Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Hope in the Face of Death

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

The great enemy of the human race is death. And we all have to face it.  No matter how young you are, no matter how your life’s been going up to now, I can say, without fear of contradiction, that there is a lot of death in your future. And therefore, you severely need what this text talks about. It talks about hope in the face of death.  Let’s ask the text three questions: 1) Why do we need hope in the face of death? 2) How can we get hope in the face of death? and 3) If we have it, how do we use it and increase it in our life? This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 14, 2016. Series: Bible: What We Are Receiving: The Gospel Goods. Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel and Life. If someone asked you what the main story of the Bible is, what would you say? Today Tim Keller is preaching through the central storyline of the Bible. What went wrong with the human race? What God has done to rescue us through Christ? And how God means to restore the world? We're glad you're listening with us. The scripture reading this morning is from 1 Thessalonians 4 verses 13 to 18. Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope. But we believe that Jesus died, 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 proceed 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. 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, the Word of the Lord. So, as B. Jan was saying, over the next coming weeks, the coming weeks we're going to be looking at our future, what we deem her hopes to accomplish in the city over the next

few years. And the vision's very, very big and it's extraordinarily exciting and we will be talking about that. But no church should ever talk about the future without making sure that its feet are grounded right now in the biblical historic gospel that Jesus Christ gave to his disciples and apostles and who then gave it to us. And what we've been doing for a number of weeks now, we're almost done with this series, but not quite, is we're looking at what we're calling the gospel goods, those unimaginable benefits that the gospel of Jesus Christ brings to us. Now, the one we're looking at today is, I don't know if you can even talk like this, but perhaps one of the greatest of the benefits, there is an enemy.

And we all have to face it. We do face it. We will face it. How do we have the courage to face it? How will we have the hope to face it? And the great enemy of the human race is death. And this is a pretty young congregation still. But no matter how young you are, and no matter how your life has been going up to now, I can say without fear of contradiction or being disproved that there is a lot of death in your future, a lot of death in your future. And therefore, you severely need what this text talks about. It talks about hope and the face of death. So let's ask the text three questions.

One is, why do we need hope in the face of death? Secondly, how can we get hope in the face of death? And then thirdly, if we have it, how do we use it and increase it in our life? How do we use it to make our life stronger? So why do we need hope in the face of death? How do we get hope in the face of death? How do we get hope in the face of death, and how we use it in our lives, in our hearts?

So first of all, why do we need hope in the face of death? Take a look at verse 13. Brothers and sisters, Paul says, writing to a group of Christians, we don't want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope. The reason we need hope in the face of death is that this is a universal problem.

In fact, when Paul says, and we'll get back to the way he says it in a little bit, so we don't want you to grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope, everybody, everybody in the world struggles to have hope in the face of death. Everybody does. These people obviously have recently lost loved ones, might have been family, might have been friends, and they're struggling, and he says,

I want to help you in that struggle, because everyone in the world struggles often without success to have hope in the face of death. Now how then do people try to find hope in the face of death? And I'm going to say that there's at least two main ways. These are probably your two biggest, most often seen alternatives. None of these are the Christian way.

But there's two alternative ways that human beings use in order to try to have hope in the face of death. The first is what I'll call the stoic way. Now not just talking about the fact there was a Greek school of philosophers, the stoics, but the stoic way is actually not only the most, the more ancient way that all cultures and societies try to equip people to face death. But even in our society, up until maybe 30 or 40 years ago, this was still the dominant approach.

And what's this stoic way? Well, a perfect example of it is in Homer, the Iliad, where one character says to another character, bear up and don't give into angry grief. Nothing will come of saw-ring for your son. Nothing will come of sorrowing for your son. Nor will you raise him up before you die. Bear up, don't give into angry grief. Nothing will come of sorrowing for your son.

So this approach acknowledges that death is terrible and horrible and that the normal and fact inevitable feelings you will have in the face of death are anger and grief, despondent sorrow, anger and grief. But what is the stoic approach? Shut down those emotions. Keep a stiff upper lip. Be strong. Don't give into those emotions. Don't give into those emotions.

