Christ Church Washington D.C.

Scripture reading for this morning’s message comes from the book of Acts chapter 2. These are the words of God.
He is at my right hand that I may not be shaken.
Our Father in God, we thank you for this word. We thank you for the resurrection. We ask that you would strengthen our hearts with it this morning and that you would do it in the strong name of Jesus. And amen. You may be seated.
I think it was pretty clear that Nate was having way too much fun with the piano right there. And so the tech demons had to get him with that last song. And I don’t know, one of the things, you didn’t know how grateful you were for air conditioning until this moment, like right now. You were like, air conditioning is the greatest invention in the history of the world. And you didn’t know until now. This is what God wanted to give you this morning. Happy Easter. Nothing like getting together with 200 of your closest friends and sweating.
This is Easter Sunday. And on this Easter Sunday, we’re going to talk about death. We’re going to talk about death. What is death? What happens when you die? And it might be odd on Easter Sunday, Resurrection Sunday, to talk about death. But it’s the same reason that earlier in the service, we wanted to talk about sin. We want to talk about sin because we want to talk about forgiveness. We want to talk about death because we want to talk about the resurrection. The resurrection stands out more if we have a deeper understanding
of death. And so as we do this, I want to begin the Easter message with two basic claims that I think are true of all people. This is true of not just Christians, not just Americans, not just men or women. Every person on planet earth who has ever lived, I think these two statements are true. Statement number one, all men seek happiness. All men seek happiness. And everything we do, no matter what it is that we do, we seek happiness.
You want to be happy. You wake up in the morning and you want to have a good day. You drive to work and you want to be happy in that work. Now, you may not always be happy. That’s not the claim. It’s not that all men are happy. That’s certainly not true. But you want to be happy and you want to be happy all the time. Like even things that maybe aren’t happy in the moment, like your job, you do because you think that’s a means to greater happiness. I’m doing this because on the far side, I will be happier.
Blaise Pascal, a famous philosopher, once said that the pursuit of happiness is the motive of every action of every man, even those that hang themselves. Even those that hang themselves. Even the person who commits suicide believes in that moment, death will make me happier than the pain and anguish of this life. So that’s my first statement. Everyone here, about all of you, is that you want to be happy. Deep down,
what animates you, what motivates you, is a desire for deep, and not just deep happiness, lasting happiness. We don’t want just happiness to be there for a minute. We want it to last. You want it to stick around. That’s statement number one. Second statement. All men seek happiness. All men fear death. All men fear death. Every human being will die. We will be cut off from the land of the living.
We see it on the news. We see it in our families. We see it in our future. All men
fear death. So all men seek happiness. All men fear death. Now the passage we just read in the book of Acts addresses both of these. But before we can look at it specifically, I want to take a step back and I want us to think about death. And I have three questions. So what is death? What happens after we die? And then what happened after Jesus died? So this is the question. Yesterday was Holy Saturday. Good Friday. Maundy Thursday.
And everybody goes, Monday, Thursday? Is it Monday? No. Maundy Thursday. Night of Last Supper. Good Friday. Holy Saturday. And now Easter Sunday. Where was Jesus on Saturday? What was he doing? So first question, what is death? Death, according to the Bible, death is fundamentally a separation. It’s a dividing of things that ought to be united. And I want us to think in terms of three particular separations.
Death is separation from God. Death is separation from God. This is what Paul says in Ephesians 2. You guys, we just preached through this, the whole book. So call back to Ephesians chapter 2.
Now, that’s an odd passage because it doesn’t track with what we normally think about death. So man by nature walks, lives in the passions of the flesh, following the course of this world, following Satan, who is at work in our disobedience. So we’re alive, we live in sinful passions, and so we’re walking, following, living, working, carrying out, and yet Paul says, you’re dead. We’re dead in trespasses and sin.
So what kind of death can this be? It can’t be physical death. Death in this passage is separation from God. It’s enslavement to sin. It’s to be under God’s wrath. This is a hostility, an alienation from the living God. Because we were made to know and enjoy Him, to be in fellowship with Him, to be together with Him, and our rebellion against Him, our disobedience to Him, has separated us from Him.
So, first and foremost, death is separation from God, spiritual death. But death is not just separation from God, it’s separation from each other. So, one of the deepest pains we know in this world is the loss of those that we love. So, about 12 years ago, my father died. After a seven-year fight with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, it’s hard to believe it’s 12 years ago, honestly.
And in dying, he was separated from me and from my mom and from my brothers and from his family. And we all know, like, you’ve experienced that separation. That separation really hurts. It’s very painful. We think it’s not supposed to be this way. Like, I think about that every year. So, right now, we’re just starting up baseball season. My boys play baseball. We just started up baseball season. I think about this every, usually just a moment at some point during the baseball season. My dad was a big baseball guy. We’re a big baseball family.
