Turn in your Bibles, if you would, this evening, to 2 Corinthians, Chapter 5. 2 Corinthians, Chapter 5. That was the one occasion where I only spoke for nine minutes. Another problem happened once. I was preaching in Gibraltar, and I was preaching along, and the clock said 11.30, and I kept preaching, and I looked up. It still seemed to be... Couldn't be any later than it was before. I kept preaching and still said 11.30 and finally this fellow in the back, his name's Jerry, he was a real timid fellow, he said, Pastor, he said, I don't know if you know this, but that clock's battery has just died. It's 12.15. So I wrapped it up then. We'll try and be somewhere in between there tonight. I mentioned this morning the great theologian, American theologian, Jonathan Edwards, and his well-known sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. He's also well-known for a series of 70 resolutions by which he governed most of his adult life. 70 disciplines, 70 habits that he determined while he was still a teenager, most of them, would be the best things to do to produce a life pleasing to God and productive for Him. He reviewed this list weekly for 35 years, which would be about 1,800 times in all. This evening, I want to look at one of these remarkable resolutions, number nine, if you're keeping count. I am resolved, he said. to think much on all occasions of my dying and of the common circumstances which attend death. This resolution seems a bit shocking to us, odd if nothing else. We don't enjoy thinking about death. We go to great lengths at time to prevent thinking about death, to suppress thoughts of death, because thoughts of death bring with them sentiments of grief and fear and pain, and we don't like these kinds of things. But we're all reminded regularly of the common circumstances which attend death, right? They can't be avoided. They may stay in abeyance for months, even years, if we keep ourselves isolated from friends, but we can't help but return to them time and again in life. And despite his youth, Edwards had the wisdom to identify this as actually a good thing, a good thing. And he's in good company. The author of Ecclesiastes, we find, says the same things. In chapter 7, verse 2, he says this, We think about the appropriate things, timely things, significant things, when we are brought face to face with this idea of death. And when the Apostle Paul wrote this letter to the Corinthians, he was writing to a group of people who were consumed with negative thoughts and worries about death. It's a little bit difficult to reconstruct the situation from Paul's words. We see the answer, but we don't see the question. He's answering a series of questions here, and we see the answers, but we don't always see the questions. Some apparently were teaching that the present life was all that there is, that in a few years, We'll spend on Earth, these are the sum total of our human existence, there's no hope of life after death. This was a popular idea in Greek thought, the Epicureans thought similarly. And apparently some of the Corinthian believers were apparently starting to entertain the possibility that this was true, that this life is all that there is, and that they were pouring out their lives in pursuit of the wrong religion, something rather empty. Christians in every age have suffered, right? Poverty, loss, persecution, even death. And it's a very disconcerting suggestion, maybe one you've entertained at some point, right? That perhaps the Christian system might be the wrong one and we're ruining the few years that we have. Others in Corinth were apparently troubled by the lack of information about the afterlife. And there is precious little in the scriptures about the afterlife. Like the writer of Ecclesiastes who spoke elsewhere of death being a portal to a gloomy and shadowy existence. He wasn't sure what it was going to be like, a mysterious realm. He says there's no knowledge or meaningful relationships with anyone on earth. And perhaps the Corinthians had become quite anxious about the uncertainties associated with death. And surely there are many of these, right? We just don't know a lot of detail about how it's going to unfold. Others, on the other hand, were apparently so fixated on the life to come that they were living carelessly, even immorally, believing that since they had gotten their eternal life ticket, They could live however they wanted. They didn't need to endure the hardships or discomforts in this life. That was a silly thing to do, like the rich farmer in the Gospels. We should eat, drink, be merry, then die, and wake up for another round of merrymaking. Now, this is a terrible understanding of what heaven's like, but I think it's something that's shared by a lot of folks, right? We're just gonna wake up and have, we're going to enjoy all the same things we enjoy now, only on steroids. On 2 Corinthians 5, Paul lays all of these misunderstandings to rest. I'd like to read those 10 verses. The passage breakdowns down, I think, into two sections here. The first five verses give Paul's defense of the fact of immortality. There is a life after this one. And then verses six to ten give God's expectations in view of the fact that we will live forever. So let's look at these together. So chapter five, verses one through ten. We know that if the tent which is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Now 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 were still in this tent, we groan, being burdened, Not that we want to be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, and he has given us the spirit as a guarantee. And so, we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. We walk by faith and not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage and would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please God. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. Paul begins here with an apt but somewhat unnerving metaphor, right? He likens our bodies to tents. I don't know how many here are campers or were campers, but tents are not the sturdiest structures in the world. They're flimsy. If it gets windy, they blow away. If you brush up against them with a knife or a stick or a sharp rock, they leak. Even if you manage not to do this, they still leak, right? You can fold one up in the morning, put it into a little box about the size and weight of a cookie jar, and throw it in the back of your trunk. And Paul makes this unnerving observation that our bodies are a lot like tents. Now some of us are more poignantly aware of this fact than others, but the fact is it's true for all of us. Tents simply just, they just don't last very long. And neither will your body. COVID has not been kind, was not kind in my circle of acquaintance. I know many who died. Both my parents died during that window, and I am refreshed of the memory of this, even now. My mom's anniversary of her death is about two years here, it's just coming up here. But whether it's recent or distant, we can all point to reminders of the frailty of life. And we live with the unnerving realization that death may come suddenly at any time to take us and our acquaintances away. And if the Lord tarries, death will eventually come and get us all. But having made this observation, that we live in flimsy tents that could collapse at any time, Paul makes another observation that should cancel out this terrible thought. If our body is destroyed, and if it wears out, which it will, we get a building from God. The contrast is immediate. If we no longer have this tent, this transitory flimsy structure will have a building, a permanent, secure structure. How secure? It's eternal, and it's an eternal structure preserved forever in heaven. Good language there. Now there's some debate in this passage concerning about the precise identity of the building. Some believe it's a reference to heaven itself, the place that Christ is preparing for us. Some believe that there's an intermediate body, some sort of a temporary body, not made with human hands, which we'll use until we get our more permanent resurrection bodies. Others imagine that this is Paul's reference to the resurrection body itself. The debate is an interesting one, and my colleagues at Detroit Baptist Seminary don't actually all agree on the answer. But the debate is not one that we need to spend a great deal of time on because the debate, because Paul's point is crystal clear. There is a permanent sphere of existence to which we will graduate when we die. This life is merely a prequel to a greater life in the age to come. In verse two, Paul moves to this conversation about death. He retains hope that he will receive his new building suddenly, immediately. He has this hope that he will move immediately from the mortal to the resurrected state in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye perhaps we could have. He groans with intense longing to be allowed by God to simply put on immortality, like clothes. And the verb he uses is an interesting one. His ultimate hope is not that his present body will be replaced, but that his present state will be clothed, ultimately, with immortality. And he hopes, apart from the sting of death, he wants to be a recipient, a participant, perhaps I should say, in the rapture of the Christian church. Paul has no morbid desire to die. He has no desire to be without a body, even temporarily. No one really does. He does not want to become a naked soul, he says in verse three. There's nothing wrong with having a body, even an inferior body, a weak body, a disease-ridden body, and with few exceptions, we like to keep them as long as we possibly can. Paul's the same way, but I believe Paul offers us a good outlook that we do well to adopt. a true anticipation and genuine hope for the sudden return of Jesus Christ in our lifetime. We live in a day in which there is surprisingly little instruction on the return of the Lord, perhaps a pendulum swing. Back in the 70s and 80s when I was growing up, it seems like every other sermon was about eschatology, and I think there seems to be something of a pendulum swing away from that, and I think perhaps an unhealthy one. where we rarely speak about 40% of the Bible. 40% of the Bible is predictive prophecy, and yet we tend to preach very little on that. And I think Paul sort of lets us know that that's not the way we should be thinking. We should have this in the back of our minds at any time. Christ could return. We have a hope. We have a hope that we would be part of this event when Christ comes and receives his own up to himself. So we have this hope, and this hope shines through tears, right? It comes not from looking backward, but from looking forward to Jesus Christ, who is coming to make all things new, and we say, even so, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. Of course, even though we are confident of the sure return of Christ and hopeful that it will be soon, we can't simply assume that our wait will be a short one. And in our passage, while Paul clearly hopes to be raptured, he is making preparation for the possibility that he would not be raptured by Jesus Christ. It wouldn't be his own experience, but someone else who would follow him. And of course, that's what happened. He was not a participant in the second coming of Christ. In the first chapter of this book, he mentions an incident that brought him to death's door, and apparently he's come to grips with the possibility and even the probability that he is going to die. So he had some sort of encounter with death, and he realizes his own mortality is something that he has to