Don't give into them. So the stoic approach is yes, yes, anger and grief, of course, death is terrible, but you get nothing out of it, right? It won't help anything. Nothing will come of sorrowing for your son. So shut it down, shut down those emotions. That's a stoic approach. More recently, there has been an approach developed that I'm just going to call the modern approach, the modern secular approach. It's unprecedented in human history as I'll show you in a second, but what is that approach? Well, that approach is radically different because it denies that there's anything horrible and terrible about death. The way it helps you, this approach, the way it helps you face death,

is it absolutely denies that there's anything terrible or horrible about it. Recently I read a book by Julian Barnes. Barnes is a British novelist, a aging British novelist, and he wrote a book called Nothing to Be Frightened of, and the whole book's about about death and why it's just silly to be frightened of it.

And there's a Diana Athill who's a very famous British editor, kind of a legendary British editor. She's now 97 or 98 and she wrote an article in The Guardian which is a British newspaper, not too long ago called It's it's silly to be afraid of being dead. It's silly to be afraid of being dead. And she lays out perfectly this approach, which by the way, you're going to find everywhere. Go into Barnes, and then we'll pick up a book on dying. It's going to be there.

Go to a funeral home, find a little brochure, how to talk to children about death. It'll be there. That's what she says. She says, first of all, she refuses to call death the end of life. She says death is a natural process, that's her words. Death is absolutely natural.

It's simply the next stage in your place in the life cycle of the world. When you die, your body and its chemicals nourish the earth so that vegetation can come up, so other beings can eat it. And so you become part of this life cycle. And death itself, she says, is nothing but a sliding down into non-consciousness.

You just go away, your consciousness goes away. You're chemicals, you're the organic vital vitality of your body becomes part of the life cycle of the earth, but your consciousness goes away, you just don't know anything. So she says, what's there to be afraid of? And in the end she says, but basically she says, coming to see death's naturalness took all of her fear away. And that's the idea. Coming to see the fact that death is natural, perfectly natural, gets rid of all fear. Not to be afraid of. Well, does that work?

Peter Kraft, a Catholic author, tells a story about a neighbor of his, a woman who had read all these books and she believed this was the way she was dealing with her own understanding of death. And she was faced with an issue. She had a seven-year-old son and his little cousin, a little boy, a cousin of his died, suddenly.

Terrible tragedy. And the boy, the seven-year-old, comes to his mother and says, mommy, where's my cousin? Now, where's my cousin? So she told him the things that the brochures say you're supposed to say to a kid. She herself didn't believe in a God or an afterlife for anything, so she had the integrity to say this. This is what she said, Peter Cressa. She says, now your cousin has gone back to the earth from which we all came. We all come from the earth. He's gone back into the earth. Death is a natural part

come from the earth. He's going back into the earth. Death is a natural part of the cycle of life here. And when you see the earth putting forth new flowers next spring, you can know that your cousin's life is fertilizing your those flowers. And little boy looked at her and screamed, I don't want him to be fertilizer and ran out of the room. And Peter Kress said actually she was surprised and the reason she was surprised was that what she had taken the propaganda to heart and it would basically repress the natural and normal human intuition about death, but it hadn't happened yet in her seven-year-old son. And what is that normal intuition?

The intuition is this. Death is not natural. There is nothing natural about it. It's an aberration. It's an intrusion. It's a monstrosity. There's not a culture and history that ever saw it that way.

There's not a single ancient legend or ancient myth. Go back to any of the ancient myths that try to talk about the origins of things. And if death ever shows up in any of those myths, it's always the intrusion. It's an aberration. Something went wrong. Everybody knows this is those myths, it's always the intrusion. It's an aberration. Something went wrong. Everybody knows this is not the way it's supposed to be.

Everybody knows that. Unless you read the brochures. Dylan Thomas is much closer to it, the Welsh poet who said, do not go gentle into that good night. He's making fun of the whole idea. Do not go gentle into that good night. He's making fun of the whole idea. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. That's way closer to what all human beings have always known is true. Death isn't natural at all. Now, when people say death is nothing to be frightened of,

why are they wrong? Why are they wrong? Maybe we screen, but why? Why are we afraid? Why are they wrong? Maybe we screen, but why? Why are we afraid? Why are we angry? But why are they wrong? There's two reasons why when they say that this is not going to be frightened of, they're wrong. Well, here's one. The one is this.

The first is, take a look at your life and ask yourself, what is it that gives meaning to your life? What is it that makes your life bearable? What's the greatest joy in your life? It's love relationships. Love relationships. So when they say, well, you know, death is nothing. It's just sliding down into non-consciousness. Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. You know what that means? What that means is all of your life, death will strip you one by one of every person that you love in your life. And then in the end, death will come upon you

and it will strip you from all your loved ones. Death will spend all of your life stripping you of loved ones. And then at the end, it will strip all your loved ones of you. It will, death will destroy everything meaningful, everything that gives your life any meaning. And you're not supposed to be afraid of it? Oh gee.

