Sunday Sermon: When Our Earthly Home is Destroyed (2 Corinthians 5:1-5)

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You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabrielle Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

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New Testament book. On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday.

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Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the letters to the

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Corinthians. This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit. Here's Pastor Gabe.

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We come to our scriptures today in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and our main focus is going to be on verses 1 through 5, but in context,

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I'll be reading for our reading this morning verses 1 through 10. So in honor of the word of the

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King, would you please stand? 2 Corinthians chapter 5, we'll read verses 1 through 10.

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The Apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth. 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 in life.

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He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the

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Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always of good courage.

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We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight.

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Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the

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Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him.

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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.

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Let us pray. Our Lord God, I thank you for our time together as a body of believers to gather and sing your praises and hear the

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Word of God read. And so have the Holy Spirit teach to us, to apply the words that we read this morning to our minds and to our hearts, so that we may go from this place and live them in the world.

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And here we read all the more about our hope, that these bodies that we inhabit and we live in for this time while we are here on this earth is but limited.

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And a day is coming in which we will be with the Lord forever in glory, and we will be given glorified bodies as Christ has his glorified body.

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And this gives us hope. Knowing that in the struggles and the evils and everything that's going on in our present age, none of this is permanent, nor when we died as our body even remain in the grave, but we will be risen again to glory in Christ.

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And it is in Christ that we have our hope. He who has conquered the grave has promised that if we believe in him, we likewise will be raised from death to life and dwell with him forever in his eternal kingdom.

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So I pray that we cling to that truth and that we would know how it applies to every facet of our lives, that we would not lose hope and we would not despair in anything, but continue to place our trust in Jesus Christ.

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We pray for our soldiers, those who are even away at training, or as they continue to have to meet the demands of our military right now, that you would give peace in their spirits and you would give a longing in their hearts for the things of God.

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Even as we struggle and go through the responsibilities that are in front of us in this life, may we continue to understand the instruction that's given us in scripture to keep our eyes heavenward where Christ is.

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So as we have soldiers that are away on training and soldiers that have been deployed, continue to encourage their spirits and their wives as they are here at home.

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We thank you for the Coles and this new baby that you have brought into their family, into our family and into this world, and I pray that you would continue to strengthen

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Reagan and keep that baby healthy as that baby continues to grow and breathe in this new life.

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We thank you for the gift of life. We thank you for the gift of new life, and we thank you for the gift of resurrected life that we have promised in Christ, in whose name we pray and all

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God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated. In 1875 in France, there was a woman born whose name was,

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I'm not going to be able to do this in French, so I'll just tell you what it sounds like in English, Jeanne Calment.

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She was born in 1875. She died in 1997. If you do the math on that, she was 122 years old when she died.

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At the age of 112, she was considered to be the oldest living person on earth.

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At the age of 120, she was declared by the Guinness Book of World Records to be the oldest living person on record.

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Guinness Book of World Records said, hey, there may be people who have lived longer than that at some time in the past, and those of us who are

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Bible -believing Christians, we know that. We can read that even in the Old Testament of people who lived into their hundreds.

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Adam, who was 900, over 900 years old when he died. But as far as recent recorded history is concerned,

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Jeanne Calment was the oldest person to have ever lived, even at the age of 120. So she was declared the oldest living person at 112, a record which she continued to hold for another 10 years when she finally passed away at the age of 122.

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When she was 90 -something years old, a lawyer approached her. By the age of 90, she had already outlived her daughter and her grandson, both of whom had already passed away, leaving her with no heir.

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So the apartment that she owned there in Arles, France, a lawyer approached her and asked if he could have the apartment when she died.

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In exchange for that promise and that commitment, he would pay her the equivalent of $500,

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American equivalent of $500 a month for that apartment. Now, he was thinking in his mind that this was a wise investment, because eventually this woman who is in her 90s is going to die, and he will have only paid her rent for just a few months, and therefore receive her apartment.

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She outlived him. He died before she did.

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Furthermore, the agreement that he had with her was only terminated upon her death, not his.

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So after he died, his widow had to continue to pay her rent. They paid to her for over 30 years a total of $180 ,000, which was more than twice the worth of the apartment.