grapple with. And so he gives us then a third observation, and that is that the nakedness of death is not permanent. Even though Paul knows that death was his likely end, he's not ultimately worried. He knows that there may be a time, a period of time in which he would exist as a naked soul, but he would not stay long in this unclothed state. And how does he know this? Well, he gives two reasons. Chapter five, verse five, first part, because it's the centerpiece of God's plan. He has prepared us for this very thing. The language here is a little bit vague. Paul does something that might get him in trouble in high school English, right? He uses a pronoun with an antecedent that is not as clear as it might be, right? What is this very thing for which God has prepared us? Well, I think verse four tells us. God has prepared us for fellowship with him, clothed in physical bodies forever. That is our end. That is God's intention. in his universe, that's why God created us. In fact, Job says as much, right? Remember Job, when he's talking about his own demise, he says in chapter 19, verse 26, after my skin is destroyed, this I know. So after I've rotted and my skin flakes off, ugly picture here. This I know, that from the standpoint of my flesh, I shall see God. with mine own eyes and not another. So he starts with a rather graphic picture here of him just sort of disintegrating in the grave. But he recognizes that at some point, from the standpoint of my flesh, my flesh, not another's, I'm going to see God with my own eyes, mine, and not another's. I am going to get a new body. And he recognizes that this is why God has created him. God's charter for humanity, to fellowship permanently with man in his image in bodies. I think we can see that as you work your way through the Christian scriptures. It's expressed throughout the scriptures. It begins with God walking physically with Adam in the garden in perfect bliss. It continues with God's preparation of a tabernacle, which is what? The tent of meeting. Its purpose was what? For people to meet with God. That was the purpose of the tabernacle. And then later, a permanent structure, the temple, where apparently he concentrated his presence in the form of a Shekinah glory, right? So the glory cloud was this concentrated manifestation of the presence of God was there and the people would visit multiple times a year. He would dwell among his people and mingle with them. Jesus came and was given a name that expresses this purpose, right? Immanuel. I could point to Brett here, see if he can remember some of his Hebrew words here, but Im, with, manu, us, el, God, the with us God, okay? And it takes three Hebrew words and just crams them together and gives Jesus his name. He is the God who is with us. Christ was not like the distant gods of the world, he was with us, he was imminent. And then finally in Revelation 21, the grand climax of the age, God brings down the new city of Jerusalem down to earth and a voice cries out, behold, the tabernacle of God, the tent of meeting of God is with men. He will dwell with them and they shall be his people and God himself will be with them forever and be their God. This is what we were prepared for. And this is why Paul has confidence that he will not long remain a naked soul. Because God created mankind in order to fellowship with him forever in bodies. This is the grand consummation of God's plan. But God does not simply leave us with an abstract theme for the universe. He gives us something more concrete. In the second half of verse five, here's something that we can enjoy now as proof that immortality will, in fact, be swallowed up in life. He has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. When the Holy Spirit regenerated us, he gives us new life. We did not immediately receive, if I may, life to the full. He did not give us immediate physical immortality. We didn't receive as an experimental reality all that God has promised for us. I'm not saying that we didn't have eternal life, but we didn't experience in all of its fullness what we will enjoy at God's right hand. 1 Timothy 6, 19 says it this way. At the present time, we are storing up for ourselves a good foundation for the time to come when we shall lay hold of life that is life indeed. So he's looking forward to this day when our life will be life indeed. So there's more to come. And Paul's saying the same thing here in 2 Corinthians 5. When the Holy Spirit saved us, we received eternal life. But we're not enjoying that eternal life in the same sense now that we will in the hereafter. So how do you know that we're gonna graduate to the hereafter? Well, Paul gives us the answer. When the Holy Spirit indwelt us, his permanent residence was in us. It served as an absolute guarantee, an earnest, a pledge, a down payment. that we will not only live, but experience what Paul calls life in deed, life in the full. My wife and I enjoy going to yard sales in the summer, and occasionally we'll come across a really good deal, but don't have quite enough cash in our pockets to pay for it, and so what do we do? Well, there's a... standard policy in such a setting where you give a down payment. You hand them a $20 bill and say, just hold this until I get back. Usually they do. They know you're gonna come back. They know you're not gonna leave that $20. Nobody who's out at yard sales is gonna give up $20 that easily. So they know I'm gonna be back, okay? And so I've given them a down payment, a guarantee that I'll be back. And God does something similar, but with something far more valuable than cash money, right? He actually gives us an installment of himself in the third person of the Trinity. In 2 Peter 1, we are, it's described this way, we've been made partakers of the divine nature. It's impossible for us to imagine that