God of the Living 1980

If our Lord delays His coming a bit longer, there will come a moment in each of our lives when the slender cord which continues to attach us to this realm of flesh and blood will snap, and we will say with absolute certainty to ourselves, now I'm going to die. For some, it will be a moment of great peace, and for some, it will seem like an eternity of terror. It will be terror if all our treasure and everything we hold dear is on this side of the grave, and we have to let go of it and move into a yawning emptiness.

It will be peace if we really have nothing to let go of, and we find that our treasure waits for us over there. Hebrews 11. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life.

Others suffered mocking and scourging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with a sword, they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering over deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. How could they live this way? They could live this way because they knew that something better was waiting for them over there.

They had overcome the fear of death because they had come to know the God of the living. Mark 12. And Sadducees came to him, who say there is no resurrection.

And they asked him a question, saying, Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife but leaves no children, the man must take the wife and raise up children for his brother. There were seven brothers. The first took a wife, then he died and left no children.

The second took her and died, leaving no children. The third, likewise. And seven left no children.

Last of all, the woman also died. In the resurrection, whose wife will she be? For seven had her as wife. Jesus said to them, Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. He is not God of the dead, but of the living. At least the Sadducees were consistent.

They said there was no resurrection, and they lived that way. We claim to believe in a resurrection, but we live as if this life were all there is. We talk about the coming kingdom of God, and yet we reveal how shallow our faith is by the way we clutch the things of this life.

Now the treasure we are laying up for ourselves may not even be material. We may, in the material realm, live like Spartans, sleeping on boards, eating nothing but health food. See, but we may at the same time be collecting our dividends and depositing them in the bank of ego satisfaction, or the body beautiful, or some other trip.

When a life is so arranged that our goal is on this side of the grave, then no matter how we may mount the doctrines of the Lordship of Christ and quote the Bible to everybody, we are not living by faith. We are living as Sadducees. What happens when we, no matter what kind of religion we profess, try to get all the gusto we can on this side of death? Then death becomes our God very quickly, and it becomes a tyrannical God, a God that floods us with fear of dying.

Jesus came to set us free from the fear of dying. Died, rose, in order to break that curse. Since, therefore, the children share in flesh and blood, he himself, likewise, partook of the same nature, that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who, through fear of death, were subject to lifelong bondage.

Now, if Jesus, by his death, destroyed the power of the fear of death over our lives so that we're no longer supposed to be in bondage to that fear, how come most of us, most of the time, still live in that fear? How come we're so nervous about getting it all in before the bell rings? Worrying that death might come for us before we accomplish some great thing. Thinking in our minds of those who have died already as being really dead. Wiped out of existence.

What a tragedy. And she was so young, Exodus 3. Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. And he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. And he looked, and lo, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.

When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. He said, Do not come near. Put off your shoes from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.

And he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. He was not the God of three dead men who no longer exist.

He is the God of these three men who still live in him. The God of worlds beyond our comprehension who comes and now speaks to Moses from the beyond. Now when Elijah and Moses much later appeared with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, this was a window on a reality for Peter, James, and John which they had never even dreamed of.

Hundreds of years had passed since these two men, Moses and Elijah, had been seen on this earth. But here they are, still alive. Jesus gives us the parable, and he would never distort reality with any parable, of the rich man and Lazarus.

The rich man dies, Lazarus dies. Lazarus is carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom in paradise. The rich man sinks to Hades, the region of the dead.

They are not corpses on the other side. They are alive to God, for better or for worse. And the long list of people, of faith, that we are given in Hebrews chapter 11 is a catalog of men and women who had their eye on the world beyond death.

All these died in faith, not having received what was promised on this side of the grave, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, looking across, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles in the earth, knowing that the earth, they're not going to get it, it's over there, they're waiting for it. We need, of course, to have faith that God will answer prayer. Continuously, we need to have faith that God will provide, that God heals, that God will raise up labors for the harvest, that God will redeem the lost, all these things.

But none of these aspects of faith will amount to anything in our lives, in our real living, if we do not also have a faith that believes that God is waiting for us on the other side of the valley of the shadow. A faith which defies the fear of death and keeps throwing that fear of death away until the fear of death is removed entirely from our lives. To have faith is to know God as the God of the living.

As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob still live in him. The rich man still lives to him.

Lazarus still lives to him. Loved ones of ours who have already died live to him. And the life you and I will live to him on the other side of death is not disconnected from the life we're now living, but that life is the fruit of the life we now live.

For instance, the rich man showed no mercy here, so he found no mercy there. Lazarus found no mercy here, so he received mercy there. The thief on the cross cried for mercy here, got it there.

Those who are faithful to God here will be acknowledged there. And those who are faithless to God in their living, regardless of what they mouth here, will be denied there. This is all what Jesus teaches.

Those who confess Jesus with their lives here will be acknowledged there. Those who deny Jesus with their lives, even if they cast out devils and do many mighty works in Jesus' name, will be denied there. Depart from me, I never knew you.

To walk by faith is to walk with an ever-growing vision of the life that waits on the other side. And that vision of the life that waits for us beyond death will increase when we quit laying up treasures of any kind here and start laying up treasures there. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust consume, where thieves break in and steal.

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Sell your possessions and give alms. Provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and scourging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with a sword.

They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, of whom this world was not worthy, wandering over deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. The more our hearts are taken up with God and with Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, and with his will of mercy, the less we will find it necessary to hoard things or to try to build up our egos. What need is there to hoard or to shine when we can walk with the living God through this world and when we know that the only treasure which will follow us through the door of death is mercy, and mercy that is performed before the eye of God and as much as possible away from the eye of man.

Every time you do it for the eye of man, you've already collected your reward. Don't forget, don't expect one over there. To walk by faith is following the footsteps of Jesus to defy the fear of death and head straight for a cross.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, all who did that, who defied death, let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, particularly the fear of death, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, and the goal of that race is a cross, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. And we see this in all the Gospels, that the goal was the cross, all the way from his temptation right on through. Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, not to take over the place, not to win laurels, not to get a trophy.

The trophy will come in heaven, but we go up to Jerusalem to die. In Gethsemane, Father, if there's some way this cup can be taken, nevertheless not my will, but thine be done, he gets up from his knees and straight for the cross. So you and I deny ourselves, take up our cross daily and follow him in the same way.

Instead of veering to the left and to the right and pretending that there is no such thing as death, covering it with flowers, reading poetry. I'm not knocking poetry, but I'm knocking anything that covers over the reality of death. Instead of that, we aim our lives directly to death, not in some kind of suicidal despair, but in the burning confidence that beyond the final cross, which is death, the Father waits.

As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not God of the dead, but of the living. In the relatively near future, most of us, I'm sure, can already feel in our bones that we are going to see with these eyes, not on our television sets, but with these eyes, more death than most of us here at least.

Some of us here have seen plenty of it already, but that most of us have ever thought we'd see. May God grant us to walk by faith, following Jesus, even in the shadow of our own cross, rejoicing in his cross and in our own, absolutely confident in the light which he has prepared for us on the other side. Let's take some time in prayer.