Preached · July 23, 2017
Where We've Been
If you've got your Bibles, I encourage you to turn with me to the book of 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. We are in a series called I'm Dead, Now What?, and we're taking a look at life, and death, and the afterlife, and heaven, and hell, and resurrection, and all of those big, big questions: What happens when we die?
Two weeks ago, I introduced the problem that a guy named Paul is writing to a church in Thessalonica about. And the problem is this: Jesus had come, he had died, he was resurrected, and then he ascended, he was enthroned in heaven, and the church was given this promise that Jesus is going to come back. And so the church is waiting, they're expecting it, they're waiting for this parousia, this royal return of Jesus, and they thought it would happen in their lifetimes. And then in this church, people started to die, and so this anxiety began to build up. If people die before Jesus comes, are they going to miss out on Jesus' kingdom? Are they going to miss out on Jesus' reign on earth? What happens to those who are dead? And so Paul, like he does — he's in prison, he's in chains — but he writes this letter to this church answering this question: What happens to those who die before Jesus?
And this is a question that affects all of us, because as I said a couple weeks ago, studies show that one out of one of us will die. Everyone here, unless Jesus comes back first, we're all going to die. This is the universal question. Questions don't get more universal than this.
Last week, Pastor Steve talked to us about grief and how Christians can grieve well, how we can see, even in the midst of tragedy, hurt, heartache, and death, that God may be up to something good, may be up to redemption in the midst of that. So this week, we're going to be answering questions about heaven and hell. Next week, about what happens after heaven and hell. If that doesn't make sense to you, it will by the end of the sermon.
So 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, starting in verse 13:
Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed — we don't want you to be ignorant, we don't want you to be dumb — about those who are asleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord's word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. And after that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore, encourage one another with these words.
Jesus Died — Then What?
So the primary question is, what happens when people die? What happens when Jesus doesn't come back yet and people are dying? Well, everything that Paul believes, everything that Paul says about this, comes back to one core central belief: "For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that..." So this statement right here — Jesus died and rose again — this is the key that unlocks every other truth. This is the foundation of everything that Paul believes about heaven and hell and life and death.
And so if that's the foundation, we have a question to ask. Jesus died, then what happened? Christianity is unique among world religions because our faith is centered, is founded, on a historical event. A lot of other world religions are philosophies, they are conceptual, they're ideas. Our faith has some concepts, some ideas, some philosophies, don't get me wrong, but its cornerstone is a historical event. Jesus died, and then what happened? Because a faith that's based on someone dying isn't much of a faith. Whoop-dee-doo. We can claim Jesus as a martyr, but not a whole lot else. Jesus died, and then what happened?
Specifically, if you've been around for a while in the church, you've probably heard Jesus died on a Friday. And on the third day — so Friday's the first day, Saturday's the second day, Sunday's the third day — the third day, Sunday, he rose again, he was resurrected. This is good news. But the question we're left with is, what about the in-between time? What happened in between Friday and Sunday? Jesus is dead. His body is dead. But where's his soul? What's his soul up to? Anybody ever wondered that question? Am I the only one that lies awake thinking about these kinds of things?
The Creeds and the Descent
So we're a church, and this church affirms what are called the creeds. And the creeds are these documents that are hundreds and hundreds, some of them thousands, of years old. They're succinct summaries of the beliefs of the Christian church. When they were written, they were meant to protect against heresies — that which was against belief — and they summarized what we did believe. And so one of those is called the Apostles' Creed, and the Apostles' Creed says this:
Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, he was crucified, died, he was buried, and then he descended into hell.
The Athanasian Creed, another one that this church affirms, says that Jesus suffered death for our salvation, and he descended into hell. Now here's a part of the story that we really don't talk a lot about. We know the Jesus-died part, we talked about the crucifixion, we know that Jesus was resurrected, he was risen. We talk about that Easter story. But what about the time in between? And so if the church decided it was so important to put this into its creeds, into its summary statements of belief, then perhaps we should take a look at it.
Behind the English Word "Hell"
Now, when we're talking about a word like hell, a lot of images come to mind. A lot of ideas and concepts. Hell is an English word, and we need to look behind that English word into the Greek and Hebrew words that this word is translating.