But here's a second reason. that gives your life any meaning. And you're not supposed to be afraid of it? Don't see. But here's a second reason. When people say there's nothing to be afraid of, why we know that's not true, and why so many of us run away screaming, it's because we're not sure about what happens after death. See, when you say, well, after death, you just go down to the non-consciousness,

you stop existing. How do you know that? Can you prove that? Of course you can't prove that. That's a leap of faith. And Epicurus, the great, the old Greek philosopher, put it like this. He says, what men fear is not the death as annihilation,

but that it is not. We're not afraid that death is the end. We're afraid that it might not be. Russo, a little more recently, put it like this, and he's no Orthodox Christian, but Russo said, he who pretends to look on death without fear lies. I don't know how it went in French, but it's pretty good in English. He who pretends to look on death without fear lies. But probably, you know, the most eloquent person who explained this problem,

why it's silly to think that death is nothing to be frightened of is what Shakespeare put in the mouth of Hamlet. You know what Hamlet said? The dread of something after death death the undiscovered country From whose born no traveler returns puzzles the will and makes us rather Keep the ills that we have rather than fly the ills we know not of. Therefore conscience makes cowards of assault.

Do you hear what he's saying? He says, we dread something after death. The undiscovered country from whose born no traveler returns. In other words, nobody's come back from death. We don't know what's out there. And it puzzles the will. Why? I know this was, as a pastor, I can't tell you how often I've talked to people who are

really seriously ill over the years. And even the people that have no intellectual belief in God or afterlife at all, when you're seriously ill and when you know death is even a possibility, you start to feel a sense that I need to evaluate my life. Have I lived the way I should? And nobody feels they've lived the way they should.

Because as we get near to death, we sense what if there is, what if death isn't the end? That's what Epicurus said. Thus, conscience makes cowards of us in the face of death. We're not afraid that death is the end. We're afraid that death isn't, and we know we haven't lived as we ought.

So you see, would you be anxious if you were driving in a car at about 60 miles an hour and all, and you couldn't see out any of the windows? Would that make you anxious? Okay. Well, we're all driving toward death, and the windows, we can't see out the windows. We have no idea where we're going. No wonder we run screaming from the room? So death is nothing to be frightened of, that just doesn't work.

But here's the point, and here's the first point. We should grieve them. We should be angry, we should weep. Notice if you look at carefully at this first sentence, if you look at the grammar carefully, you'll see that Paul is not saying he doesn't want them to grieve. He doesn't say, I want to give you hope so you don't grieve. No, look, he says, I don't want you to grieve

like those without hope. In other words, Paul is saying, you should grieve. Absolute you should grieve. Why? Because death is a monstrosity. It's an aberration. It's not right. We know that. And therefore, we should be like Jesus. Remember how Homer said, or in the L.A. the character said, don't give in to angry, weeping? Look at Jesus Christ at the

tomb of Lazarus in John chapter 11. What's he doing? He's weeping, right? Mary comes up to him and says, Lord, if you had been here, a brother wouldn't have died. It just says Jesus wept. No, he's angry. He's angry. It says he was furious. And why would he be furious? It's interesting that Jesus Christ claimed to be God, and yet when he sees death, he's furious. What does that mean? That's the answer to why all human beings intuitively know that death isn't natural. Because when Jesus Christ claiming to be God

gets angry at death, that shows that this was not part of his original design. This is not the way he made the world. We were made the last. We weren't made to get weaker and weaker and shrivel up and go away. We were made the last. We weren't made to go get weaker and weaker and shrivel up and go away. We were meant to get stronger and stronger and wiser and wiser and more and more beautiful. Forever we know that's what we're made for. We weren't built to lose the people we love. We were built to keep them. And Jesus by being angry

and weeping at the tomb of last was shows that this is not the way things ought to be. So Jesus is not in what the stoic does, is he? Jesus is not saying shut it down. He's weeping, he's angry. Why? Because you should grieve. It'd be wrong not to grieve. But on the other hand, he's not like the modern person. He says, well, you know, this is the way of things.