God would make a deposit of his own self and then not come to complete the transaction. And so with these two arguments in view, Paul silences all false ideas about the afterlife. We are going to live forever somewhere else. This is the purpose for which God has created us, and he has given us proof in the person of the Holy Spirit. And so we know that we will live forever in physical bodies, with God forever, together with all those who have died in Christ. It's the promise. And this is a great comfort in seasons of loss. But Paul doesn't even stop here. Because in the next paragraph, verses six through 10, he makes sure that these verses do not simply function as some sort of an abstract philosophy lesson here about the meaning of life, or even just a source of comfort in the face of loss. Now it does that, but it should do more. He expects us, Paul does, to do something with the information, and so in verses six through 10, he offers some very practical implications that flow from the first five verses of the chapter, and here's his message. Knowing that you will live forever, your future life should shape the way you live your present life. There is a certain frustration that all pastors occasionally have. A frustration that after having shared God's word, even to an attentive audience like yourself, sometimes even hearing the words, good job, pastor, that I wonder if they really got it. I'm not sure that they did. And I sense this frustration in Paul. He's recently written three letters to the church at Corinth. He has already taught at length about the Resurrection. Longest chapter in the Bible on the Resurrection. He's already given them, 1 Corinthians 15. and he closed that chapter this way. Therefore, in light of the certainty of the resurrection, therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. But a few months later, Paul realizes that the Corinthians still hadn't got it. They were still bantering about the same struggles that had prompted the earlier letters. But rather than chide them, Paul patiently writes again, teaches them again, very specifically about the effects of the doctrine of the resurrection on their lives. And he mentions specifically two chief responses. First, we can be confident in the face of death. We can be confident. No one enjoys the thought of dying. Paul doesn't like the thought of death, he just said so, in verses three and four. He's not saying that we should be dismissive of death, that we should be callous towards death, whether that's our death or someone else's. Instead, Paul says we should embrace the reality of death by being comforted and confident, because after death, a building replaces the tent. After a week of camping, I put the tent in the trunk, and we head home. Am I sad? Sure. There's always that little letdown at the end of vacation. We've all been there, right? Knowing that it's gonna be a while before we can spend this kind of quality time with family again. But I'm not incapacitated by the fact that I'm leaving my campsite. Because I know that in a few short hours, I'm going to be in my building. And there's a very comfortable bed there that I have been missing right for the last week. I'm not incapacitated in the face of death because I know there's a building still standing, waiting for me. And that's precisely the picture that Paul has in mind. Even his words convey this. If I'm at home in my tent, I'm away from home, my real home. And if I am away from my tent, I am in my house. I have a home other than my tent. You have a building other than your tent. In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul put it this way, I don't want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, our acquaintances who have died. Lest you sorrow as others who have no hope, for we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain at the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with a voice of the archangel, with a trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we shall always be with the Lord. So comfort one another with these words. Paul says here, don't lose heart. Same thing. Because even while the tent is wearing thin and getting holes, our new house is actually improving day by day. We can't see it, verse seven says, because we walk by faith and not by sight. But we know it's there. with a certainty that is greater even than the camper who drives away from the campground, intent on rediscovering his house. And that's the nature of saving faith. There's a modern hymn making the rounds that speaks of resurrection of faith being clothed in certainty. That's actually not quite right, because faith is certainty. Eventually it becomes sight, and we look forward to the day when faith becomes sight, but faith does not become certainty. Faith is certainty of itself. And we have a confidence that we are going to be with God. This long, slow decline into death that we all experience often entails the long, slow removal of the things that we can see, people that we love, our health. Often the elderly need to give up their own home. Sometimes we lose the ability to see anything at all, right? Blindness, perhaps we're unable to even mentally process what can be seen. But this verse allows the declining saint to be more and more and more firmly convinced as what he sees fades, that his eternal state is in fact secure. And so we do look forward to a day when our faith becomes sight, when the greater source of certainty aligns with the lesser one. As it stands now, it's better to have faith than it is to have sight. And as we think in this way, we become steadfast in our Christian walk. Unmoved, as Paul puts it. Always abounding in the work of the Lord. That's what Paul's after in these last five verses. So firmly has he come to believe in God's promise of resurrection that he