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Most of us are not going to live that long. In fact, I might even be bold enough to say none of us in this room are going to live that long, but some have just been ordained by God to live longer than others.

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We read in Job chapter 14 that God has set the limits of a man that he cannot pass.

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Who can determine his days? Only God has determined man's days. So Jeanne was just more blessed than others, or maybe you might consider that more cursed than others, having to live in a body that old for that long.

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I will tell you this, though. I saw a picture of Jeanne in her 90s doing an Olympic -style hammer throw.

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You know what that is? They swing the big ball and chain over their heads and see how far they can throw it. She was doing that in her 90s.

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She was taking fencing lessons in her 90s, learning how to do sword play.

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I would have thought if the lawyer was aware of that, he might have been clued into the fact a little bit. This woman is going to live a little bit longer than most if she's doing a hammer throw in her 90s.

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Medical professionals, when she got into her 110s, were kind of trying to find the secret of how she was able to live so long.

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And her diet consisted mostly of cheap wine, olive oil, and cigarettes. In the last 10 years of her life, she was consuming as much as two pounds of chocolate per week.

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And personally, I love stories like that because it just flies in the face of our modern dieting.

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And you'll see, you know, different dietitians come about from year to year that'll say, oh, eating eggs are bad for you.

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And then another dietitian will come along and say, no, eating eggs are good for you. It just changes, like from year to year or from decade to decade.

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I love the advice that we have from the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, whether you eat or drink or whatever it is, do it to the glory of God.

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So my brothers and sisters in Christ, eat bacon to the glory of God. Die young and make a pretty corpse if you have to, but just enjoy it to the glory of God.

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So there are some who are going to live two lifetimes, is practically what

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Jean had lived. At 122, it's like she had lived long enough for two people by that point. But most of us are not going to live that long.

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If anything, we have this reminder, this statistic that remains consistent for every person from day to day, and that is one out of every one person dies.

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No one has ever been able to overcome that except one person.

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And that is Jesus Christ, who is the only person ever in the history of the world to have laid down his own life and took it back up again.

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You know, of course, there are other accounts in the scriptures of men who did not die. You think of Elijah who was taken up in a whirlwind to heaven, or we haven't even talked about in Genesis about Enoch who walked with the

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Lord and then he was no more for the Lord had taken him. So there are other accounts of men who did not taste death and were taken to be with the

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Lord in the air. But Christ is the only one who laid down his own life of his own accord and took it back up again.

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And it is he who has given us the promise of eternal life for all those who believe in him.

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Our bodies are but mortal. You know that when you get up every morning, the aches and pains that you no doubt feel, except for you,

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John, you're still probably young and spry. But for those of us who are over the age of 30, that kind of seems to be the benchmark.

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You get over that age and then everything just kind of seems to start going down instead of getting better.

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Our bodies begin falling apart. We're reminded of this decay day by day. And some will even be reminded of the mortality of our bodies even at young ages.

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I had a friend who, when I was in high school, had muscular dystrophy, and he died before he graduated from high school.

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So even at a young age when he was diagnosed with MD, understood the gradual futility or decay that happens in the body while we are here in this world and in this life.

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Nothing lasts forever except the promise that we have in Christ Jesus.

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And it is that promise where we must place our faith if we expect to be able to survive the grave.

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Every single person dies, but only those who are in Christ will be risen again to new life.

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And that is what the Apostle Paul means to encourage with the Corinthians with here in chapter five, verses one through five, as he encourages them to know that which we inhabit in this tent.

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He describes the body as a tent. We know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building that is from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

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Many of you know the words that Jesus said to his disciples in the upper room in the book of John. Before he went to his death, he said,

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I am going to prepare a place for you. In my father's house are many mansions, and I go to prepare this place for you.

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I am coming back again to receive you unto myself. And it was wedding language that Jesus was using with his disciples as he was talking about this, as a groom would go and prepare a house for his bride after they are married to live in that house together for the rest of their lives.

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So Jesus is saying, I am going to prepare a place for you, for us, the disciples of Jesus, those who are being purified, the purified bride of Christ, his church.

