Participants:
Series Code: ICJ
Program Code: ICJ190021B
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00:01 We're continuing to focus on the teachings of Jesus
00:03 about the death, the grave, and the resurrection. 00:07 And so we want to continue to focus on what He's just been 00:11 teaching us from Scripture. 00:13 So I'm going back to the Scripture again. 00:15 And we just read that text in John 5:28 that says, 00:20 "Do not marvel at this; but the hour is coming 00:23 when all who are in the grave will hear His voice." 00:25 Everybody that's in the grave. 00:26 And they will come up to the resurrection of life 00:29 or the resurrection of condemnation. 00:32 We'll talk a little bit more about that. 00:34 So we shouldn't be amazed at the ability of Christ 00:37 to resurrect the dead. 00:39 And also, when the dead hear the voice of Christ... 00:42 Because many people say, "Well, they're in heaven. 00:44 And Jesus is going to call them and He's going to 00:48 bring them back down here and put them in the body." 00:50 But that's not what Jesus says. 00:52 Jesus says, He says they hear the voice in the grave. 00:57 They're not in heaven. 00:59 They don't hear the voice in heaven. 01:02 They hear the voice in the grave. 01:05 And Jesus goes on to say, everyone, good and evil, 01:11 are going to be resurrected. 01:13 So there are two resurrections. 01:17 And you choose which one you come up in. 01:20 For sure we don't want to come up in the resurrection 01:24 of condemnation. 01:25 We want to come up in the resurrection of life. 01:30 Now the resurrection of life, as I mentioned earlier, 01:33 comes first, and the resurrection of condemnation 01:37 comes second. 01:39 Now that means that those who are in the resurrection 01:41 of life, they're not going to die again. 01:45 They're going to get everlasting life at that point. 01:49 You see, we possess... 01:50 When you give your heart to Christ, 01:52 you possess life, but you possess it in Christ. 01:56 You may die. 01:57 And we'll talk about that death and the difference between 02:00 the first death and the dreaded second death. 02:04 We'll talk about that in a few moments here. 02:06 So that means there's a resurrection of life. 02:09 You'll never die again. 02:11 But if you come up in the resurrection of condemnation, 02:15 then you're going to be condemned by the judgment 02:19 for your works which are evil. 02:22 If you come up in that resurrection, 02:24 you have no covering of Christ to protect you. 02:28 And you're going to be condemned to the dreaded 02:32 second dead. 02:33 I call it the dreaded second death. 02:36 Because there's no coming back from that death. 02:38 Well, let's go on here and look at Romans 6:23. 02:44 This is clear too. 02:46 The apostle Paul reflecting the words of Jesus, 02:48 "The wages of sin is..." What? 02:51 "...death, but the gift of God is eternal life 02:55 in Christ Jesus our Lord." 02:58 Once you give your life to Christ, 03:00 it's tied to the life of Christ. 03:03 So what is the condition of one who is dead? 03:07 Well, there's no immortal soul. 03:11 Let me explain why there's not. 03:13 Let's go to Genesis. You know the story well. 03:17 Satan's temptation to Eve. 03:20 He looks at Eve, and she makes the statement 03:23 in their conversation that they can eat of 03:26 any tree of the garden except that one. 03:29 But in the day they eat of it, they will die. 03:34 Now death is not life. 03:37 Death and life are opposite. 03:40 Now it's interesting what Lucifer comes back to her. 03:44 He comes back to her and he says to her, 03:47 "You will not die. 03:49 But you will be, if you eat this fruit," I'm paraphrasing, 03:52 "you eat this fruit that God has said you can't eat of, 03:56 God knows that if you eat of it you'll become like Him. 03:59 You'll become immortal like Him." 04:03 And Eve bought the lie. 04:06 It was a lie. 04:07 It was a direct contradiction of God Himself. 04:12 The serpent says, "You'll not surely die. 04:14 You'll be like God." 04:15 So he's just saying, "Look, God may say that you die, 04:19 But I'm telling you that you won't die." 04:22 And listen, as I said earlier, the opposite of life is death. 