What Does it Mean to Sleep in Jesus? (05/08/2022)

Psalm 116 and the Precious Death of the Saints

Yeah. We'll be having a memorial service for my mom here at this church on Wednesday at 6 PM. We're having a graveside service just for the family this afternoon. The majority of the family asked that we do it that way.

And so that's what I will do. But it'll be a big service. We have like 24 people. Is that right, Ashton? Something like that. So pray for us this afternoon as we leave here. We'll go there. And all right.

So in Psalm 116. Uh-oh. Let's see. I got the wrong note there. This page. All right. So in Psalm 116, verse 15, very wonderful passage of scripture, but somewhat odd, I think. So let me read it. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.

And the reason to me that the verse is odd is because it doesn't seem that way to us, does it? You wouldn't say the death of your mom is precious in your sight because you're talking about your senses.

You're talking about what you see, what you feel, what you hear. And it's not precious. It's awful. And yet God says it's precious from his viewpoint. So what does that tell us right off the mark? It tells us that death is different than we perceive it.

Would you agree with that? It's not like we perceive it in part of our flesh gets in the way, but Satan gets in the way of it as well. And so I want to talk about how it really is as compared to how sometimes our senses make us feel that it is.

I want to talk about how it really is in truth, all right? For just a little bit this morning. 1 John 3, verse 1 says, behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God.

Therefore, the world doesn't understand us. The world does not know us because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God. And it does not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

What a beautiful verse. That's speaking of the rapture and the fact that we're with him now. But when we see him face to face, we're going to see him as he really is. And we'll be like him. All of the part of our flesh that works against God and against what we want to do will be gone.

You talked about it a little bit about sometimes you do the things you don't want to do. Sometimes you don't do the things you want to do. Same problem the apostle Paul had. All that will drop off on the way up when it says we are changed in the air.

And at that moment, we will be like him. Imagine that. In more ways than one, we will be able to pass through a wall because we're from a higher dimension. And we can appear in the room and eat bread and fish with people and go right back out and not disturb the molecule of the wall, like he can do.

And so think as my mom can do that right now. Give me a little angle. Can't do that. And I remember when Brother Otis passed away, I was literally mad at Otis for about a day because all the things we were in the midst of discussing that we couldn't figure out about God from the scripture, he instantly knew it and I didn't.

And I was a little upset with him. And I'm not upset with my mom in that way. The way I'm upset with her is just that I'm not upset with her at all. I don't think I've ever in my life been upset with her.

But think what she's seeing today. She sees Jesus as he is, and she is like him. She was an awful lot like him down here. I can't imagine what she looks like now, but quite amazing. So in reality, death, what it doesn't mean in the Bible is it never means cessation of life.

And yet that's what we see with our senses, isn't it? We think life stops and there you go. It never means that in the Bible. It has nothing to do with life ceasing in the Bible. But rather it is the separation of the spirit and the soul from the physical body, which is a freeing of the soul and the spirit.

It's freedom is what it is. You're no longer bound by a body that fights against everything God wants you to do. The body that even wants to kill itself through various manners of indulgences, you're free from that.

So the Bible, which has many things to teach us about this event, says that death for the born-again Christian is several things. Number one, it is precious in the sight of the Lord. Number two, in Philippians 121, the Bible says that death is gain, not loss.

For to me, to live is Christ, the apostle Paul said, and to die is gain. So physical death is profitable to the Christian. Now would we be so selfish as to deny my mom that blessing of gain, right? Number three, death always occurs in the presence of God and the angels.

We never die alone. Even if you're on an island by yourself and your family couldn't be with you, you would not die alone, because no saint ever has. And I get that from Psalm 23, 4. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art what?

With me. Who is thou? That's God, but he also has his ministering spirits there with you as well. And the Holy Spirit is there with you as well. And you are never alone when you pass away. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me, David said.

The fourth thing is that death leads to comfort. In Luke 16, 25, but Abraham said, Lazarus is comforted. And he was in heaven, if you remember the story. He was in Abraham's bosom, which was heaven for the Old Testament saints.