You know, he's just going to be helping the fertilizer. You don't see Jesus doing that either, no. But what here is the point, he says, grieve, the Bible says grieve, do grieve, but you say, how am I going to not be overwhelmed by that? And the answer is you have to mix hope in with your grief. Paul does not say don't grieve. He says, I don't want you to grieve without hope. You know how in the old days you used to put salt,

rub salt into the meat. So the meat didn't go bad. You need to rub hope into your grief. So your grief doesn't go bad. To not grieve, to tell yourself it's natural or to shut down your emotions is not right. It's not good for you and it's not right. But in the other hand, just simply

given to the emotion and not have any hope, that will destroy you too. What you need is you need to be able to rub hope into your grief. So instead of making you more anxious and more upset and more hard and more cynical, it makes you wiser and better and more compassionate and deeper. So what is that hope? How do we get that hope? Point two, and it tells you right here in verse 14. See, brothers and sisters, we don't want you to be grieving without hope, but then he says, right away, verse 14,

for we believe that Jesus died in Rose again. And so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. How can you have hope? Jesus died in rows again. There's the hope. See, think about it now for a second. One of the things that's most fascinating about Jesus, he weeps at the tomb of Lazarus.

This is John chapter 11, and he grieves, and he's angry. But he also doesn't go home. He doesn't turn away. He goes charging toward the tomb. In fact, many commentators talk about how strange it is that the, in fact, very often translators play it down because it seems so strange. And very often our English translations don't get across the fact

that basically Jesus went roaring to the tomb in anger. Why? Well, he says to Mary and Martha, I'm the resurrection. See, there's a perfect example of why, of how Christians ought to be. You shouldn't be a stoic, just camping down your emotions, but you also shouldn't be a modern secular person,

not getting angry at death, thinking it's perfectly natural. You should weep, you should be angry, but you should go with hope toward the death, not let it cow you in any way. And of course, he was able to do that because he said, on the resurrection of the life, I, you say, well, wait a minute, but I'm not Jesus.

I'm not the resurrection of the life. So how do I not get overwhelmed with grief and anger? How do I face death with that kind of confidence and hope? And here's how. He didn't just die and rise. He died and rose for us. He died and rose so that those that believe will come with him. The other passage that I thought about preaching on by the way years ago, months ago when I thought about

this day and preaching on how the gospel gives us hope in the face of death, I thought about another passage. It was Hebrews 2 and in the end I chose first Thessalonians 4 but I got to tell you about Hebrews 2 because it's important as well. And Hebrews chapter 2, which is remarkable, it talks about our salvation. And it says in verse 10, in bringing many sons to glory, that means in God seeking to bring us into salvation,

in bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God should make the champion of our salvation perfect through suffering so that he would share our humanity. In bringing many sons to glory it was fitting that God should make the champion of our salvation perfect through suffering. Now the word champion is the Greek word archigos and the Greek word archigos, and the Greek word archigos. And the word means, what's a champion? The word means representational, representational fighting. A champion is a person who does representational combat.

He fights for someone else. He fights in the place of someone else. And then it goes on in verse 14 and says, what Jesus is going to do. It says he shared in our humanity so that by his death he should destroy death and free those who all their lives have been slaves to the fear of death.

Jesus shared in our humanity so by his death he should destroy death and free those who all of your lives were held in slavery to the fear of death. Now how does this work? How do you get this hope? Listen here. If Jesus is a champion, then let's imagine being in a battle. Let's imagine you in the battle.

And the champion is scanning the field. Why? Because the champion's not just the champion's fights for other people. So he looks over at you and guess what? You're not doing very well. You're overmatched, let's say, against someone who, some other warrior who is better armed, far bigger, far stronger, and far faster than you. And you're going to die. And you're gonna die. So you're running away from him, but don't forget what I said. He's not only far stronger and better on me,

but he's also far faster, so you're gonna die. So what does the champion do? Like Jesus Christ, the champion goes toward the danger. And he runs and he puts himself between you and your impending death. And he turns and he puts himself between you and you're impending death. And he turns and he faces your foe. And you're able to get away and he faces your foe, he faces your death and he dies so that you may live.