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Jesus saying to those who follow him, I'm going to prepare a place for you, and I'm coming back to receive you to myself as a groom comes back for his bride and takes her to this place to live together with him for the rest of their lives.

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The even better news in that for us who are Christians is for the rest of our lives is eternal.

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For the rest of our eternal life that we are in Christ Jesus, we will dwell with him forever in his perfect and imperishable kingdom.

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And so even though this body that we inhabit now will someday be destroyed, we have a building that is from God.

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We have an eternal promise of a place where we will dwell with God, a house that is not made with hands.

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And more specifically what Paul is talking about here when he says we have a building from God, he's talking about the soul.

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It is a house that is not made with hands. And it is eternal in the heavens where we will dwell forever with God in our spirits.

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But not just in our spirits. We will also dwell forever with God in heaven in our bodies also.

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Now you might say, well, Pastor Gabe, I remember when my grandmother passed away or my friend who passed away or somebody that you know in your life recently who has died and has perhaps gone home to be with the

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Lord. When they died, their body was there in the coffin.

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You will say, I was at the wake. I saw it, body there in the coffin. I saw the coffin close.

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I saw it lowered into the ground and dirt heaped upon the coffin, which is where their body lays there in the grave. So you say that our bodies will be raised up to be with the

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Lord and we will dwell in our bodies even with Christ in heaven. But I saw the body go into the ground.

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It was an empty thing. It was a closed up tent folded up, placed in a coffin and lowered into the ground.

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And yes, indeed, when we die, our soul will go to be with the

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Lord. We have Paul saying that here in the later verses where he says that whether we are of good courage and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the

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Lord. So to be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord. That is certainly true. The moment a person dies, their soul, their spirit goes to be with the

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Lord if they are in Christ Jesus. As we read in Hebrews chapter 9, it is appointed for a man once to die and after that comes judgment.

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And it will be decided then whether a person's spirit goes to be with the Lord forever in glory or whether that person's spirit will be cast away from his presence for all eternity and be cast into hell.

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So indeed, when a person dies, their spirit goes to be with the Lord. The body goes in the ground.

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But yet we still have this promise that that's not the final resting place for the body either.

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For Christ, who had the power to lay down his own life, died in his body on the tree, shedding his blood for our sins, an atoning sacrifice, so that all who believe in him, their sins are forgiven before God.

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Yes, he died, laid his life down on the cross, and there were those who took his body off the cross and laid it in a tomb.

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But Christ, who laid down his body, his life of his own volition, took it back up again when in his body he was raised to life and walked out of that tomb on that first Easter Sunday morning.

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And as he took up his own body, which had been crushed and destroyed and was dead, so he has the authority to raise up your body from the grave on the day that he returns, and all of creation, those things that are seen and those things that are unseen, will be reconciled to him.

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When he will remove those things that are evil and that were in rebellion against God, and he will raise to life those bodies that belong to those souls that worship

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Christ in life, had turned from their sin and sought Christ for forgiveness, he will raise again.

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And that which was once perishable, our bodies, which are perishable, which are perishing even now, that which was once perishable will be made imperishable, and our lowly bodies will be transformed to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself.

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When the Apostle Paul preached at the Areopagus in Acts chapter 17, and he pointed to the false gods that surrounded him, all of these statues to these false gods there at Mars Hill.

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He said that we worship a God that was not made by human hands, and we, referring to himself and the other disciples of Christ, not the other pagans that were surrounding him, we worship a

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God not made by human hands, that does not dwell in buildings that have been made by hands, as though we could give him anything, as though we owed him something, or that he was lacking something that mankind needed to give him.

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But we worship the Lord God who has given all things unto man, life and breath and everything.

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And there is a man, Paul said there in Acts 17, he says, there is a man that this God has raised from the dead.

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And he has appointed for this man a day of judgment in which he will judge all those who worshiped him or did not worship him.

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And all this authority has been given to this man who was raised from the dead. And of course, we know the reference that Paul was making was to Jesus Christ.

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Jesus Christ, who had been raised from the dead, was given all authority in heaven and on earth.