And the rich man said, dip the tip of your finger in water and touch my tongue, for I am tormented in these flames. But Lazarus, the saved man, the scripture says he was comforted. So death is comforting to the person.

Total opposite of what our senses try to tell us about death. Do you find that interesting? Total opposite of what we would think. The next thing is, for a Christian to die means the presence of Christ.

2 Corinthians 5, 8, and we are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. There's a group of people that started a false doctrine, Seventh-day Adventists, or just one group that teaches this.

And they call it soul sleep. And they say that when your loved one passes away and you put their body in that grave, that they're still in that body too. And they lay there for thousands of years until the Lord comes back, and then they rise at the resurrection.

It's called soul sleep, and it's a lie because the apostle Paul clearly said, I am confident. Now, like Paul didn't say I'm confident unless Jesus taught him this in the Arabian desert. Like, I'm confident because God told me this.

Face to face, all right? And what God told me was, I'm willing, because of what he told me, I'm willing to be absent from this physical body because to be absent from that means I am present instantly with the Lord.

And I see him as he is, and I'll be like him. And Paul said, that's what I would do right this minute if it weren't for the Holy Spirit told me you need me, so I'm gonna stay a while and preach. But other than that, I would just go right now because I would be instantly present with the Lord.

Philippians 1 .23, Paul said again, he said, for I am in a straight between the two. He said, I can't make my mind up what I should do. Having a desire to depart, I have a desire to die and to be with Christ, because that's what to die would mean, which is far better.

So he had this fight between whether to stay and help the brothers like the Lord wanted him to, or to just die and be with Jesus right now like he wanted to. So you see, Paul didn't buy Satan's ruse about how horrifying death was.

He thought it was wonderful. He said, it is wonderful because it's instant in the presence of Jesus. You see him face-to-face. You no longer have to have faith. You see him face-to-face and you become like him.

He said everything about it's awesome. And the next thing is to the Christian, physical death brings a crown, a reward given to us by Jesus in front of everybody else. So 2 Timothy 4 .8 says, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge himself will give me in that day.

And not me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing. Isn't that something? Have you ever seen someone else receive an award and you said, man, I wish I'd have done that. I wish I'd have achieved that and gotten that award.

Well, in this case, all of us born again folks, brothers and sisters, he will personally hand all of us an award and it's called the crown of righteousness. And it seems to me that it happens at the rapture or sometime thereafter, perhaps, rather than when my mom first met him, she may be waiting to get that reward when everyone gets it at the rapture.

I'm not sure, but I think it's the clue that I see there. It says, and he gives it to all of them also that love his appearing. But what that could mean is that if I die first, like the apostle Paul was decapitated for believing in Jesus, they cut his head off.

The Romans did. He instantly was with the Lord and maybe he got his crown right there. And he's saying now the rest of you guys that live until the rapture, when you get raptured, you'll get one too. Maybe I like that better, but we don't really know which interpretation's right, but we know we get this crown from Jesus personally placed upon our heads.

Think about that. And then we get a temporary heavenly body to be our own, to live in until the rapture happens when we get our own body back, glorified. And this is something that most people don't know about.

They don't understand the temporary body that we instantly receive, but that's listed in 2 Corinthians 5, 1 through 8. And I'm gonna talk about that a minute at the end of the message. It's also talked about in Revelation 6, 11, Revelation 7, 9, and Revelation 7, 13 through 14 and Revelation 19, 7 through 9.

So that's talked about a lot that we get a temporary body the instant we die. So when my mother took the last breath, it was an unusual experience because we had been watching her all day in the process of dying, having difficulty from our viewpoint, breathing.

And yet the nurse told us, no, she's not having any difficulty breathing. In fact, I asked her, are you having trouble breathing? And she just barely moved, but she didn't indicate yes. And so from our viewpoint, she was, but what's interesting when she did take that last breath, we looked at each other and said, it's over.

We couldn't believe it. And Katie said, is she in heaven? And I said, yep. And what's interesting is the nurse has told us, well, sometimes two, three minutes later, they'll take one more breath. And we were standing there and Anna's little tummy went up and down one more time.