I think about it when we’re on the baseball field. I think, man, it would be really great if he got to see a game. At one level, I think, well, he’s in heaven, so maybe he’s watching them from there, but it would be nice if I could see him see the game. That would be really enjoyable for me. I wish he could sit in the stands and cheer as Sam pitches or as Peter bats. I actually, it’s a weird thing. I don’t know if you’ve lost a close loved one. You can still hear certain phrases that they said frequently. I can still hear in his voice.
You got to go. You got to go. I can hear his voice saying that. It’s like the main thing I can actually, rounding third base. You got to go. This is the idea. We’re supposed to be together, united. That would be how it’s supposed to be. And yet we’re not. That’s not going to happen in this life. And so it’s a horrible thing. We look at that, we look at the tearing apart, the ripping apart of families, friends, and we say,
it’s not supposed to be this way. It’s a separation. So death is separation from God. It’s separation from each other. And then finally, death is the separation of the soul from the body. So you have a soul and you have a body. And the book of James tells us the body without the spirit is dead. The body without the spirit is dead. At death, our very nature as human beings is ripped in half.
And death just tears them apart. And so this is what happens. Death is not just, so you think it’s a separation, but it’s more than that. It’s actually a scattering. Like it’s taking pieces that all are supposed to be united together. Us with God, us with each other, us as a unity. We’re all supposed to be together. And then death is just like, just tears it all up and just scatters the pieces in every direction. I remember, so I used to mention my dad, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. And I remember,
as it neared the end and you would see his scattered thoughts, his mind was just falling apart. It’s awful. It’s a horrible way to go. And I just remember, I remember looking at like the jumbled words and the loss of cognitive function and think that fragmenting, splintering, crumbling, that’s death. I’m looking at death and it’s awful. So that’s what death is. It’s separation from God, separation from each other, separation of the soul and body. So second question, then what happens when we die? So after that, where do the pieces go?
Well, in the Bible, you have to bring some different passages together to get a clear picture, but I’m going to try to offer an account of it. So I want to think about those two parts of the human person, the body and the soul. So in the passage we read, Psalm 16, so Peter quotes in Acts 2 that I read, he quotes Psalm 16, which we read earlier in the service. And this is what it says, you will not abandon my soul to Sheol or let your Holy One see corruption. So I think that passage,
gives us a normal account of what happened when a human being died before the resurrection of Jesus. So here’s what happened. When someone died in the Old Testament, any person, the soul went to Sheol, was abandoned to Sheol, and the body decayed or saw corruption. But Peter says, David, right, foresaw the resurrection of Christ. He was not abandoned to Sheol. His soul wasn’t. And his flesh, Peter says, did not see corruption.
At death, souls went to Sheol and bodies decayed in tombs, in graves. Now, that second half, the body decaying in a tomb, that makes sense to us. But what’s this whole thing about Sheol? What is that? Here’s what Sheol is. In the Old Testament, you see this word a lot in your Old Testament, Sheol is the place of the souls of the dead. And in the Old Testament, it’s the place both of the saints, like forgiven sinners,
like Jacob. Jacob says, I will go down to Sheol morning, and when he thinks Joseph is dead. So the saint Samuel, the prophet, is down in Sheol, we see, in 1 Samuel 28. But it’s also the place of the wicked. Psalm 31, 17 says, the wicked go down to Sheol. Now, in the New Testament, Sheol is just a Hebrew word. We just bring it over from Hebrew. We don’t even translate it. It’s just a place, like Scarsdale, just a place. So Sheol, in the New Testament, is translated as Hades. Hades.
You’ve probably heard of Hades, maybe from Greek mythology or something like that. And the picture in the Bible is actually similar in some ways to that Hades of Greek mythology. It’s under the earth. In Numbers chapter 16, the sons of Korah, when they rebel against Moses, are swallowed up. They go down into Sheol alive, is what the Bible says. They go down into Sheol alive and the ground covers them up. So it’s down, it’s under the earth. It’s like a city with gates. So King Hezekiah says,
It’s like a prison. It’s a land of darkness. It’s a land where the shades, the shadowy souls of men dwell in Isaiah 14 verse 9. We’re told it’s a land of forgetfulness where no work is done, where no wisdom exists. That’s Ecclesiastes 9.10. And it’s a place where no one praises God, interestingly. It’s in multiple passages.
That’s Isaiah 38.18. So that’s what Sheol is in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Jesus actually gives us a greater window into this. So in the parable, Luke 16.19-31, there’s this story that Jesus tells. And it’s a story about a selfish, greedy, rich guy who never took thought for others.
