The Elephant In The Room

Thank you so much, worship team.

Thank you, Congregation, for some great singing this morning.

Thank you, Jesus, that we have something to sing about, for which we are filled with uh with worship uh and with praise.

Today is Sunday, the 11th of September, 2016.

Fifteen years after September 11, 2001.

On that day, God was still on the throne.

He had been every day before that since the beginning of time.

He was that day and he has been ever since, and he evermore shall be.

Our God is still on the throne.

We keep saying that because it's true.

We keep saying that because it gives us perspective when we deal with life.

On that Tuesday, 15 years ago, there were four coordinated terrorist attacks on this country.

There were two airplanes that intentionally crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

There was another airplane that intentionally crashed into the Pentagon.

There was another airplane that was intending to go either to the White House or the Capitol building, but because of the courageous actions of some of the passengers for which it cost them their lives, that plane crashed in Pennsylvania.

There were almost 3,000 people killed that morning in New York City and in Pennsylvania.

There were over 6,000 people wounded.

And as a nation, we began to realize in a new way that an era of indiscriminate terror was upon us.

We live in a time of tribulation, a time of darkness, a time of trial.

The reality is we always have.

We had been insulated from that in significant ways, and yet it's always been the case.

That Tuesday morning, in those days, I was pastoring a church, an international church in Germany, and on the following Sunday morning, the 16th of September, I had already been pastoring that church for a couple of years, and I had already developed the habit of beginning each service by saying, today is, and in that day it was today is Sunday, the 16th of September 2001.

And before I could complete the sentence, the congregation spontaneously responded in unison, and God is still on the throne.

You see, that is a central fact that we cherish and we need and we love and we worship God for who He is.

He is sovereign, He is in control.

He always has been, and He always shall be.

I'd like to ask you to join me in a time of prayer.

Heavenly Father, we live in a dark and dangerous and insecure world.

We always have.

And until that day in which you return or take us home, we always shall live in an insecure, dangerous world.

But you said, be of good cheer, in the world you will have tribulation, but I have overcome the world.

Have courage, take hope.

And Lord, we place our hope and we find our strength in you.

We look to you, the God who is on the throne, for the trials and difficulties and deep moments of pain and sometimes despair in our own personal lives.

We turn to you.

We turn to you, Father, when we think of a world that seems out of control.

When we think of nation upon nation, when we think of all of the difficulties.

Father, we thank you.

We thank you, and we ask that we could see you as you are, high and lifted up, that we could see you in your goodness and your glory and your sovereignty and your grace and your trustworthiness.

Father, we want to pray for our nation.

I thank you, Father, that you rule and you reign, you raise up leaders, you set leaders aside.

I thank you that you are in control of the details of our lives.

But Father, I thank you for those who defend this country, who often at great personal cost sacrifice themselves, be it military or firefighters or security guards or law enforcements.

And there's nothing simple about all of this, but we thank you for that and we pray for them.

But beyond them, we thank you for who you are.

We will soon go to a ballot box and make important decisions.

And we pray that you would help us to know personally how we should approach that.

We pray for our leaders, we pray for our president, we pray for the members of Congress, we pray for local government.

You are involved with them, even when we cannot see it.

You raise up kings and put them on thrones, you bring down kings and you take them from their thrones.

But you, O Lord, are ever and always on the throne that counts, and we turn to you, and we trust you.

Thank you for being trustworthy.

Have your way with us, and as we deal with for several weeks with a subject that on the one hand is difficult, on the other hand, you have been so clear about this subject of life and death and life after death.

May we trust you, may you expand the thinking process, may you allow us to get our minds around your word and who you are and see this life in a different perspective as we see it as it is and as we look forward to that which shall come.

If that happens, that's because you've helped us.

And so we ask you, Father, help us, I pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, as you uh as you know, if you've been around, um, we are going to spend several weeks talking about a subject of life, death, and life after death.

This is encouraging stuff, folks.

This is not sad, this is not somber, this is not gruesome, this is not a downer.

This is part of what we need to be able to live.

We cannot live this life in the way that God intends, unless we place it in a far broader context and see this life not only as the moment, but we see it as part of the life to come.

And what happens in this life has great significance.

And what is to come is intended to encourage us, challenge us, and cause us to depend upon Him.

So I'm just gonna take a few weeks.

Let me uh kind of give you an overview.

Um the Bible has an amazing amount of information about life, death, and the life to come.

Sometimes we think that the Bible doesn't really say very much about heaven, for example.

That's absurd.

That's absurd.

We just don't often have ears to really hear it and understand it.

Death, the nature of death, what happens after death, there are hundreds and thousands of verses that touch on this subject that touches every single one of us in this room, because the death rate, by the way, in case you don't know it, happens to be a hundred percent.

You will die.

And we ought to get used to that idea.