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This is what Jesus said in the Great Commission. In Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 through 20, he said to his disciples before he departed from them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

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Therefore go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the

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Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.

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And lo, I am with you always, even to the very end of the age. Jesus' declaration of his authority, his command to us to go and make disciples, and his promise that he will be with us until the age ends.

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And the age ends when Christ returns. On that day that Christ returns, these lowly bodies that we inhabit will be transformed to be like his glorious body, like the body that he resurrected from the grave.

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So he will resurrect our bodies from the grave to be with him forever. As Paul had put it in 1

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Corinthians chapter 15, that that which is perishable must put on the imperishable if we're going to inhabit the kingdom of God.

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Because that which is perishable can't enter into the imperishable unless it's also made imperishable. Make sense?

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So we cannot dwell with God in his holy habitation, in his eternal place of residence, if our bodies likewise have not been made imperishable as he is imperishable.

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And so Christ is going to do that for us. That is the promise that we have in Christ Jesus. Not only are our sins forgiven if you are a follower of Christ, but you will be raised from the dead.

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In verse 2, Paul says, In this tent we groan, we are longing to put on our heavenly dwelling.

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If indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. We read in Romans chapter 8,

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I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

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For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility.

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Why is creation subjected to futility? There's another way that this question is most often worded, and maybe you've asked this before too.

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Why is there evil in the world? It's because of sin.

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It's because of mankind and our rebellion against God. That's why there's evil in the world.

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Why do bad things happen to good people? Have you ever asked that question before? Or had someone asked you that question?

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That's a question sometimes may even come up at a funeral. When you're saying goodbye to a loved one, and you think to yourself, this is bad what has happened to this person who was so good.

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Why do bad things happen to good people? As R .C. Sproul said, you know what, that only happened one time and he volunteered.

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Bad things don't happen to good people except what happened to Christ. Bad things happen to bad people.

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As we read in Romans 3, 23, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

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And my brothers and sisters, I remind you of this constantly because I need reminded of it constantly so that we don't get too big on ourselves and think that God owes us something and that we have done something right that he would have to repay us for the good we have done for God.

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Scripture does not say that whatsoever. It says that God owes us nothing, but it's by his grace and mercy that he has given us the forgiveness of sins and eternal life in Jesus Christ.

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Folks, if God owed that to us, it wouldn't be grace. It would be a debt he owes us because we did the right thing.

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We crossed the right T's and dotted the right I's. And so now God owes us this.

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He owes you nothing, but he shows you grace and love through Jesus Christ who died for our sins so that all who believe in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

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So as Paul goes on here in Romans 8, creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it.

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God is the one who cursed creation because of our sin, which is all...

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And when you understand that world, when you understand that truth from Scripture, it can be mildly comical to you whenever you hear somebody talk about how we need to improve this world.

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Or that this world, maybe this world is falling apart, not just because of evil, but because of global warming or something like that.

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So we need to change our condition so that we can improve our environment.

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Yeah, you want to know why the world is falling apart? Because of man's sin. And because God cursed it since we had rebelled against God.

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God subjected all things to futility, whether that's because of the evil in this world, or whether that's evidenced by the evil in this world, we'll put it that way, or evidenced by the fact that all of creation is just gradually falling into decay.

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But, Paul goes on, he subjected it to futility in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

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In other words, Paul is personifying creation here, that even as we groan in our bodies for redemption that is in Christ, creation itself groans and longs to be set free with the return of Christ at the end of the age.

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For as we read in Ephesians chapter one and other places, that God is reconciling all things together in Christ.

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Even all of creation is being made new. Jesus says this in Revelation chapter 22, very end of the book, behold,

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I am making all things new. We are promised a new heaven and a new earth.

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So even creation as we observe it, that's going through times and seasons, but still everything is just in a gradual state of decay.

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Mankind is going from bad to worse, as Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter four.

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We see all of creation gradually falling into decay and getting older and falling apart.

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Yet we are promised that Christ is making all things new and that which we see now is not the way things are gonna be for all eternity.

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He will restore creation to its proper order that he gave it in the garden of Eden.