And he dies without seeking God’s forgiveness. And then there’s this poor man named Lazarus who is ignored by the rich man in life, but apparently was a worshiper of the true God and he sought mercy from God. And so here’s what Jesus said. They both died at the same time. The poor man died and he was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and he saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.
And he called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me. Send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue. I’m in anguish in this flame. But Abraham said, child, remember you in your lifetime received your good things and Lazarus bad things. But now he is comforted here and you are in anguish. And besides this, between us and you, there’s a great chasm that has been fixed in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able and none may cross from there to us. So here, get that picture?
The geography of it, okay? So the Hades, just like the Hades of Greek mythology, the biblical Hades, the biblical Sheol has two compartments. There’s Hades proper, that’s where the rich man is sent, and then Abraham’s side where the angels take Lazarus. That one side is a place of torment. Fire causes anguish to the souls imprisoned there. This is where sins are punished by those who have rebelled against God. But Abraham’s side, on the other hand, it’s within shouting distance
and there’s a big chasm separating it, but it’s a place of comfort and rest. So we don’t know much about it, but it begins to take shape, right? So all souls before Christ, all souls go down to Sheol or to Hades, but it’s divided into two compartments. Those who turned from their sins and believed God’s promises, they’re in comfort. And then those who clung to their sins and refused to repent, they’re in their side, okay? And they’re cut off from the land of the living. The souls, even the saints are cut off from land of living.
So they don’t have the worship of Yahweh. They can’t go to the temple like they used to on earth. But they’re not tormented there like the wicked. So that’s the picture. Now, here’s the question then, okay? Now, all of that background, here’s the question. Okay, what happened to Jesus, right? Where did Jesus go, okay? Well, Jesus in Luke 23, when he’s dying on the cross, one of his statements from the cross, remember the thief who turns from his sins? He says, remember me when you come into your kingdom, right?
And Jesus says to him, today you will be with me in paradise. Today you’ll be with me in paradise. And so some Christians believe that after death, Jesus, he went to heaven to be in the presence of the father with the thief. But Luke 23 doesn’t say that Jesus would be in the presence of God. It says he would be in the presence of the thief, right? Today you’ll be with me. We’ll be together. Where was he going to go? Well, he’s just repented of his sins. So where were the angels going to take him?
Answer, they were going to take him to where Abraham is, right? So this place that’s called paradise by Jesus is that place of comfort and rest for the forgiven souls of the dead. The thief’s going there and Jesus says, today we’re going to be there together. So on Good Friday, when Jesus died on the cross, he endured our first death, that separation from God. Okay, so remember the three separations. He was separated from God. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
The cross was Jesus saying, I am joining my people. I’m being separated from you on their behalf. And so he expresses the horror of that separation from a holy God because of sin. But that separation was completed before he died. That’s why a few minutes later, maybe hours later, he says, it is finished. Okay, so why have you forsaken me? He endures the wrath of God and then gets done and says, it’s finished. That part is over.
Death absorbed. Penalty paid. Sin done with. Then what happens? Jesus dies and his soul and his body, his human soul, yet a human soul, yet a human body, they’re separated and Jesus’ body goes into a tomb. Joseph of Arimathea goes into a tomb. Where does his soul go? His soul goes down to Hades, to the city of death. But he goes down there to rip the gate off its hinges. It’s a big jailbreak.
He’s getting everybody out. He liberates Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, John the Baptist, all the rest of the Old Testament faithful. They’ve been down there. And Jesus goes down in the Old Testament in the Psalms. You have this question, Psalm 49, Psalm 86, Psalm 89. Over and over again, there’s this question. Who can ransom me from the power of Sheol? Who can ransom me from the power of Sheol? And the answer then is nobody. Like there’s no way out. Like death’s coming.
Get ready for it. You’re going to Sheol. You’re going to Sheol. So they’re there in prison. It’s a place of comfort, but it’s still not where you want to be ultimately. And Jesus goes down and says, I can ransom people from the power of Sheol. I can do that. I can rip these. They had been waiting a long time, cut off from the land of the living. They hadn’t received what was promised. Jesus says, what you were hoping in, it’s go time. Come on, everybody. We’re getting out of here.
Jesus is raised and then he ascends to heaven. And we’re told in the New Testament that he takes the ransomed saints with him when he ascends. Their souls now go to heaven to be with God, which is why Paul later in 2 Corinthians, Paul says, I know a man who was caught up to paradise. And he says, it’s up. It’s in the heavens. Well, I said paradise was down. Well, now it’s up. Paradise is up. Why? Because Jesus emptied it. He just grabbed paradise where Abraham was.
And he says, well, I’m taking it with me and we’re going up there. And now, so this is what happens now. I’ve been describing what happened then, but now. Now, those who trust in Christ, when you die, you’re not carried by angels to Abraham’s side. You depart to be with Christ, which is better. That’s what Paul says. I desire to depart and be with Christ. That’s better. It’s better than it was in the Old Testament. It’s better than living in sin on earth.
