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A WILL WITH A FOREVER LOOPHOLE

There was a tough little story in the March 16, 2003 issue of the Los Angeles Times, just on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. Young men and women were shipping out, headed for possible conflict. And here’s just one painful slice of that front-page story:

“After packing their rucksacks and checking their gear and stowing their night vision goggles, war fighters have one last thing to do before shipping out. They have to decide who would get the mountain bike and who the boombox. They have to face a harsh possibility and come up with a distribution of their worldly goods that would leave their families with keepsakes and comfort if they don’t return.”

In other words, these soldiers – these KIDS, many of them still just in or barely out of high school – have to make wills. They have to get with a lawyer and draw up papers and get them signed and witnessed and notarized just in case an enemy bullet strikes them down or nerve gas snuffs out their life. At Camp Pendleton, where some 30,000 Marines were deployed, attorney Captain Beth Harvey came in and walked hundreds of soldiers through a standard six-page, “no-frills, California statutory will,” in one mass exercise. “Look at section Bravo,” she called out, using familiar military language. And line by line, marines and sailors and army grunts, many of whom barely shave, had to write down that so-and-so would get their CDs, someone else their PlayStation. Some soldiers tried to joke that, with the military’s lousy pay, they hardly had anything TO give away. But the jokes hid some shaky signatures, and there were many weeping brides in the room that day. Again, most of them are so young – and many from difficult economic backgrounds – they weren’t exactly disposing of vast estates and Wall Street portfolios and yachts and sets of Lenox china. A Sgt. Hernandez did have two cars: an ‘84 Cutlass and a ‘92 Ford Escort. Those would go to his wife. Times reporter Nora Zamichow concludes:

“Preparing the wills forces men and women, many in their early 20s and ready to fight, to confront the unspeakable. It is a chore that underscores the gravity of their mission. It means weighing lives, crystallizing emotions, evaluating relationships and asking: What will happen to my loved ones if I die?”

We’re right in the middle of a radio sermon series on the Second Coming of Jesus, and friend, I know how easy it must seem to you that I sit here in this air-conditioned, safe, protected studio and talk about other people dying. But the simple reality is that every single one of us faces death. I have. So have you. We all have a cemetery plot in our future. And unless the Bible is telling us the truth when it says that Jesus Christ is coming back in the clouds of heaven, then a cemetery plot is the last thing we face.

I try to think of young husbands and wives who fill out those legal forms and then face the possibility that their loved one could return home in a body bag . . . and have that be IT! The end. My heart aches with the very thought of it. Going back to that dark, poignant Friday right after 9/11, we all watched as Rev. Billy Graham stood there in Washington’s National Cathedral and gave us this promise from God’s Word:

“The Cross,” he reminded us, “tells us that there is hope for eternal life, for Christ has conquered evil . . . AND DEATH, and hell.”

And listen: the defeat of death is, and forever will be, linked to the Second Coming. Someone once observed that I Thessalonians 4 is read at almost all Christian funerals, and here is the pertinent passage for us to rejoice in together:

“For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” And then the classic line: “Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”

And the thing to hang onto, as world news just gets bloodier and more deadly, is this: friend, Jesus Christ has absolutely CONQUERED death. He’s beaten it.

A bit earlier in this I Thessalonians passage is one verse that confounds all of us who have studied and dissected the spiritual chronology regarding death, sleep, resurrection, the soul, “depart and be with Christ,” etc. I want to save the “debate” aspect of verse 14 for another radio program, so for now let me read it to you in the wonderful Message paraphrase, which bypasses that dilemma. Here’s how Eugene Peterson puts it:

“Since Jesus died and broke loose from the grave, God will most certainly bring back to life those who died in Jesus.”

And the beautiful point made by that verse is well expressed in the Tyndale New Testament Commentary for First Thessalonians, by Dr. Leon Morris. Here it is:
“Death has been transformed into sleep through Jesus.”

Isn’t that powerful? Because of the power of Jesus, He has simply changed death into sleep. That’s all it is. Sleep. It’s quiet; it’s restful; it’s temporary; it ends when the sun comes up in the morning, or when the Son of God shows up in the eastern sky. I’m sure many anxious mothers whose sons are even now over in the Persian Gulf remember childhood mornings when they would go into their little boy’s bedroom, where toy trucks and yesterday’s dirt-stained L.A. Lakers T shirt are lying all over the floor. And they would gently call their young son to the beauty of a new day. “Time to wake up, honey.” And . . . he would wake right up! Friend, the might and victory of Jesus over death means that He has personally, single-handedly, definitively, and permanently changed the impregnable wall of death into a quiet cloud, a thin veil, which He can so easily sweep aside. Dr. Morris completes his thought:

“For the natural man death is the antagonist that no one can defeat, but for the Christian it is completely without terrors. It is no more than sleep, and the transformation is brought about ‘through Jesus.’”

I hope you notice, as I have anew right here, how very central the person of Jesus is to all this. It’s the Second Coming OF Jesus. As we said last week, He comes personally, not some assigned substitute. And this victory over death is entirely His. We share in its mighty results, but the working of it is all His.

“The last enemy to be destroyed is death,” we’re promised in I Corinthians 15. Later Paul writes: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

I’ve been at many Christian funerals, and I’ve seen and experienced many tears. But the death at those sweet, solemn ceremonies had not one taint of defeat to them. There was no sting present on those occasions, because our wonderful Savior had already turned those deaths into a gentle sleep.
I’ve often thought about that marvelous healing story in Mark 9, where Jesus, moved with pity, began to walk to the house of a man named Jairus. His daughter was clinging to life by a thread, and he begged Jesus, in desperation, to come quick. But there were crowds around, and other people who needed healing, and traffic jams, and long traffic lights, and delays at each subway stop. And finally, some servants came and said to Jairus: “It’s over. Your child is dead. Don’t bother Jesus any more.”

And you know what? Most of the time, you’d just turn around right there. You don’t keep going; you don’t continue in the former direction; you don’t keep the sirens going. Because death is a steel curtain that cannot be penetrated. It’s the final two words at the conclusion of a movie: “THE END.” But for some amazing reason, Jesus just keeps on in the same direction. He doesn’t speed up, He doesn’t slow down, but best of all, He doesn’t turn around. Because Jesus has turned death into a sleep. And waking people up from any kind of sleep – for Jesus – is no problem at all, no matter what the EKG machine might be saying. Jesus has a Calvary machine that turns the world’s EKG machines into scrap metal.

And all of this, right now, today, can be mine and yours. I’m old enough now that I don’t have relatives in battle. But maybe you do. And we have all been to the hospital and we’ve all sat outside ICU while waiting for the curtain to fall. But listen: if you have Jesus, if He is yours today, then He changes death into a sleep. He makes “permanent” into “temporary.” A cemetery plot is just a brief stopover, a flicker, a nap before we resume a friendship that will last for celestial centuries. It says in II Timothy 1:9, 10:

“Grace . . . has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has DESTROYED death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

Wouldn’t you like to have immortality, to be safely beyond the reach of death forever? You can have it . . . through the gospel. Which means you can have it . . . through Jesus.