And that was actually last breath. And so at that very instant, she found herself in a new glorified, though temporary body that could, in a higher dimension, they can do things you can't comprehend or I can't really comprehend, but think about the difference.

But she broke her arm. I don't know if you all know, she broke her right arm when she fell a day before she had the stroke. So here she's got this cast on and then she loses the use of her left arm and leg and all of that was going on.

She had a broken arm the whole time. And imagine her now. Now she can leap and run. She can fly. She can go through walls. Superhero, right? So there is the temporary body. And then the fifth thing is we have a joyful resurrection.

1 Corinthians 15, 51, behold, I show you a mystery. The apostle Paul said, we shall not all sleep. See, they don't talk about dying. That's Satan's, that's Satan's word, death. Jesus and Paul use sleeping in Jesus quite often, not every time, but quite often Paul does.

We shall not all experience physical death, sleep, but we shall all be changed. That's a reference to the rapture. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet shall sound and the dead in Christ be raised incorruptible.

And we who are still alive at that moment are changed in the air. And that is the great resurrection. And so at that point, those of us who went before, those who went before us, who are in their temporary bodies, come out of that body and enter their resurrected body, which is the same molecules they had when they were here, rearranged into a glorified manner.

And so you actually get your body back and it'll be a glorified body though, which is quite amazing. And then Job chapter 19, one of the oldest books in the Bible, verses 25 through 27 talk about that day, the day of the rapture, the day of the resurrection.

They happened at the same time. It's so sad that people have lied about that. Scholars have been trying to make people think they're not part of the same event, but the rapture is part of the second coming event.

And it's also cannot happen until after the resurrection, but immediately after, like in the same second. So our loved ones will come out of those graves and their life will come out of that temporary body, go into that raised glorified body.

And we will see that within a nanosecond or two later, we go up and we're changed. And we never have to experience physical death that one generation that's here when that happens. And Job talks about it in the oldest book of the Bible.

It's quite fascinating. Chapter 19, verse 25. And then the fifth thing is, death is within the purpose of God. It's part of his perfect goodwill. God is love, God is good, and yet we have death. So we have to understand it must be different than we perceive it.

Would you agree with me again on that? Job chapter seven, verse one says, is there not an appointed time to man upon the earth are not his days also like the days of a hireling? Job 14, five says, seeing his days are determined, the number of the months are with God, that thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass.

There's not one thing anybody could have done to make Nana live one second longer physically than she did. But remember, one of the things we're learning is death never meant cessation of life. It simply meant graduating from a bound body that couldn't even get out of a bed to a body that can do anything.

That if we saw it, we would worship that person as a God. In fact, that happened in scripture where they had to say, no, don't bow to me, worship God. I am a person like you, because that glorified body is amazing.

And then even the angels have amazing bodies that some people have tried to worship. That's the kind of body that she has now. So I think this is appropriate. It's not really part of the verses where Job says, God has determined the very hour that we are going to die.

No one's gonna change it or cross the bounds of it. But in Psalm 39, four, it says, where King David understood these things. And he said, Lord, make me to know my end and the measure of my days, what it is, that I may know how frail I am.

Because David could have been a prideful man, couldn't he? And he said, let me know, remind me that I have a certain number of days and I'm gonna be stricken down and this physical life will be over so that number one, I'll know how frail I am.

And number two, I know I need to be living for you with the time I have left. So let's just take a minute and let's talk about this temporary body. Turn with me if you would to 2 Corinthians 5, verse one.

And then after that, we'll take a second, talk about the resurrected body and then we'll be done for this morning. But 2 Corinthians 5, one, it's this amazing information that I went to church all my life.

I know I wouldn't save a lot of that time, but I never heard anybody preach about this. I didn't even know it existed. And I've talked to people this week that didn't know about this. Most people don't know about this even in churches that this exists.

So let's look at it. One reason is in the King James, the old English language is a little difficult. So you have to, you kind of have to understand the old English language to get the simple message of what's happening.

I'll try to do that interpretation as we go. 1 Corinthians 5, one, for we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, now that's both biblical language and King James language, but I mean, it's biblical language.

