's temporary. It's dying. And if the body dies, there is an expectation of a resurrection, of a building, something that is permanent, of a glorified body, a body that will not die. And Paul's groaning for that We are groaning for that We we ought to long for that resurrection body But what Paul is saying is that he would like to have that resurrection body If it's possible to have it without dying Without being found naked if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked What he's saying is that that bodilessness, that state of nakedness is something, if it can be avoided, that he would avoid. To have both a body and a soul is what makes us complete. Not having the body will not hinder our communion with God, or it wouldn't be far better. As Paul said, it won't remove our personality. We are who we are. Jesus wouldn't have said to the dying thief, today you will be with me in paradise. He would have said, today a part of you will be with me, or today the memory of you will be with me. But he said, you will be with me in paradise. So it's, it doesn't do away with the things that we've already established, but something will be missing. We need our bodies. How do you see without a body? How do you think without a brain? We were given bodies for a reason. So we wait for the return of Christ and the resurrection. This is the hope of the believer. This is what scripture points us to. We're never told to hope for a day when we die and we're freed from our mortal shell. That's what the pagans teach. The body's a hindrance to true freedom The Bible tells us tells us that the mortal body must put on immortality So it's an incomplete state, but it's also a state of That's incomplete because we're waiting for the judgment of the wicked Waiting for God to be vindicated You know that might sound kind of harsh but take away the pride, take away the personal desire for vengeance. Replace that with a righteous love for justice, a desire for the vindication of God. And Revelation 6, 9 says, when he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God. And for the witness they had borne, they cried out with a loud voice, O sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth. They are souls, they have died. They are bodiless souls in the intermediate state, waiting for the judgment of those who persecute the church, who persecuted them. They're fully conscious. Notice that. They know that the passage of time is going on. They know how long it's been. And they're crying out, how long? Before you judge. The intermediate state is, by definition, not final. It's not the final state. It is incomplete. Those in the intermediate state are waiting, just as we wait. Not for death, but for Christ's return and for the resurrection. We will have much the same hope then as we do now. Waiting for Christ to come and complete His work of redemption. Although, then we will walk by sight. Well, very quickly, let me Look at this third point. What is the condition of those who die in their sins? It might be sufficient simply to say that it is the opposite of those who die in the Lord. Their experience is immediate. Their experience is conscious in the same way. They experience the passage of time just as those who die in the Lord. Their bodies lie in the grave and their souls are separated from their bodies and experience something immediate and conscious and yet everything that their souls experience is quite unlike the experience of the souls of those who have died in the Lord. Those who die in their sins Rather than being with Christ, they will be separated from the shining face of the only Savior of men, who is described as being gentle and lowly, of having a yoke that is easy, who in his life welcomed sinners to come, come unto me, he said with his own voice and through his word and through his preachers, through generations and generations, instead of being with that Savior, they will instead suffer torment under the face of the displeasure of God. They will be without Christ. They will be without holiness. Instead of holiness, those outside of Christ will be forever unclean. They have died in their sins. They have died in the thing which caused the fall of man in the first place. The thing which causes God's anger to burn so hot. The thing which caused the fall of Satan. The thing which caused God's own son to come into the world to bow himself under his own law and to die under the wrath of God. They've trampled underfoot the blood of God's own son. The guilt of sin will never be taken away, no matter how long the punishment goes on. The love of sin will never be satisfied, no matter how much the opportunities have been removed in hell. They are without holiness. Those who die in their sins are without rest. They will be without rest in the intermediate state. Soul sleep would be a good thing for the unbeliever. But it does not exist. They do not sleep in their graves. As I said before, the grave is like a prison as they await judgment. and their souls do not sleep. Their souls are cast immediately into hell as they experience conscious torment. Luke 16 verse 6, Jesus is giving account of the rich man and the poor man, and they both die. They go to their separate places. And Jesus has this to say, the rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes. Jesus said this before the resurrection, of course. This is the intermediate state of those who die in their sins. Conscious, torment. And the intermediate state for the wicked is also incomplete. But unlike the righteous, they're not waiting for a glorious resurrection unto life, but they're waiting for judgment. They're waiting for eternal death. The state is unconditional. It means it's not probationary. What I'm saying is that There's no chance for repentance. There's no second chance in the intermediate state. This isn't, there's no gospel being preached. They've heard their last sermon. There's no getting out of hell before the judgment day. They're held under lock and key, as it were, with God as the prison guard. And the sentence has already been decided. So it is incomplete. But they're just waiting for the resurrection to be cast back into hell. And things will surely become worse. I've only mentioned the state of those who died in their sins. But we'll deal with that in later lessons. You do have to die. It is the fate of all men, and the thing, you know, we've spent the past few years debating in the public square what, what the best methods are to keep people from dying, but, Rarely has anyone ever said, what if none of it works? What if we die anyway? What then? How will you die? Consider less the circumstances of your death and consider, will you die in your sins or will you die in the Lord? If you're not certain, then you have nothing else to do today. but to figure that out. And if you do know that you are in Christ, then how thankful you should be. This is a day of rest. This is a day to be thankful for what God has done for us, to look forward to that eternal rest that we enjoy in Christ. We are Christians. We should be honest about death. We ought to be realists. See it for what it is. Hold fast to Christ. Let the world be escapists. We know death for what it is. We know what happens after. and be encouraged, be comforted, and remember that today is the day for fruitful labor. Today is the day to honor Christ in your body. Today is the day to reach those who are not in Christ. There won't be a day after. I hope that's helpful. Let's pray. Our Father, Please help us to understand so many and so many difficult things. Please impress upon our hearts the truth of your word. Help us as we go into worship. Give us focus. We ask this in Christ's name, amen.