That's a champion. But here's what the Bible says. Not only has Jesus Christ on that, Jesus Christ the champion of our faith, not only has he gone into death and he's faced our death for us, the Bible doesn't say death is just an enemy. Listen please everybody,

the Bible doesn't just say death is an enemy, it also death is an executioner. That is to say death is our penalty. It's not just our enemy, it's our penalty. And just as when you pay the penalty, you have a creditor and you pay the penalty, the creditor no longer has any power over you, that when Jesus Christ took our death in our place,

when he took the death we deserve, the wages of said is death. What happened? It doesn't say just died. What does it say? He rose, meaning he went into death and because he paid the penalty of death, death no longer has any power for all those who believe in him,

put it another way. He went into death and he blew a hole out the back of it. He went into death and he blew a hole out the back of it. And this is the reason why you don't have to be afraid of death anymore. Why Jesus Christ has delivered you from slavery to the freedom of death. Most Christians even pastors struggle to talk about their faith in a way that applies the power of the gospel to change lives, especially in our skeptical culture. Tim Keller's book of preaching, communicating faith in an age of skepticism, is a guide

for anyone who wants to become more effective in communicating about their faith. Pastors and lay people alike. Drawing on his years of experience, Dr. Keller will help you share your faith in a more engaging, passionate, and compassionate way from the public or in the coffee shop. Preaching is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel and Life share the hope of Christ's love with people all over the world. So we request your copy today at gospelandlife.com slash give.

That's gospelandlife.com slash give. Now here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. Hamlet was wrong. Someone has come back from death. Hamlet was wrong. Someone has come back. He says deathlet was wrong. Someone has come back. He says, death, that undiscovered country from whom's born, no travel returns.

Jesus Christ has come back. And here's what he said, I took your death for you. And I blew a hole through the back of it. And if you believe in me, then when death comes upon you, here's what you can say. Jesus lives and death is now, but my entrance into glory, courage then my soul for thou hast a crown of life before thee.

Jesus lives and so, death is now, but my entrance into glory. It looks like a dark door, but it goes right through the back. Jesus is open to door. See, as Lewis puts it like this, our great captain, Jesus Christ, has opened a cleft in the piti-less walls of the world and he bids us come through it.

There's hope. Oh, my goodness, there's hope. When death comes to you, you can all the courage in the world because your great champion has already faced this, he's already paid the penalty, and now all death can do is lead you in a glory into his arms. That's the reason why, by the way, George Herbert says, death used to be an executioner, but the gospel makes him just a gardener. If you meet death in Christ, he won't execute you, he'll just plant you, and make something far greater, just like the flowers greater than the sea, just like the tree, and the forest is greater than the acorn.

C.S. Lewis puts it like this, if we let him, he will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into dazzling radiant immortal creatures pulsing all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine. Bright stainless mirrors which reflect back to God perfectly, though, of course, on a smaller scale, his own boundless power and delight and goodness. That is what we are in for. Nothing less. There's a hope for you. Rub that in. Rub that into every experience of grief and see how it makes you. It prepares you to be the great dazzling, radiant, wise, loving,

being you're going to be if you die in Jesus Christ. So listen lastly, how do you actually take hold of the seat? Verse 18 says something pretty interesting. It says, therefore, encourage one another with these words. Now the word encourage is, it's a translation of the Greek word, paracaleo, very important word, hard word to translate. It's a powerful word. Sometimes it's translated, comfort. Paracaleo means basically, I like to encourage. Paracaleo, this is what it's saying. Take these truths. the truths that I just gave you,

the truths that I hope gave you some goosebumps. It's not enough just to believe it. You've got to work them into your lives. In fact, you're supposed to do it with each other. Encourage one another, not encourage yourself. Take these truths and learn how to instill them, distill them, drill them down into your heart until they make you people that can face anything.

How do you do that? Well I think by looking at this passage and looking at the unique features of the Christian hope and drilling and taking hold of those, and not just a few minutes I got left here, let me do that for you, because you see the first verse, many people think Paul's being kind of harsh. When he says, I don't want you to grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope. And a lot of people say, well look,

maybe secular people don't have any hope of an afterlife, but lots of other religions do. So why would Paul say, nobody else but Christians have any hope in the face of death? I think he's speaking comparatively. You know the place where Jesus says, if you want to be my disciple, you have to hate your father and mother. It doesn't really mean

that you're supposed to literally hate your father and mother. He's saying, my love for me ought to be so much greater that all other loves look like something else by comparison. And I think Paul's talking the same way. He's not saying that nobody else has any hope, but what he is saying is the Christian promise, the Christian promise of the future is unique. There are certain aspects that no other religion even begins to promise you. And there's a sense in which, and you can judge for yourself

because I'm gonna give you these three, because of how different this Christian hope is, and there's a sense in which it asks to address all the others. Now you'll be the judge. Here are the three things you need to think about. Only Christianity promises all three of these. The first is that heaven is a world of love.