So it's not, it's talking about the physical body and it calls it a tent. So what does that tell you? Our life is not what we look at in the mirror. Our life is inside of that. The real us is our spirit, especially for born again people.

It's your new man is the real you. And he dwells inside of you. It's funny, in some of my studies this week, I found the passage that answered the question I had my whole life. And that is where does the Holy Spirit dwell within our bodies?

And I've always conjunctured, we've said at men's breakfast, sometimes we've guessed, well, it's probably your brain, right? Well, I found a verse that proved where it is. I wish I'd brought it with me, but I didn't.

I don't know where it was. I have to look it back up. I hope I made a note of it. I'll never find it if I didn't. But do you know where it is? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, when Moses was blessing the tribes of Israel before Moses died, he blessed the tribes of Israel.

And I don't remember which tribe. It might've been the one right before Benjamin, I'm thinking, or it might've been Benjamin. But he said, may the spirit of God dwell between your shoulders. That's your head.

So he dwells in our brain. I finally have biblical proof of that. That's pretty cool. You like that one, Brother Bill? Isn't that neat? So if our earthly house, this body, this tent that we live in, if it dissolves, that's talking about physical death.

Isn't it interesting how seldom Bible writers like to use the word death? They use other words like sleeping or dissolving. But I mean, obviously that's physical death because when we die physically, the physical body begins to dissolve back into the elements that God made us from.

If you remember Adam and Eve from the dirt of the ground. And so if that happens to us, if our physical body is dissolved, listen to this. We have a building that God made. Not a building that came from the genes of your parents.

Not an earthly building that came from dirt down from Adam and Eve through your parents to you. Not like that, but we do have a building. Now that means we are taken out of one tent or one tabernacle and the real us is immediately placed to another one.

And it's using the idea of a building, but it's talking about a body. We would call it a body. So we're removed from one body. We're immediately placed in another one that's different because the new one, which I call the temporary body, is made by God himself.

He didn't make it from the dirt of the earth. It's heavenly in nature, but it's physical. In the sense that you can see it, recognize the person, recognize each other, even in this temporary body, it would be you and people would know it's you.

But it's not something that can die. It's immortal. It's in a different higher dimension than this body could handle. And so there it is. It's called the building of God. A house not made with hands, had nothing to do with humanity.

God made it. Eternal in the heavens, so it can't die. It's eternal. And you can live in heaven in it, or you can be on the earth in it, or you can be on Mars in it, or on the moon, which is gonna be fun for me in it.

I wanna go see the moon someday. But you can do these things in these bodies. For in this body, we groan. We have pain, we have suffering, we have crying. We have death, physical death. For in this body, we groan.

Listen to this, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon by our house, which is from heaven. Now, why do we earnestly desire that? Because we don't like the idea of death, do we? I certainly don't. I talked to Charlotte about it quite a bit, tell her secrets about things I think that I would never say from the pulpit, lest you lose faith in your pastor.

But honestly, I don't like the idea of physical death and the things that go with it, but I'm focusing at it from the human viewpoint, which is not the real viewpoint. So I had to go through all these scriptures for me, and that's why I'm preaching it to you today.

But we desire to be clothed upon by this eternal house that God built because we don't like to die. And you know why we feel that way? Because we were built to never die. Adam and Eve weren't going to die, theoretically, if they hadn't sinned, they wouldn't, well, it's not theoretically.

If they hadn't sinned, they would not have died. So the human nature has within it still, holding from our human fathers, Adam and Eve, the concept that it's abnormal to die. Do you understand that? It's not normal for us to have to die.

That's how we feel, that's how we think. And that's why we earnestly desire to be clothed upon by our house, which is from heaven, this temporary body, because once you're in it, there's no more suffering, no more death.

And we like that concept, but it's real, it's what it is. If so be that being clothed, we shall not be found naked. Now, let me help you with the old English language. Here's one thing we know from watching Jesus heal people that were demonized, that the demons, which are different type of spirit being than we are, we're a spirit being, aren't we?

But the demons are spirit beings. When he cast them out, they said, Lord, don't send us early to hell, didn't they? And so he said, go into the swine, and they did. And why do you think they did? Because to any spirit being, to be without a physical body, you feel naked.