So the first word we want to talk about is Sheol. It's a Jewish word, a Hebrew word. It's used in your Old Testaments, and it's roughly translated as the pit, the grave, the abode of the dead. An example would be in Psalm 6, which says, "For there is no mention of you in death; in Sheol, who will give you thanks?" And so Sheol is this place that everyone who dies, according to Hebrew or Israelite or Jewish thought — everyone who dies, righteous or unrighteous — they go down to the pit, and to Sheol, and to the grave, and to the abode of the dead. It was a universal holding place for all people who died. And early on in Jewish and Israelite thought, the belief was that it was basically oblivion. You were unconscious. It was the end. It was annihilation. So this psalm kind of says that: if you're dead, there's no praise songs going on. There's no hymns. There's no worship services. You're dead.
Now later on in Jewish history, in the intertestamental period in particular — so the time between the Old Testament and the New Testament — those beliefs kind of got separated out a little bit. And so if you were righteous, you went to the good place in Sheol, a place called Abraham's bosom. Funny name, but it was a good place. And if you were a bad, unrighteous person, then you went to just the bad part of Sheol. And there might have been torment involved. There might have been some punishment. Or it could have been just annihilation. You just ceased to exist.
Now in Greek, the word that we have for hell is two possible words, either Hades or Necron. So Necron, like necromancy — talking to the dead — or necrophilia — being romantically attracted to the dead. It's a thing. Don't Google it. And it's also translated as the pit, the grave, the abode of the dead. So it's basically the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew idea of Sheol. And so Jesus says, Capernaum, you will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You are going to be brought down to Hades. So he's contrasting heaven and Hades. But again, Hades — don't get in your mind cartoons. Don't get in your mind, like the Disney movie Hercules, with the flames and the fires and all that. Hades was a pretty neutral place. Everyone who died went to Hades — good, bad, ugly, everywhere in between. And so sometimes there was torment involved, but most of the time it was just a deathly boring place where you would exist barely for all eternity. If you were particularly good, you might get a chair, but that's about it.
Third word is Gehenna. Gehenna is a Jewish concept and a Greek word. And it refers to the Valley of Hinnom. The Valley of Hinnom is right next to Jerusalem. Millennia ago it was a place where child sacrifice was done. And then it eventually became the landfill of Jerusalem. So you would take your trash out there and you would burn it. Ironically, in modern day, they do firework displays there. No joke. And so Jesus would say, don't fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear him who's able to destroy both the soul and the body in hell. And the word is Gehenna. Destroy both the soul and the body in Gehenna. And so basically it was this metaphor for saying, you're a nasty, wicked person. You belong in the dump. You belong in the landfill. That's where you ought to go.
So in the Apostles' Creed, when it says Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried — he descended into Necron, or to the abode of the dead, into Hades.
Now, here's the thing about these words — about Hades, Necron, Gehenna, Sheol. Back in the 1600s, the King James Bible, one of the early translations of the Bible, did us all a deep disservice by translating all three or four of those words as "hell." And that brought about some confusion, because they all had slightly different connotations. They were used in slightly different ways. But the King James Version translated them all as hell. And so we use one image for all three or four of these words. It's a big disservice in translation. And translations are still trying to kick against that. But Bible translations change very slowly.
The Harrowing of Hell
So Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate. He's crucified. He died. He's buried. He descends into the abode of the dead, into Hades or to Necron. What is he doing there? What is Jesus up to in this abode of the dead? Well, I'm glad you asked, because Scripture has something to say about this. In the book of 1 Peter chapter 3, we read this:
Christ was put to death in the body and made alive in the spirit. And after being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits.
And then skip ahead to chapter 4:
The gospel was preached to those who are now dead.
So remember, Sheol, Hades — this is the place where every dead person went. Righteous or not. Adam and Eve, they're in Sheol. They're in Hades. Noah, Hades. David, Hades. Solomon, Hades. Isaiah, Hades. They're all there. In Jewish thought, every single person who had died had gone to Sheol or to Hades. And some thought they would never exist again. That was the end of the story. Others thought there might be a day when God was going to bring them back to life, called the resurrection. But for a hundred percent of them, they are all in Sheol and Hades.
And so there's this question we want to ask. There are all these people who lived before the time of Jesus, before the time of the gospel being made known, before the time of the incarnation, before God taking on flesh and dying for our sins. All these people who died before that, they never heard the gospel, they never heard of Jesus. Are they left out? Do they never get to hear the gospel? Do they never get to hear what Jesus did? Not so fast. Jesus not only died, but he also went and made a proclamation to the imprisoned spirits. He went to Hades, he went to hell, as the creed says, and he preached the gospel.
Now, if you think this isn't enough, this isn't the only passage that talks about this. Ephesians chapter 4:
When Christ ascended on high, he took with him many captives.