can make startling statements about life and death. What does he say? I'm willing to be absent from the body if it means I'll be present with the Lord. Or elsewhere, Philippians. For to me, to live is Christ, to die is gain. I'm torn between the desire to depart, and be with Christ, which is far better, and the desire to stay, which is more needful, he says. And he has this view of death as something that he holds loosely in his hands. He's not being morbid, he's not looking to hasten death. In fact, he says, right now it is more profitable that I stick around. But he's confident that when it's time for him to go, his new house is gonna be ready. He won't simply cease to exist or wander lost and aimless forever. His home will be ready. I was acquainted with a little boy once who went to his first funeral many years ago. I was made privy to the conversation he had with his mother. The little boy was deeply concerned that a family member was crying during the eulogy. So he asked after the service, why is she crying? And the answer came back with the common euphemism, she's crying because she lost her father. Little boy was confused by this and says, didn't she know that he's right there at the front of the church in that box? So mom and dad explained further that this was just her father's body. His soul had gone to heaven to be with the Lord. And at this, the little boy brightened visibly. And he said, well then, if she knows where he is, He hasn't lost it. And it's true. It's true, and it gives us confidence in the face of death. What a refreshing thought. We will lose loved ones in Christ for a season. But they're not lost. When a believer dies, he or she is immediately with the Lord, and that's the truest source of comfort when we attend the deathbed of a brother or sister in Jesus Christ, or lie on our own deathbed. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me, thou preparest the table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over. Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and afterward I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. But Paul has just one last therefore to give to us in verses nine to ten. Verse nine begins with a rather forceful expression that is perhaps not caught as fully as it might be in our translation that we have in front of us. We make it our aim, Paul says, but more than this, we tie up everything. We put all of our aspirations and all of our efforts into this one single all-encompassing goal, to please God. The idea here is not that we should labor to be accepted by God, But Paul still hopes that we will live acceptably as we live in the aftermath of our new life, because we have a new building made by God. This is the only logical conclusion. Paul is not saying here that we are to put pleasing God on the list of things that we need to do. That's not it. To think this way, I think, is to miss the point. It means that you throw away your things to do list and replace it with a pleasing God list. And if what you intend to do doesn't fit on your pleasing God list, you don't do it. It can't credibly be placed there, you can't do it. Pleasing God is not one of the things you do, it is the thing you do. The only thing you do. In his earlier epistle to the Corinthians, Paul made this point in terms of the mundane. Even something as mundane as eating and drinking, you need to do this, why? To glorify God. Pleasing God must become our routine. And it's a routine that will persist eternally. And that's what Paul says, right? Whether present or absent, I need to please God. David Brainerd put it this way, I don't go to heaven to be advanced, but to give honor to God. It is no matter where I shall be stationed in heaven, whether I shall have a high seat or a low seat there. My heaven is to please God and glorify him and give all to him and be wholly devoted to his glory. Here's the thing, that's not only what your heaven shall be like, as Brainerd tells us, that's what your earth should be like as well. Your manifest purpose in life is to please God. Death will surely overtake us. It won't be long before my life will end, like the lives of my mother and my father, and many of us lost friends during this COVID season. But as sobering as that fact is, Paul nearly explodes with excitement when he tells us this. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep. We'll all be changed in the moment. in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. This corruptible will put on incorruption, and this mortal will put on immortality. And when this incorruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. And then he taunts death, oh death, where is your sting? Oh, Hades, where is your victory? Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. And so it is with great earnestness that I enjoin you to do what Jonathan Edwards resolved to do so many years ago, resolved to think much on all occasions of my dying and of the common circumstances which attend death. Because when we do, We remind ourselves of the life beyond, and that which really matters, causing us, in Paul's words in 1 Timothy 6, to lay up treasure for ourselves as a firm foundation of the coming age so that we may take hold of the life that is life. Indeed. Let's pray. Lord, we are grateful. Again, for your grace, your goodness to us, and specifically, but for the special grace of our salvation and the confidence, the hope that it generates in us. Lord, we are so mindful of the fact that this fleeting earth is something of a miserable place at times. And yet we know, we have great confidence even though we cannot see it, that there is a building prepared for us. And Lord, I ask that we would be confident in view of that and also resolute in our concern that we please God for the rest of our lives. In your name we pray, amen.