It's like we would feel if we were naked. They're uncomfortable, they don't like it. They can live that way, but they don't like it. And so we're that, our spirit is that way. If when we died, and the way Hollywood gets things messed up sometimes it moves and all that stuff.

Like if when you died, your soul just floated around, you would be very uncomfortable. You would be just really not comfortable at all. And so since that's the case, God has this temporary body prepared for us instantly.

We're placed into it. So in less than a second of time, I'm sure we're instantly there. And that's why Jesus Christ could say, he that lives, like if you've been born physically in this world, he that liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

Because we think of death as cessation of life. And that's what he meant. You'll never have that. You will never have your life cease. You will find yourself awake in a body that is magnificently different than the one that you just died in physically that couldn't do anything but lay on a bed.

For we that are in this body grown, being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed. It's not like we want to die and be a spirit floating around but to be clothed upon, to have a body that's perfect and not bound by the negative things, the weak things that we have in this body so that mortality might be swallowed up by life.

So there is no more mortality in that body. It's immortal. You can't die. Now, he that has wrought us for the self same thing as God. Now stop and think about that a minute. God wrought us meant worked in us to form us, to make us be who we are.

God who made us made us for this very thing. Do you get that? God, listen, God has one method to create new babies for himself. And that is through us having babies. It's like a family business, right?

We get to work together with God, do everything he's doing. And one of the things he likes to have is more and more children. I can understand that. I want a gazillion grand babies. And then I want to live way longer than my appointed time so I can spend way more time with them, right?

Well, Nana had that problem. She didn't want to leave for that reason, I'm sure. But the reason that we have these babies is because God wanted us to have these babies because they're his children. The elect ones are his children.

And I figured out in my lifetime, God is very intelligent being, and he tends to put the elect ones, the sheeps in saved families because they hear the gospel from the time they're born, from before they're born, right?

And so the reason that we go through this life is to be here, to have life and to have existence, to be brought into existence, but the main purpose is to go through that change where we come out of this body into that immortal body and we're with him forever.

That's the main purpose in existence of our life. Now, I consider this to be training ground for that. And so listen to it carefully. Now, he that wrought us, the God who made us, made us for this self-same thing.

What self-same thing? So that mortality might be swallowed up with life. So it would be placed into this temporary body and eventually into our glorified body, who also has given to us, listen to this, the earnest of the spirit.

Now, what is that talking about? Even in this body, he has given us the Holy Spirit, which is like earnest money on that future house that we're talking about. The future building that we will live in, the earnest money has been paid by Jesus on the cross and he put the proof of it in our hearts now and we already have that, but we don't have the whole building yet.

We got this one, right? This one's gonna be dissolved, but the earnest money for the one that will never be dissolved is already in us. Isn't that something? So that assurance of our salvation is placed there, that comfort, that knowledge that we really are beings that never die is placed within us from the time we're born as a baby, but certainly from the time we're born again, we began to comprehend that.

So God put us here and wrought us and made us for this very purpose. And he also gave us the earnest money of the Holy Spirit dwelling in our bodies. Therefore, we're always confident. What does that mean?

Paul didn't have doubts when it came to death, physical death. He did not have any doubts about what's really going on. He saw it from God's viewpoint, but then again, he had met Jesus face to face and been taught all this stuff by Jesus.

So of course Paul saw it, but now we get to hear it and learn it from Paul. So we should get it. We should get it as easily as he did. Therefore, we're always confident, knowing that while we were at home in the body, we're absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight into this life.

We're confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, because that means I'll be present with the Lord. Now, there's a lot of stuff you could teach from verse six, seven, eight. Paul said, we walk by faith here.

Why is it so many people in churches want to see stuff? I want to see God do a miracle right there in every church service, because they don't want to walk by faith. They want to walk by sight, but we don't.

Paul said, we don't live that way in the church age. Therefore, we're always confident about these things we can't see, the unseen things that are true and more real than the stuff we see. I mean, all this stuff we see will dissolve on it.