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And we who are in Christ Jesus will share in that paradise. But again,

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I say to you, those who do not know Christ will not know paradise. This is the only paradise that they will ever know.

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But those who do not know Christ and did not believe in him in this life and did not repent of their sins and follow him will be sent to hell where they will be separated from God and endure his wrath forever.

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And that should implore us as Christians to all the more share the gospel for how will they know to believe unless they hear it?

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And my friends, there are people even here in Junction City, Kansas, who do not know the gospel. And we must tell them the good news of the resurrection life that we have in Jesus Christ and him alone.

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All of creation groans to be set free as we groan in our own bodies. In verse 22 of Romans 8, for we know that the whole of creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

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And not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

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So we have the redemption of our spirits the moment you come to Christ. When you believe in Jesus, you are convicted of your sin and you ask for his forgiveness.

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You are immediately justified before God the Father. You have salvation, the redemption of your soul, but you have not yet received the redemption of your body and that you won't receive until Christ returns.

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And so we go on in 2 Corinthians 5, Paul saying, for in this tent we groan longing to put on our heavenly dwelling.

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If indeed by putting it on, we may not be found naked. Now you might try to be deeply theological there and you read that as whenever we come before God, we're naked, we're exposed, right?

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He sees our hearts. He knows our evil and wicked deeds. He knows the things that we have thought as we read in Psalm 139, where David says before a word is even on my tongue, you know it fully, oh

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God, you have searched my inmost thoughts. Jesus says in Revelation 2 23,

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I am he who searches mind and heart, so be zealous and repent. And so indeed it is true that we cannot hide anything from God and we are naked and exposed before him.

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But that's not what Paul is saying here. There's no need to be that deeply theological with what he's saying in this particular passage.

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All he's saying is this. If when our bodies die, our souls go to be with the

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Lord and that would be it, our soul would be there forever with God, that would be great, but we'd be naked.

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Because our soul would be without its body. And so all he's saying here is that our bodies will be resurrected too, so our souls won't be naked.

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So our soul and our body will be joined together once again. Verse four, 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.

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So as a Christian, you probably in your body as you continue to go through the trials and the pains and the struggles and the afflictions of this life, you may no doubt pray unto the

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Lord to take you home. Lord Jesus, come quickly that I would go and be with you.

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But we pray not just for our spirits to be released from this body to be with God.

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Folks, we should also pray and understand when we pray that our bodies will likewise be resurrected to be with the

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Lord forever. If our scope of eternity is just limited to our souls fleeing our bodies and being forever with the

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Lord, then we don't have a complete view of eternity. For it's not just our soul that goes to be with God, our body will be resurrected also.

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Don't despair in that. Oh man, I gotta come back to this body? Don't I deal with enough in this body as it is?

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As I said, your body will be transformed to be like Christ's. That which was perishable will be transformed to be imperishable.

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You have nothing to fret having to come back to this body. But just as our bodies will be redeemed and just as our bodies will be sanctified, so my brothers and sisters in Christ, what this means, the practical application of this means that you must live in holiness even while you are in the body.

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The Gnostics, and I mean it's a common spiritualism even of this age, would believe that whatever is done in the spirit is holy and whatever is done in the body, in the flesh, is evil.

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So it doesn't matter what you do in the flesh, that will always be evil and your flesh will eventually die but your spirit will go on to live forever.

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So it doesn't matter what you do in the body, it doesn't affect what happens to your spirit. That's not what the scripture says.

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What you do in the body is a reflection of the condition of your soul before God. And if you continue to walk in sin, it means your soul is still dark and blackened by sin.

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And even your soul has not been yet redeemed by Christ if sin is your walk in this world.

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We must put those things off and put on immortality, is what

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Paul says in Colossians chapter 3 that we read last week. We read all of Colossians 3 at the conclusion of the sermon.

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And Paul says there to put on the new self which is being renewed after the image of its creator.

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While we are still in this tent, we've grown, we are being burdened, you will struggle in this life but not that we would be unclothed, not just that our spirits would be freed from this body to go be with God but that we would be further clothed so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

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Understand that everything that we experience in our mortality is death. Why? Because all of creation has been subjected to futility.