We ought to understand the nature of life and death and life to come.

So I'm gonna do my best uh over the next several weeks.

Uh this morning we're gonna look at the elephant in the room.

The elephant in the room is um the brevity of life and the proximity of death.

And actually, it's an incredibly encouraging and important thought.

Uh we will then uh continue this next week, and we'll look specifically at what death is.

Uh you look up the word death, and uh in a dictionary it means to not be alive.

Duh.

That doesn't help me very much, but what God says about death helps me a great deal.

Uh and life after death.

Then we're going to take a panoramic view of what happens in the period of time between when you die, and please get used to saying that, when I die.

In fact, we're going to learn to conjugate the verb to die.

I die, you die, he, she, and it dies, we die, you die, they die.

Why are we afraid to say that?

Because we don't like the elephant in the room.

We'll keep going.

But between the time that you die and eternity, the eternal state, there are an amazing amount of things that are going to happen that we will be involved in that we need to know about.

And the Bible says, actually, not just a little bit about that, but a great deal about that.

We're going to talk about up from the grave, resurrection.

Resurrection ought not to just be spoken about on Easter Sunday.

Resurrection, the reality of the resurrection is a sure and certain reality, a hope that's not yet here for us, but it's not a hope-so, but a no-so.

And the more we understand about resurrection, the more we will long for that which is to come.

You see, we're so focused on the here and now.

We think this is all that there is.

Or we live that way, we act that way.

How utterly foolish.

The truth of what is to come, the resurrection and all of the other things, is designed to give us the right perspective to know how to live in the here and now in light of the there and then.

And we're going to be talking about those kinds of things.

We're going to look at the body you've always wanted, the body you would die for.

In fact, you can only die to get the body you've only always wanted.

The Bible says, what's about the resurrection body?

We go on and we assume that the Bible doesn't say much about all of this stuff.

That's because our eyes are so focused and relating to things here and now and avoiding the elephant in the room.

And if we could only let God speak to us, we would find that we are drawn towards that which is to come.

We are weaned away from this life for the life to come.

And if we're not seeing that that's part of what God is doing when my arms don't work quite the way they should, and my body sags in all of the wrong places, and I get sick and I grow old and I eventually die.

God's good purposes in that is to wean us away from this life and to grow us up for heaven.

The body you will die for.

Then we're going to talk about eternity, forever and ever.

I'm tempted to just start in on that, but I have a few other things I want to talk about first.

And then we'll wrap it up by talking about judgment.

How could we talk about life, death, and life after death and ignore the reality of judgment?

Talk about ignoring the elephant in the room, denying it as a society, not wanting to think about it as individuals.

So that's where we're going.

We'll spend six, seven, eight weeks, depends on uh how much my clock here chases me.

Um and um and in the process, all I really want to do is I want to expand your thinking.

I want to get you to try to expand so you're wrapping your minds and your hearts around themes, topics, subjects that God has spoken clearly about.

He has spoken, he is not silent, and he has not stuttered.

And let us incorporate this because it's revealed that we might live, live now and live forever.

Okay?

So that's that's where we're going.

Um I want to take just a couple of minutes because I'm starting a topical series of messages.

And uh this is a bit of a hot topic, understandably, uh, in our setting, because we focus on expository preaching and teaching.

And it would be very understandable to misunderstand what that is.

And I just want to I just want to try uh to put this in perspective.

I have a strong personal and principal preference to simply take a portion of scripture and to work our way through it, verse by verse, section by section.

That is an intentional, that I do that on purpose for some very good reasons.

But there is also a time and a place to gather from various places throughout the scriptures what God says about various topics and to bring them together and to sit under the authority of God's word through a topical rather than a verse-by-verse approach.

What I want to say is expository preaching should not be identified with a particular method of verse by verse or some other way.

Let me just say what I understand expository preaching, and for some of you, this is like, what in the world is he droning on about this for?

For others, this is a pretty important thing for us to talk about.

The reality is my job as a preacher, as a teacher, as I stand before you and I say, in effect, although I never say thus saith the Lord, because what I am saying is not the thus saith the Lord, it's what God has said.

But here's what the goal is.

The word expository has to do with exposing, expository, bringing to light not what Walt has to say, but what God has already said.

The intention is to closely tie what the person who stands here says and does with God's word, so closely that you will see that this is our authority, and this is what God says.

Not me, and not just my words.

We expose, we bring to light what is in the scriptures, and then we seek to help one another apply it to life.

You can do that in a variety of ways.

Two of the most common, and for me, the one of intentional preference, and also for our church, the method of intentional preference.

The bread and butter of what we do is to take a section of scripture and just walk our way through it.

Another is to gather from various places in scripture, bring it together, and communicate that.

Now, why do I have a strong preference for one as opposed to the other?