04:27 They're opposites. 04:29 Now I want to tell you, and I tell you with great sorrow, 04:31 that the great religions of the world, like Hinduism, Buddhism, 04:36 witchcraft, paganism, and to my sorrow, much of Christianity, 04:43 they've bought into the same lie. 04:45 They tell people, "Oh he's not dead, he's in heaven." 04:48 But that's not what the Bible says. 04:50 "Oh, they just go on living. They're not..." 04:53 You know, the paganism says, "Well..." 04:55 You go to Hinduism, "Oh no." 04:56 You know, they have the reincarnation. 04:58 That's a big thing today. 04:59 Because they believe that you don't die when you die. 05:02 Really? 05:04 Again, are our eyes deceiving us? 05:08 No, our eyes are not deceiving us. 05:10 When a person dies, they die. 05:13 Now listen to this. 05:14 Satan's solution to death is the lie about an immortal soul. 05:22 But Jesus' solution to death is the resurrection. 05:29 Big difference. 05:32 Jesus' solution is the resurrection. 05:34 1 Corinthians 15:52 says, "For the trumpet will sound, 05:38 and the dead will be raised incorruptible, 05:42 and we shall be changed." 05:44 Now we want to come to the death of Lazarus. 05:47 I've given you some background to that already. 05:49 And we'll go to John 11:3-4. 05:52 And the sisters came to Jesus, and they said, 05:56 "Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick." 06:01 Or they sent Him a message. 06:03 And when Jesus heard that, He said to His disciples, 06:08 "This sickness is not unto death, 06:12 but it's so that God will be glorified, 06:15 and the Son will be glorified in this sickness." 06:19 Now John 11:11-12, you can read it for yourself, 06:24 "Our friend Lazarus," Jesus said to His disciples, "sleeps." 06:28 This is a couple or three days later 06:31 after He got the message. 06:32 And the disciples were kind of puzzled 06:34 why Jesus didn't go right away to help out Lazarus, 06:37 and Mary, and Martha whom He loved so very much. 06:41 But Jesus knew what He was doing. 06:44 I'm sure Mary and Martha, they made it clear, 06:46 "Lord, if You had only been here our brother would not have died. 06:51 If You had only been here." 06:54 But Jesus knows what He's doing. 06:55 Sometimes we don't understand the mysteries of God. 06:59 We can't explain them. 07:01 But my dear friends, we must trust God. 07:04 Jesus is about to do something for Mary, Martha, and Lazarus 07:07 that has given hope to millenniums of Christians. 07:12 So let's go back to the text. 07:15 John 11:11-12, Jesus says, "Our friend Lazarus sleeps..." 07:20 Now that word is important. 07:22 Because Jesus already knew he was dead. 07:24 It's going to say that in just a moment. 07:26 "...but I go that I may wake Him up." 07:29 So Jesus said, "He's asleep. I'm going to wake him up." 07:33 But He's not talking about normal sleep. 07:36 He's talking about the sleep of death. 07:38 And Jesus said, "I'm going to wake him up." 07:40 The disciples took it as the other way, that Lazarus was 07:43 just taking a rest and he's doing better now. 07:46 And they said, "Lord, if he sleeps, he will get well." 07:49 But then Jesus makes it clear what He meant 07:51 by His illustration. 07:55 Verses 13-14 of John 11. 07:57 "However, Jesus spoke of his death, 08:00 but they thought He was speaking of taking rest in sleep. 08:05 Then Jesus said to them plainly, 'Lazarus is dead.'" 08:11 So Jesus speaks of Lazarus as being asleep, 08:14 the disciples think he's getting better, 08:16 Jesus frankly and plainly tells them, "Lazarus is dead." 08:22 He says nothing about Lazarus being in heaven, 08:24 or anywhere else. 08:26 Now that's why the apostle... 08:28 Not apostle, I'm sorry. 08:29 ...great King Solomon, the great wise man, 08:31 he said this in Ecclesiastes 9:5, 08:34 he says, "For the living know they will die, 08:37 but the dead know nothing. 08:39 They have no more reward, 08:41 for the memory of them is forgotten." 08:43 And then it goes on to say, 08:44 just in case we didn't get the point, 08:46 "Also their love, their hatred, and envy have now perished." 