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So everything that we experience in the physical is death. It has been subjected to death. It is going to die.

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Once again, my friends, one out of every one person dies. If you're on Twitter, there's an account that you can follow on Twitter.

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It's called My Daily Death Reminder. And every single day, this account on Twitter will remind you someday you're going to die.

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It's a heavily followed account probably because some people need that reminder. Someday you are going to die.

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You are not immortal. And what is going to happen to you when you die?

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That is a great question of every person's life that no atheist, agnostic or any person from any other religion can answer.

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What will happen to your soul when you die? Now, there are plenty of theories and ideas and philosophies, maybe even theologies of what will happen to your soul, to your spirit when you die.

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But only one person can truly tell us and that is the one who came from heaven to earth and has gone back to heaven to be with the

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Father. And that is Christ. On the day that you die, this happens to your spirit and the only way that you can be guaranteed eternity with God and not outcast into hell for eternal suffering is to believe in Jesus Christ.

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And so we must desire that we would be clothed with the imperishable so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

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Everything that is in the body, everything that is descended from Adam is death. But everything that comes from Christ is life.

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And if we believe in Christ, then even what is mortal will be swallowed up by his victory over the grave.

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Verse five, he who has prepared us for this very thing, who has given us a spirit as a guarantee, given us the spirit as a guarantee, this is

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God. 2 Corinthians 5, 5, he who has prepared us for this very thing is

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God, who has given us the spirit as a guarantee. And I must be clear with you once again, when

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Paul uses those collective pronouns, us, we, he's talking to fellow Christians.

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The people who are not believers in Christ do not have that guarantee. They do not have the sealing of the spirit of God until they have turned from their sin and come to know

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Christ as savior. We read the following in Romans chapter nine.

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You will say to me then, why does he still find fault for who can resist his will? But who are you, oh man, to answer back to God?

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Will what is molded say to its molder, why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?

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What if God desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.

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My friends, those who are in Christ Jesus have been prepared for glory by God who has given us the sealing of the

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Holy Spirit as a guarantee. God will be glorified in you.

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He will either be glorified by saving you from his wrath and giving you the promise of his eternal kingdom or he will be glorified by destroying you in his wrath and casting you from his eternal kingdom forever.

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And again, the sealing of our guarantee is the spirit of God whom Christ has poured into the heart of every believer who has turned from sin and follows him.

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Once again, my friends, every single one of us, we are going to die. What will happen to you on that day when you stand before God in judgment?

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Little over a year ago, Paul Washer, who has been a long time evangelist in the

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Southern Baptist Church, had a heart attack and died. He was revived three times and he was actually scheduled to speak at both conferences that I've been to this year,

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G3 in Georgia back in January and then the Shepherds Conference in March that I attended back in California.

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And he was not at either conference because he's still weak, still struggles to keep his strength up after the heart attack that he suffered over a year ago.

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On his website or through the HeartCry ministry that he founded that does missions work all over the world, he said the following.

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This was a letter that he posted back in March. It has been a little over one year since my heart attack and without warning,

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I fell to the kitchen floor unconscious. I remember nothing that happened thereafter until five days later when

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I found myself in a hospital room and I asked what happened and someone said, you died three times.

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My heart had stopped and had been resuscitated on three separate occasions. I would like to be able to say that in that moment

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I said something spiritual, instead I responded, I'm just like Buck. And everyone just stared blankly at me until I explained myself,

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I'm like Buck. You know, the little weasel on ice age who said I died but then I lived and everybody laughed at me.

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During my hospital stay, the pain in my ribs was intense due to the cardiac resuscitation. To add to that, the damaged neuroreceptors in my brain from lack of oxygen made me feel like my skin was on fire.

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The smallest movements resulted in intense pain. Due to a loss of my short -term memory,

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I nearly drove my wife crazy by asking the same questions over and over. She started occasionally calling me

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Dory and Rain Man. As the days passed, I had plenty of time for reflection.

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If I had died or stayed dead, what would have been my regrets?

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What would I have changed? What should I change now that God has chosen to extend my life?