This is still Paul in Ephesians 4. What does "Christ ascended" mean except that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? And so these captives — what Peter calls the imprisoned spirits — Jesus took with him after he left those lower earthly regions, the Hades, the Sheol, the grave. In theological terms, this is called the harrowing of hell. Any farmers here ever use a harrow? A harrow is a thing you drag over the land, and it pulls out weeds and pulls out rocks. And so Jesus goes down into the depths, into the grave, into Hades, into hell, and he harrows it. He loosens up the chains to preach the gospel to those who have never heard it, and brings with him, at his ascension, many captives.
How many have ever heard a sermon like this before? I've got one and a half. This is in the Bible, folks. It's in the Bible. It's in your creeds. This is what we believe happened between Friday and Sunday, between cross and resurrection. Jesus went down into the depths, went down into Hades, went down into Sheol, and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits.
And this idea, the harrowing of hell, is a really popular sermon topic in the early church. A guy in the second century named Tertullian, in one of his sermons, writes:
Christ descended into hell in order to acquaint the patriarchs and prophets with his redeeming.
Another sermon, a guy named Cyril, says:
Going in his soul, Christ preached to those who were in hell, appearing to them as one soul to other souls. When the gatekeepers of hell saw him, they fled. The bronze gates were broken open, and the iron chains were undone. And the only begotten Son shouted with authority to suffering souls according to the word of the new covenant, saying to those in chains, "Come out," and to those in darkness, "Be enlightened." In other words, Jesus preached to those who were in hell also, so that he might save all those who believe in Jesus. Both those who were alive on earth during the time of his incarnation, and those who were in hell or in Hades, had a chance to acknowledge him.
Who Holds the Keys?
Now, many of us — I'll speak for myself at least — I grew up with this image of Satan, the devil, being the king, the ruler, the reigner over hell. In the tights, the pitchfork, the horns, the red suit, right? Anybody else have that image? Yeah, okay, you got that from cartoons. You got that actually from medieval art, Dante's Inferno, and it's been transferred into pop culture. And so we have this image of Satan being the one who reigns over hell, who's keeping everybody in torture and torment. But that's not the image that the Bible uses for hell. This is actually how Jesus introduces himself in Revelation. Jesus introduces himself to John, and he says:
I'm the living one. I was dead, and now look, I'm alive and forever. And I hold the keys of death and Hades.
It's not Satan who reigns over hell. It's not the devil who reigns over Hades. Jesus himself holds the keys to death and Hades. So hell and death themselves are not enough to stop the love of God and the proclamation of the gospel. Remember Romans chapter 8. Are we going to believe Romans chapter 8 or not? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons can separate us from the love of God. Or go to Psalm 139. Where can I go from your Spirit? the psalmist writes. Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you're there. If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there. There is no barrier too great.
Hell and death themselves are not enough to stop the love of God and the proclamation of your life. Friends, there's no part of your life that's too dark, too evil, too wicked, too hidden, too much in the hell of your soul that Jesus can't redeem. Jesus has literally been to hell and back. There's no temptation that Jesus has not faced. There's no suffering that he has not suffered. There's no hell that he hasn't been to. He's been there, done that, got the t-shirt, and brought people back with him. That is the gospel.
Did Jesus Empty Hell?
Now, of course, this brings up lots of questions. Did Jesus empty out hell? And there's actually a matter of great debate in the early church over how many people heard that proclamation that Jesus made and actually did anything about it. Was it one? Was it two? Was it thousands? Was it all of them? Did everybody leave? To which I say, well, of course not. I've been around long enough — and I'm not that old, but I've been around long enough — to not underestimate the stupidity, stubbornness, and wickedness of humanity. Many people saw the incarnate Jesus of Nazareth walking around doing miracles, feeding thousands, preaching the gospel, and refused to follow him and walked away. And so, of course, there are those who heard Jesus make proclamation of the gospel in hell and decided to stay there.
I love this image, and it's probably really hard to see, but there's this painting of Jesus in hell. I'll paint the picture with words for you. The wounds on his feet and on his hands are really fresh. You can see the blood coming out of the wound on his side where the soldier stabbed him to see if Jesus was dead or not. So the wounds are fresh, but it's Jesus, and he's going into hell. He's trampled down the doors of hell. They're underneath his hands and his feet. There are demons in this picture, and they're fleeing away. And then Jesus is reaching out his hand to the first person who's going to leave, and it's Adam, with Eve right behind him. It gives me chills every time I think about it. It's such a cool image. But there are those in the background of this picture who stay in the background, who are deciding not to leave.