It'll be dissolved. And so therefore, we're always confident, knowing that while we're at home in the body, we're absent from the Lord because we have to walk by faith, because we cannot see him. But we're confident and willing to be absent from this body so that we can be in the presence of the Lord.

Wow, that's the attitude we should have, and that's how we should be thinking. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things have become new.

I skipped down to verse 17 there. For he has made Jesus to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made to righteousness of God in him. And that's what makes all this possible. Now, just for a moment, let's talk about the resurrected body because it's different than the temporary body.

And this happens at the rapture, if you want the time period. And at the rapture, Jesus Christ comes at the second coming, and his saints come with him. So we're with him. Those who go before us, like my mom, will be with him in their new bodies that are invincible, and they're going to be fighting later on in the sequence in the battle of Armageddon, fighting against human people who are mortal.

And those of us who are with Jesus will be in an immortal body. I wouldn't want to be on their team, would you? I wouldn't want to be on there fighting against people who can't die, who can pass through walls without destroying the wall.

It is going to be a tough battle for those guys, for Satan's people. But the resurrected body is different than the temporary body. And we instantly are taken from the temporary body into that resurrected body at the rapture.

And that happens before those who never died go up and are changed. I don't know, probably a second before. It kind of happens together, I think. Job 19, the oldest book in the Bible, perhaps, verse 25.

Job said this, "'For I know that my Redeemer lives.'". Who's his Redeemer? Jesus Christ. "'And that he will stand at the latter day upon the earth.'". What is that a reference to? The second coming, right?

So Job knew about the second coming and the rapture. "'I know that my Redeemer will stand on the earth "'in the latter day. "'And though after my skin.'". But Job knew it wasn't gonna happen in his lifetime because not enough things, the Lord hadn't even come the first time yet.

I mean, he just knew. So he knew he was gonna experience this thing we call physical death. And he talks about that. He says, "'Though after my skin, worms destroy this body.'". Listen to this. "'Yet in my flesh, I will see God.'".

Now think about that. How can both be true? And he takes it further, more detail. He says, "'Whom I will see for myself "'with my own eyes, I shall behold him, not another.'". I'm not gonna be in someone else's body seeing him.

I'm not gonna be in a temporary body seeing him. I'm gonna see him through these eyes that died and got put in the earth and began to dissolve. God's gonna put it all back together, but it's the same molecules.

Job knew that, you know, almost 3000 years ago. "'Whom I will see,' Jesus. "'I will see him for myself with my eyes. "'My eyes shall behold him and not another, "'though my reigns be consumed within me.

"'Though my body was destroyed, "'I'm still gonna see him with these eyes "'and he's gonna stand on the earth.'". Wow, I mean, that's amazing information. First Corinthians chapter 15 is where it talks about the resurrected body.

And it's amazing. I can't read, for sake of time, all of it, but I'll just give you a couple of high points so you can see the differences between the temporary body and certainly the difference between this body we're in and the resurrected body.

But some men will say, "'How are the dead raised up?'. Doubters that don't even believe in the resurrection.". Like Sadducees, they were like that. Scientists today, you know, atheists and scientific people today, they don't believe in this stuff.

So some will say, "'How can the dead be raised up? "'And with what body do they come?'. Like when they are raised, what kind of body do they have? "'Thou fool, that which you sow.'". So these very atheists who don't believe this can even happen, they sow seeds.

Some of them are farmers and they sow seeds and the crops come up. And he uses this example to show them how foolish they are. "'Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not made alive "'unless it dies first.'".

Has anyone ever tried to plant a green seed and see what happens? Nothing. Nothing happens. That seed has to die and become dry and die first, then you plant it. And then he comes up, he's using this example that even the atheist understands.

And he said, "'You can't even get a plant to come up from a seed "'unless the seed dies first.'". So this body has to die first before the true plant can come up. We're just the seed. Think about that.

Compared to the tree, the fruitful tree, he uses that allegory. "'And that which you sow, "'thou sowest not that body that it will be.'". Like that little seed looks nothing like the tree or the squash plant, does it?

I mean, the seed looks totally different than the squash plant that comes up. Why do I use that? I don't even like squash. Whatever you guys plant at your house. Tomatoes, barely like them. What do you make that I like?