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And Washer gives three things and I want to leave you with these three things as we conclude this. This would be the practical application for you regarding what we've just read in 2

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Corinthians 5 verses 1 through 5. Here's the three regrets he said. Number one, the first thing that he would have regretted if he had died on that day, he had that heart attack.

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The first thing he would have regretted is love. I regretted that I had not loved more.

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I am not writing about mere sentimentality or a misguided love that hinders one from speaking the truth.

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I am referring to a Christ -like servant love for my family, brothers and sisters in Christ, and the unbelieving world, even my enemies.

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In this one thing, all the commandments of God are fulfilled. Love one another.

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However, it is an impossible task apart from a mind renewed in the word and filled with the

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Holy Spirit. Isn't it strange? I did not regret that I preached too little on the streets or that I spent too little time in my study.

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I regretted that I played too few board games with my nine -year -old daughter.

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The second thing he said he would have regretted is intercessory prayer. I have heard many an old preacher say that no minister on his deathbed regrets that he prayed too much, only that he prayed too little.

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Studying has never been a difficult task for me. The day after my return from the hospital, I studied and I wrote for several hours.

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Indeed, I have spent most of this last year alone in my study. In fact, it requires more discipline for me personally to deny myself the joy of studying than it does to force myself to study.

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God's excellencies provoke the regenerated heart to draw near to him and think much of him.

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In contrast, intercessory prayer is work for me. More pointedly, it is war.

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It is war with my flesh, with the clock, with the devil.

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How my flesh hates intercessory prayer, fastings and night watches.

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How many times my flesh has won out over my better understanding, drawing me back to bed or to the table or even to my study.

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Yes, my flesh will choose even Bible study over intercessory prayer. But it is in the prayer closet and in the night watches that darkness is beaten back, that Christ gains ground in the heart, that souls are redeemed and that battles are won.

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The prayers of God's saints ascend from the earth like a faint and feeble cry. But when the incense of heaven is added to them, they return to earth with the power of thunder, lightning and earthquakes.

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Why then do I not rush to the closet, to the night vigil, to the times of separation? May God help me and you spend our days on the earth in believing, persevering and prevailing intercessory prayer.

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The third regret that Washer says that he would have had. The third and last thing

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I will mention is focus. And what Washer goes on to explain here regarding focus is his attention given to the ministry that he has that equips missionaries to go around the world and continue to preach the gospel.

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That may not be your calling. Maybe it is, but maybe it is not. But I will tell you this regarding focus.

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I am a person that is easily distracted. When I first came here and preached my first sermon here at First Southern Baptist Church, I said that I struggle with a condition called

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ADOLS. That stands for attention deficit. Oh, look, shiny.

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I am easily distracted by things, especially in an age of smartphones, when

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I will get on my phone and I will check the news and I will check my email and I will check messages that I might've received on any other platform.

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And then once I've done that, I go back and do it again. I check the news,

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I check my email, I check messages that may have come from my contacts in the last three or four minutes since I last checked those messages.

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And then in the process of doing that, various things will pop up in front of my eyes that will capture my attention and I will scroll, scroll, scroll.

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And it takes me nowhere. It makes me no smarter or wiser to the world.

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In fact, most of that stuff has been put in front of me to feed my frustration, to keep me coming back to it, to feed the outrage machine, as I had spoken to you about 45 minutes ago, which means

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I need to be wrapping up this sermon. There are plenty of things out there that buy for our attention, but may we maintain focus on the task that is in front of us, the task that is at hand.

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Might I put before you that as we're coming into this VBS week, you're gonna have all kinds of things going on and responsibilities that no doubt you will have to handle and you will have to focus on.

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I don't mean to take that from you, but can I just encourage you to focus on helping our children understand the

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Bible this week? And as many things as are going to be competing for your attention, that that would be the joy that you get to experience this week here at First Southern Baptist Church.

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There may be other things that you would add to this list. If you were to die today, what kinds of things would you regret?

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But here's a starting point for you from our brother, Paul Washer. Love more, pray more, and have more focus.

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Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

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For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

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On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky inviting you to join us again this week, growing together in Christ when we understand the text.