C.S. Lewis puts it this way. He says, "The doors of hell are locked from the inside." And there are plenty of folks — I've met them, you've met them, Jesus has met them — plenty of folks who, when they encounter the radical, reckless, scandalous, prodigal love of God, love without boundaries or limits, love without conditions, love that just keeps on going — there are plenty of folks that see that kind of love and say, No, not me. I don't want to be a part of that.
The Two Sons
Remember the parable of the prodigal son. Very quickly: there are two sons. The younger son goes to his father and says, I wish you were dead. Give me my inheritance now. The father says, Okay, if that's what you want. The younger son takes his inheritance, goes out, squanders it on wild living, ends up destitute and poor, feeding pigs and eating out of the pig trough. The younger son comes to his senses and says, I would be better treated as a slave in my father's house than I am right now, so I'm going to go to my father and ask for forgiveness. So the son goes up the road. The father is waiting for the son. He sees the son. He goes running toward the son — the younger, rebellious son who wished the father was dead. The father casts aside all cultural assumptions about fathers and running, and goes running toward this rebellious son. And puts a ring on his finger, a robe over him, kills the fattened calf, and throws a feast, for his son was dead and is alive again, was lost and now is found.
And who is outside the party? It's the older son. It's the son who's all about limits and boundaries, who's all about who's in and who's out. The older son is the one who's so self-righteous he can't see the goodness of the love of the father.
Do I think there are still people in hell? Do I still think that there are people who refuse to hear the message of Jesus? Absolutely I do. And it's older sons. It's those who refuse to see the goodness of the love of the father, who forgives all, who accepts all, who gives grace and mercy to all. And what does the father do? This is the part I love. What does the father do? He leaves the party and makes proclamation to this imprisoned older son who's still outside. That's the kind of love that God has for his people. There is no barrier too great. Heaven and hell and death and angels and demons — nothing too great that can prevent the love and the proclamation of the love of God.
Yeah, there are still those who choose hell. There are still those who, even though Christ has broken down the doors and gotten rid of the chains, are going to march right back into Hades, put the chains back on their wrists, and say, No, thank you, I'll have it my way. But don't you dare think that they're there because God wants them there. The Bible says that God desires that none should perish. God says, Do you think I get pleasure when someone is punished for their sin? No.
So using the words of just Scripture, we can say this: Christ was put to death. His body was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. And Jesus' soul descended to the depths of the earth, made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits, and preached the gospel to the dead. 1 Peter 3 and 4. And those who believed the gospel were released to paradise that very day. And Jesus' body was then resurrected. And Jesus now sits at the right hand of God. And he holds the keys of death and Hades.
What About Those Who Never Heard?
So a question that often comes up in sermon series like these is, what happens to those who have never heard the gospel? In modern times, there are folks who have never heard the gospel, or they've been lied to about Jesus. Our Muslim fellow human beings — all they've been told their whole lives are lies about who Jesus is. What happens to them? And when I look at the harrowing of hell, when I look at what 1 Peter 3 and Ephesians 4 say about what God did, what Jesus did — I don't worry about that as much. I know that God is just. I know that Jesus made it right back then. And I think he'll do it again. I don't know if he'll do it in the same way. But I know that, according to James 2, mercy triumphs over judgment. So I know God will give all an opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel.
Those Who Put Their Faith in Jesus
Okay. So let me give us a big outline. What happens to those who die before Jesus comes back? Paul says, well, this is why we believe what we believe: Jesus died and rose again. We took a look at the death and what happened in the in-between time. Jesus goes, he makes proclamation. There are still people in Hades. Hades is, right now, just a temporary location for those there. We'll talk about that next week. And their story isn't over yet.
But what about those who do put their faith in Jesus? What about those who do put their faith in the gospel and what Jesus proclaims? What happens to them? Well, we get a hint of the answer when Jesus says to the repentant thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in paradise." This thief turns to Jesus, basically asks for salvation. Jesus says, Today you're going to be with me in paradise. So for those who put their faith in Jesus, there's a good place where they're going to go when they die.
We continue to see this in Scripture. The Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, "I would prefer to be away from the body" — so dead, in other words — "and at home with the Lord." Paul writes again about this. He thinks he's going to die. He's in prison. He's writing a lot about life and death. Paul says, "I'm torn between living and dying." He's facing execution. And Paul says, I'm torn between whether I want to stay alive or die, because I desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is better by far. And so, in Scripture, we get this idea that if you die, you are going to be with Christ. Your body stays on earth, but your soul, your spirit, that part of you that goes on, is going to go and be with Jesus.