Well, the fact of the matter is God knew what he was doing when he revealed himself in Scripture.

He did not reveal himself in topical approaches normally.

He normally, well, let's think of it this way.

We want to get to know, change this, uh, an illustration here, change the focus.

We want to get to know the world of nature around us.

God's creation, after all.

We want to get to know nature.

How do we get to know the world around us?

Well, for me, certainly the most enjoyable way is to go for a walk.

I prefer a walk in the woods.

I prefer a walk on trails, and for me personally, the more up and down they are, and I don't mean the green way, by the way.

That just speaks to my soul.

But what happens when you get to know nature by walking around?

You come across things in their natural habitat.

You you see trees, and you see birds, and you see streams, you see animal tracks, you see other things that animals have left behind.

Uh, you come across, and and and it all fits together.

There's a context.

And you can understand trees best when you see them in the context of the soil and the earth and the sun and the stars and the birds and the butterflies and all of that.

And that's the way God has revealed Himself.

And so we take a cue from that.

We want to just walk through the scriptures and let the subjects that uh come to the fore come to the fore.

What I at times in the past uh tried to do, I quickly learned not to do it, was to sit on a Monday morning, or for me Tuesday, Tuesday is my Monday, um, to sit and ponder.

Okay, what do they need to hear now?

Huh, I wonder.

And then Betty and Fred come to my mind.

I don't think there's any Betty or Freds here, so I hope I'm safe.

Betty and Fred, oh yeah, boy, am I aware they got a problem.

They've got an attitude.

They have a problem with this or a problem with that.

I guess I better scurry around and come up with something to help Betty and Fred.

And when I do it that way, invariably, Betty and Fred aren't there that Sunday.

And then I begin to realize maybe the problem is not so much Betty and Fred.

Maybe it's the problem that I've got a problem with Betty and Fred.

Okay?

But what I find is when we just open up the scriptures and take it as it comes, as we did with James, many different subjects.

I was astounded how often that particular subject, just happened to be the next passage, was precisely what we needed.

Precisely what we needed.

And because we believe the word of God is what it is, it's living, it's active, it's sharper than a two-edged sword, it pierces to the innermost being, it reproves, it corrects, it teaches us, it instructs us in righteousness.

When we simply turn the word loose, even when I don't see what God is doing in Betty and Fred's life, I am astounded how God works through his word.

And so for me, the danger would be great to pick and choose, and parenthetically, with a topical approach, that is a very real danger.

Pick and choose, you know, a good, bad Bible teacher can prove anything.

With the scriptures.

You can make a case for anything if you take verses from here and there, take them out of their context, verses that may have no correlation actually with one another, but they sound like they might plausibly be able to be strung together in an effective way with a poem and a prayer, and you can prove any point you want.

Now, you can twist a passage, but it's much harder when you're just taking the next thing that comes.

So it's a protection for the sinful preacher, and it's a blessing for the congregation, and that's the way God has revealed Himself.

He has given us in a natural context.

This is not the other thing besides going just out for a walk would be to go to the Natural History Museum.

I have pictures in my mind of the African Museum in Tervuren on the outskirts of Brussels, where we live for many years.

African Museum.

I'd walk in there, and I have a distinct memory of two huge rooms filled with cases of butterflies.

Just those were the butterfly rooms.

There were hundreds and thousands of butterflies on display there.

Butterflies from all over the world, especially the Belgian Congo, had been brought together.

And I don't just mean in cases, I mean in cases, cases that had maybe ten drawers in them.

You'd pull them out and they're under glass, and case after case after case.

And I'm sure you can learn some things about butterflies by looking at the totality of them all brought together.

But that's not the way butterflies exist in real life.

So we're going to be walking into a room for the next few weeks that has a great deal to say to us, not about butterflies, but life, death, and life after death.

And you can appropriately draw from scripture, not from an artificial bringing together of verses that aren't really connected together, and find that sometimes God has revealed Himself in the course of the 66 books of the Bible, the 1,189 chapters, there's things that's scattered throughout there.

The 31,103 verses of the Bible, they're not always brought together, but there's a time and a place to bring those kinds of things together.

And you can do that in a way in which we sit under the teaching of God's Word where the authority is not in the preacher, but the authority is in the Word of God, and we can learn things that we desperately need to learn.

So I will never go through that discussion again publicly, but it's a pertinent and important thing for us to say in our setting.

Our bread and butter is verse by verse.

That's who I am, that's the bread and butter of this church.

That does not mean there's not another way to do expository teaching with scripture.

So the elephant in the room.

Death.

The brevity of life and the proximity of death.

An elephant in the room.

You're familiar with that expression, I trust.

I'm not sure where it came from, but I think you know what it's like.

Sometimes there's things we just avoid talking about.

Death, dying, the life after death, we avoid talking about.