That heaven is a world of love. Now I would say a big number of religions in this world do not say that when you die, they say you survive death, your soul lives on after death, but not as a personal consciousness. So most Eastern religions would say that when you die,

you become an impersonal part of the impersonal soul. It's some Buddhist teachings which thinkers have said, it's like a drop of water going back into the ocean. The substance of the water doesn't go away, but frankly, it loses its dropness. And so many religions say, yes, you live on, but you live on not as a personal consciousness. You're not conscious anymore.

You become part of the great also. Now, there's a lot of ways of talking about that. You become star dust and all that. And it sounds very comforting, but here's the key. If the meaning of life is love, and you lose your ability to have personal consciousness after death, then there's no love after death, because only persons can love. It's one of the reasons why John Updike, by the way, in his memoir, talks about why he held on to Christian belief and didn't go into some kind of new age or other kinds of

Eastern beliefs. You know why? He says, I want to be a self forever. He says, I want to be a self forever because only if you're a self living with other selves, can you have love. John Edwards wrote a sermon, which you can find online, but it's, I'll tell you, it's something you'd probably

to read about 20 times to get all the wonders out of it. He wrote a sermon called, Heaven is a World of Love. It's the most radical astonishing ceremony ever wrote. John the Baptist of course is the 18th-century American philosopher and pastor. And here's what he says in the sermon, just of it. He says in the center of heaven is not just some generic God. Not just a generic God. It's the triune God of Christianity, one God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

And those three persons have been loving each other, pouring love and joy into each other. In infinite degrees through all eternity, and in heaven, he says, the fountain of that love, a dynamic, magnificent, impossible to imagine, powerful fountain of love is finally released without hindrance and it floods all around you. All the people who are in heaven are completely flooded with this perfect love. And Edward says, all the things that on earth keep love from being anything like the joy it ought to be. Just think about joyful love is here.

But he says, on earth things are always clogging our love. He says, your love is clogged. Your love is like a pipe clogged. Very little love actually gets through because it isn't heaven all the clogs are gone. So for example, he actually uses the word clog. But so for example, on the one hand, he says, in heaven, everybody will always love everybody else equally. Isn't it true, by the way, that on earth, you never love the other person exactly the way they love you? They either love you more than you do or less than you do? That always is a problem in heaven.

Everybody will love everyone equally. You'll love God equally with all your heart. He'll love you equally with all his being. He'll love you equally with all his being. You'll love everyone else equally. Here's another thing, on earth, you want to express your love. You want to tell people how much you love them, but you never can get it out.

You can never express it, can you? But in heaven, everyone else will be, everybody will be able to perfectly articulate. All others, your love, so you'll perfectly express it, you'll perfectly experience, you'll perfectly give it, you'll perfectly receive it. On earth, we tend to love people so that they'll make us happy. But in heaven, we'll always love people perfectly, which means we'll put our happiness into their happiness. Do you follow that?

Edward says, to perfectly love people is not to say, I love you so you can make me happy. Perfectly love people say, I put my happiness into your happiness, so I'm only happy if you're happy. And the happier you are, the happier I am. And you realize what that does?

It means the more prosperous and joyful and great and brilliant and glorious the people are, who you love, that the more joyful you will be, and they'll love you more perfectly, and they'll make you more glorious and on it goes exponentially forever. Also, in heaven, you'll never lose love. See the envy, the loss, the inability to praise and express our love.

All the things that here on earth make love always clogged. It'll be gone. Heaven is a world of love. At the center of it, the triune God, which is the ocean and fountain of love, flooding you every minute, making your love a pure, pure. There's no other faith that promises anything like that, that talks like that. Secondly, secondly, by the way,

you see where it says down here in verse 17, after that we who are still alive will be caught together with them to meet the Lord, we will be with the Lord, persons, persons, persons, will be together. Secondly, the Christian hope talks about resurrection. It says, the dead in Christ will rise first, verse 16. But then it says, by the way, and 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. Commentators always point out that word meet is a technical term. It was a word that meant that when someone, a conquering king, had left town and had gone out to do a great victory and was coming back victorious, you went outside of the city as the king was coming toward the city and you met them. The word met means you joined the parade and he came on in. And this is not talking about going to heaven and leaving the earth. This is talking about being part of Jesus Christ coming back to renew the earth

and make this material world perfect. Not just redeeming your souls, but redeeming your bodies. Not just redeeming your cell, your individual cells, but redeeming the world. There's no suffering, there's no disease, there's... the world. There's no suffering, there's no disease, there's if the best our salvation could do was give you a future immaterial spiritual constant, you know, a kind of bliss that consoled you for all the stuff that all the stuff you never got here.