Two Clarifications: Not Heaven, Not the End
But I've got a couple things to say about this. I'm just going to set up next week's sermon. So you die, you go with Jesus.
Number one: this is not heaven. We typically refer to people going to heaven when they die. But that's not actually the language that the Bible uses. The Bible uses very sparse language about what happens immediately after we die. There's language of being in paradise, of being at home with the Lord, of being in him. Back in our 1 Thessalonians 4 passage, it says we don't want you to be uninformed about those who are asleep in death, that God's going to bring with him those who have fallen asleep in him. And so we know that we're going to be with Jesus when we die, but it never uses the language of heaven. The New Testament is much more likely to talk about heaven as the place where heaven is being reunited with earth. Jesus' message was about the kingdom of heaven, and Jesus' message about the kingdom of heaven is that it's at hand. It's in your midst. It's coming to you. It's not a place where we go. It's a place that's coming here. The last chapters of Revelation are all about heaven and earth being reunited.
Randy Alcorn, in his magnificent book Heaven, talks about it like this:
What we usually think of when we hear the word heaven is what theologians call the intermediate heaven. For Christians, it's the place we go when we die, the place we'll live until our bodily resurrection. Our Christian loved ones who've died are now in this present intermediate heaven. The heaven we go to when we die is a place without suffering, but it's not the place we'll live forever. Our eternal home, where God will come down to dwell among his people, is called the new earth.
So those who die and have put their faith in Jesus, they go to this intermediate stage. In common language, in common parlance, we call it heaven. But that's not exactly what Scripture calls it. It's being in Christ's presence. It's being home with the Lord. It's the betterness of being with Christ. It's the stage in which the dead are held firmly within the conscious love of God and the conscious presence of Jesus Christ. It's blissful rest.
But this leads to point number two: it is not our final destiny. In our resurrection survey that we did back in April, about a third of you said that the afterlife was only a spiritual existence in heaven. And a large majority of U.S. citizens say that the afterlife is just a soulish, spiritual existence. And I've got news for you: this is not Christian orthodoxy. This is not what Scripture teaches. It's better than that. I've met many, many people who are afraid of heaven or aren't looking forward to heaven because they picture harps and clouds and floating around as a soul for all eternity in a pointless existence. That doesn't sound much like heaven to me.
Now don't misunderstand me. If you die today, and if you put your faith in Christ, you are going to be in Christ's loving presence. Your body will be here decomposing on earth for a while. But your soul is going to be with God. But that is not the end of the story. N.T. Wright puts it like this:
The ultimate destination is not going to heaven when you die, but being bodily raised into the transformed, glorious likeness of Jesus Christ. Thus, if we want to speak of going to heaven when we die, we should be clear that this represents the first and far less important stage of a two-stage process.
Resurrection isn't life after death. It is life after life after death. And that is the topic of next week's sermon.
Offering and Prayer
I'm going to invite the ushers to come forward, and our worship team as well. And I encourage you to come back to hear the rest of the story. Right now we're going to be taking up an offering. And an offering, all that is, is an opportunity to practice right-now response. A response of thankfulness, thanksgiving, for all that Christ has done. When we give our money, we want that to be just a token of a life of thanksgiving. We want our money to be just a reminder that our entire lives are meant to be offerings before God. But that token — we use that money to the best of our ability to proclaim the gospel without limits, without boundaries, to proclaim the gospel to those who need to hear a word of good news. And so we ask that you would give. We ask that you would give in faith, knowing it is being used for the proclamation of God's good news.
Would you pray with me? Almighty God, we thank you that you are God. That you do not leave us in chains, even in the chains of sin, even in the chains of addiction and bondage and sickness. You do not leave us there, God. We thank you that your Son, Jesus, not only was born as a human, not only lived, not only died a horrible death, but also descended into hell — that he would know the full impact of what it is to die without you. So, God, we thank you for this kind of love, this love that's so good, it almost seems too good to be true. But your love knows no limits. God, would you take these offerings? Would you bless them and multiply them? That they would not be used for the fame or the name of Good News Church, but that they would be used instead for the name and the fame of Jesus Christ, our Savior, the Lord of the universe. That people would know how good and wide and deep and long and high and magnificent your love is. We pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.