Those who reject the mercy of Christ, where are they? They’re still in Hades in torment. And they wait there until the final judgment. The book of Revelation shows us this. It says that at the final judgment when Christ returns, Hades gives up the dead who are in it, and they’re judged according to their deeds. And then it says death and Hades are thrown into hell. Death and Hades are thrown into hell. How is death and Hades thrown into hell? Well, you don’t need them anymore. They were holding tanks, right? And now no reason to hold them.
Judgment time. And you have the permit, the lake of fire in the book of Revelation. So that’s the picture. So what does that mean for us? What does it mean? Okay, this is back to our first two questions, our first two statements. You remember? Way back when, 20 minutes ago. All men seek happiness. All men fear death. What does it mean for our fear of death, our desire for happiness? Well, the first thing is this. Peter recognizes that Jesus is like us, but he’s also different from us. So he’s like us because he endures death for us.
All of the separations, separation from God, separation from his mother and his friends, separation of soul from the body. So you have to think on Holy Saturday, Jesus, he’s God man. So as God, he’s in heaven filling everything. He’s still God. But then he has a human soul and a human body. His human body is in a tomb and his human soul is in Sheol. So he’s filling heavens and earth. He’s everywhere.
So what death scattered for Jesus, God gathered back up. What death scattered, God gathered. Christ was reunited in soul and body. Soul and body back together. He was reunited with his mother and his disciples. And ultimately, he ascends back to the Father forever to dwell with him. So what death had scattered, God gathered back up in raising Jesus.
And so, because of what Jesus has done, we don’t have to fear death. Like, it’s still an enemy. Paul’s clear. Death is an enemy. It’s still awful. But Jesus triumphed over sin and over death, and therefore he can deliver us from our deepest fear. You can stare death in the face, and you can know in your bones Jesus defeated you, and that in God’s world, faithful death always leads to resurrection. In God’s world.
Faithful death. You’re faithful in death, trusting Christ. God’s faithful to raise you. So when my dad, I was watching him die. I was like, this isn’t the end. This is awful. It’s horrible. Don’t wish it on anybody. But God’s going to put my dad back together. And he’s going to put us back together. And he’s going to put all of us back together. And the words won’t be jumbled. He’ll probably tell his old stupid jokes again. I hope.
I’ve tried to carry on that tradition as every father does of the stupid jokes. And we’re going to embrace and we’re going to rejoice. We’ll probably get to play catch. It’s going to be amazing. We’re going to laugh and the mountains will ring with it. It’s going to be very good. And that brings us to that second thing. All men seek happiness. Well, Psalm 16, which Peter quotes, it doesn’t just deliver us from the fear of death. It points us to full and lasting happiness. Did you hear it? You will make me full of gladness with your presence.
Your presence is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. So there it is. Full joy, everlasting pleasures. So that ache for happiness that every human being feels, that’s what it’s pointed at. The longing for joy that haunts you, that’s the answer to it. And Jesus says, this is a gift. You can just have it for free. All you have to do is ask. So Peter in the Psalm said, this is mainly about Jesus. So Jesus goes to the Father.
And the Father gives to his Son the joy of his presence. Well done, good and faithful servant. You’re my beloved Son. I’m pleased with you. You did it. You finished the mission. You showed him the way back. You are the way back. There’s no other name by which men can be saved from sin and death. Now here, Jesus, the Father says, here, have all of my joy. All of my joy. And then what Jesus does, as soon as he gets the joy, Jesus is like, I’m going to share this with everybody. And he pours it out on his people. This is why we love Easter.
Because on Easter Sunday, like we do every Sunday, we say to God, we receive it. We receive that gift. Christ is risen from the dead. He’s triumphed. He’s turned us from our sin. He’s delivered us from the fear of death in this life, the torment of Hades in the next life. And he’s invited us in. So now you have full and lasting joy at God’s right hand. And you have it in so many different ways. You have it in the forgiveness of your sins. You don’t have to live in guilt and shame. That’s great.
You have it in the fellowship of the saints, the family of God. You have it in the future when your bad back and poor eyesight and sore throat will not be an issue. God is going to do away with all of that with a resurrection body. With that great family reunion that the Lord is planning for us in the future, barbecue is going to be great. Be a party for the ages and it will never end. And then you have this new inheritance, the new creation, no pain or sorrow or death forever.
Let’s pray. Our Father in God, that’s true. It’s true every day. It’s especially true on Resurrection Sunday. We celebrate the resurrection of Christ because you deliver us from the fear of death and you give us everlasting joy. I pray that every one of us receives it and keeps it.
We ask for this. We ask for you to give us that gift in our hearts and we do so in the words that Jesus taught us to pray.