That'd be one thing, but it wouldn't be a total victory over death. But Christianity, only Christianity, teaches that Jesus Christ is coming back and He's going to renew this world. And therefore, you're going to get the body you never had, not just the body back you used to have. You're going to be able to fly, you're going to be able to dance, you're going to be musicians, you're going to be able to make the You're going to be able to dance. You're going to be musicians. You're going to be able to make the music. You've never been able to make.

You're not going to float in the kingdom of God. You're going to march in the kingdom of God. You're going to dance in the kingdom of God. You're going to hug in the kingdom of God. Vina Theramachandra, he's a Sri Lankan Christian. People always come to him and they say, don't you believe in salvation in other faiths, other religions? Don't you think your salvation, other religions, he says,

what kind of salvation you're talking about, not this kind of religion, there's no other, this kind of, this kind of salvation, hope for this world, souls, bodies, world, says there's no other faith, no other religion that even claims this kind of salvation. If you say, don't you think your salvation,

another faith, not this salvation, no other religion promises this kind of hope, lastly. Very lastly, who rises to be part of this new world? The good people? No, the people in Christ. Did you see that? Those who sleep in Christ, those who are dead in Christ. And when Paul uses the word in Christ, he's talking about people who've just

believed. The minute you believe, God puts your sins on Jesus and God puts his righteousness on you and you're in Christ. And therefore, you don't have to come up to a death saying, I wonder if I've lived a good enough life. If you're a Christian, you come up to death saying, Jesus lives, he died in rose, and so I will die in rise with him. Jesus lives, and death is now, but my entrance into glory. You know, at the very, very end of this, I'll just tell you, George Herbert's dialogue anthem, go get it, it's online.

George Herbert wrote something called dialogue anthem. It's a dialogue between Christian and death, a Christian and death. And the Christian is taunting death. It's a very biblical poem. It reminds me of 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul is taunting death, saying, Oh, death, where is thy sting? Oh, grave, where is thy victory? Making fun of death, saying,

Ha, ha, ha, you can't hurt me. And this is exactly what the Christian looks in the dialogue anthem by George Herbert. The Christian looks at death and says, Alas, poor death, where is thy famous force? Thy ancient sting? And death looks at him and says, Alas, poor mortal, go and read how I killed your king. Christian looks back and he says, poor death and who was hurt thereby? Thy curse laid on him, made thee a curse.

Death turns around and says, let losers talk. Yet thou shalt die, mine arms shall crush thee. And Christian looks at him and says, Spare not, do thy worst. Thou can only make me better than before. And thou shalt be so much worse, thou shalt be no more. Live with that kind of greatness, live with that kind of buoyancy, live with that kind of joy, and you can look anything in the face. Let's pray. Our Father, we ask that you'd help us to be people who fear no darkness, fear no darkness.

We ask that You'd help us do that by taking hold of the great things that You have given us in Jesus Christ. Yes, He saved us from the penalty of sin. Yes, He, we've talked about these over the weeks, but he also on the battlefield defeated death, destroyed death, and Liberates us from any fear of death so that we don't grieve Except with hope and that hope makes us greater through the grief Turns us into the kind of people that someday you will make us immortal radiant

loving wise kind Father get us radiant, loving, wise kind. Father, can soul us with the thoughts of heaven, a world of love. Can soul us with the thoughts of getting our new bodies, the bodies, not only that we used to have, but the bodies that we never had. Can soul us with a knowledge that this is absolutely assured, and it's certain, and we don't have to worry, and enable us, Lord, then, to be able to turn to other people around us and share this hope because all humankind needs it. So do all these things we ask for Jesus in His name we pray.

Amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching from Dr. Keller. If you were encouraged by this podcast, we invite you to consider becoming a gospel in life monthly partner. Your partnership helps more people access resources like this podcast. Just visit gospelandlife.com slash partner to learn more. This month's sermons were recorded in 2009 and 2016. The sermons and talks you hear on the gospel and life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017,

while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.