08:50 Perished. 08:52 If you go to heaven, is your love still going on? 08:55 I would think it would be. 08:57 But no, when you die, you don't go anywhere. 08:59 And your love, and your hatred, your envy, your emotions, 09:04 "never will they have a share in anything done under the sun." 09:08 I was a young pastor in Raleigh, North Carolina 09:11 many, many years ago. 09:14 And in that time we had something called, the Moonies. 09:17 And so I wanted to find out what these 09:19 people were doing, and so forth. 09:21 So I went to one of their programs. 09:24 They had invited me, found me, when I was walking 09:26 around the streets or something. 09:27 Anyway, to make a long story short, I went. 09:30 And he was explaining death. 09:32 And so, was saying, "Well, when you die, 09:34 you know, your physical part..." 09:35 Then he draws a line, but he says, 09:37 "Your love, and your hatred, and your emotions, 09:39 and everything else, they stay alive. 09:41 They don't go away." 09:43 So I raised my hand. 09:44 And I said, "I want to ask you a question. 09:47 I want to read a text to you." 09:48 And I read Ecclesiastes 9:5. 09:51 He got silent. 09:53 I said, "This says that their love, their hatred, 09:55 their emotions, the very thing you said is alive, 09:57 this says that it dies, it perishes. 10:01 What do you say?" 10:03 He said, "I want to talk to you later." 10:05 Well, I guess that's all you can do in the face 10:09 of that clear, clear biblical text. 10:13 Well let's go, because I want to talk about 10:15 the dreaded second death for just a moment. 10:18 Because a lot of times people don't understand this. 10:20 And illustrations also have limits. 10:22 So let me give you this illustration. 10:23 You remember computers, they have a hard drive. 10:28 When I first went into the ministry 10:30 I probably couldn't have used this illustration. 10:31 I can use it today. 10:33 Everything in that computer that goes through 10:35 is on that hard drive. 10:37 Now when you decide that the hard drive... 10:41 You can take that hard drive out and reproduce 10:43 everything on the computer. 10:45 Am I right? 10:46 It's kind of like that. 10:48 I can't explain it, but God preserves 10:49 the hard drive when you die. 10:51 He preserves the hard drive. 10:52 It doesn't mean you're alive. 10:54 There's no electricity, there's no nothing. 10:55 You're just dead, but somehow God preserves the hard drive. 10:59 And on the morning of the resurrection 11:01 He wraps you again with all the monitors 11:03 and puts the electricity to you. 11:05 This is kind of a crude illustration, 11:06 but it kind of gets the point. 11:07 And you wake up. 11:09 Because you can take that same hard drive 11:10 and put it into a new computer, 11:12 and that new computer will tell you and go right to work. 11:16 But in the dreaded second death, the hard drive is destroyed. 11:23 There's no coming back in that dreaded second death. 11:28 My dear friends, our only hope is to avoid the lies of Satan. 11:33 Because I'm telling you, this lie is going to be used 11:37 to deceive the world and to prepare it for the battle 11:41 of Armageddon. 11:43 This lie, that you go on living, makes it possible 11:46 for people to be open to the deception of dead relatives. 11:50 During the crusades, dead generals back in the 11:52 Dark Ages would appear. 11:54 They weren't the generals. 11:56 They were evil angels appearing as generals. 11:59 Evil angels appearing as... 12:01 They take advantage of people's grief and they deceive them. 12:05 The devil and his evil angels are awful. 12:08 They'll take advantage of your worst circumstances, 12:10 your heartaches. 12:12 But listen, Jesus doesn't. 12:15 He tells you the truth. 12:16 When you die, you go to sleep. 12:18 And there's a morning of resurrection coming. 12:21 The question is, which resurrection will you be in? 12:25 You make that choice. 12:27 You make that choice by attaching yourself to Christ. 12:30 To Christ alone. 12:32 Because He, Christ, is the resurrection. 12:36 He, Christ, is the life. |
Revised 2019-11-04