It's as though we're we're going over to somebody's house and you walk in and they say, Here, have a seat, and can I get you a cup of coffee and maybe a piece of apple pie or something like that?

And you talk about whatever.

And yet, over there, there is a 16,000-pound elephant in the living room, and nobody's even acknowledging it.

I die, you die, he, she, and it dies, we die, you die, they die, but we don't talk about it.

We're not comfortable with it.

We go, perhaps, and we visit someone who is on their deathbed, and we don't quite know what to say.

We maybe don't go because we feel uncomfortable with that?

Or if we go, we would be very hesitant to say, how are you doing with the fact that you're dying?

Can you imagine that?

What do you think the person who knows they're dying is thinking about?

How loving and kind is it to pretend that that's not a reality?

Death is not a surprise.

Death is not something that is inappropriate to talk about.

I find that families with young children sometimes hesitate to take their kids to a funeral, as though being exposed to the reality of death is somehow harmful for them.

There was a time in our society, 75 years ago, almost everybody died at home.

Almost everybody died at home.

Death was something that took place in the context of daily life.

And children, children were exposed to the reality of it, and it doesn't have to be in a gruesome, uh oppressive kind of a way.

It is just the it is it is the most natural thing for any living creature is to die.

So why are we so uncomfortable about it?

Well, we don't have a problem.

In fact, we have a fascination with death, actually, in our society.

What would primetime television be like?

How could you how could 13 years of NCIS ever go on without deaths and corpses?

We went to uh the theater a couple weeks ago or a month ago and we saw a movie, actually an excellent movie, but all of the previews, um they were they they focused on uh physical um terror, death, and that was the come-on to see that movie.

I turned to Jane and said, I haven't seen a single one that I want to go see.

But see, as a culture, we have a real interest in death as long as it's out there, as long as it's not my death, or my wife's death, or our kids' death, or my parents' death.

And what I want to suggest um is that this doesn't help us.

The elephant in the room does not help us.

Um although it might be uncomfortable at first to talk about death, we need to do that.

I I was out for lunch uh a few weeks ago, was in a local restaurant for lunch.

The person can't remember who it was that I was having lunch with wasn't there, and I couldn't help overhearing the conversation of a couple at the table right behind me.

And I don't know if they had just come from the doctor's office or in the recent days, but they clearly were out having lunch, and and they didn't know how to talk about the thing that was on their heart.

You just you just felt their pain.

They didn't know, they didn't have words to.

They've lived together their whole lives, they've loved one another, and now one of them is about to die, and we can't even, we don't have the ability to talk about it.

It just makes us too uncomfortable.

And I get that there's a right and a wrong way of doing it, but not dealing with the reality is utterly foolish.

God is not silent about that which is 100% certain.

And when he speaks, he speaks in a way that actually encourages us, gives us perspective, and helps us see this life in light of the life to come.

Um I've already said, um I wouldn't challenge you actually.

Um maybe just in the quietness of your shower, just conjugate the verb death.

It'll help you because you are going to die.

You're gonna die.

And the good news is there is life after death.

The good news is this is not the greatest reality now.

This is but a shadow, a foretaste, a mere echo of a melody that we've not yet fully heard, the aroma of a flower that we've not really ever experienced.

The greatest reality, the truest reality, the most satisfying reality is not now, not in this life, but in the life to come.

That's the way the Bible portrays it.

Better by far.

We just need to begin to wrestle with that and understand it.

Um, the story is told, you may have heard this, but it's worth repeating, of two men.

Philip of Macedon, um, the father of Alexander the Great, a Greek leader about 400 years before Christ, compared with Louis XIV of France.

Uh, King Philip of Macedon had a servant, probably a slave, whose job was to appear before him by order of Philip himself, to appear before him, to look Philip in the eyes and say, You will die.

Philip, who could have done anything, could have commanded anything, commanded someone to come to him and look him in the face and remind him of the brevity of life and the proximity of death.

Louis XIV forbade the word death in his presence.

It would be, I don't know if it was a capital offense, but whoever said death in his presence would sure get in trouble.

As though just ignoring the elephant in the room uh accomplishes anything.

Who do you suppose is wiser or was wiser?

Philip of Macedon or Louis XIV?

The Bible makes it clear that it was Philip of Macedon.

Let me uh have you turn for a moment to Psalm 90.

This is one of many places we could turn to, but the whole context of verses 10 and 12, which is what I want us to look at, is seeing God from everlasting to everlasting.

Moses is reflecting on God, who God has been in the past, and how that satisfies him and stretches out to the future.

And in that context, the context is who God is in time and eternity.

Verse 10, Moses said, the years of our lives are 70, or if by reason of strength 80, or if by the blessings of modern science, I'm not sure it's always a blessing to live to 105 just because that can be accomplished.

The quality of life, is that really necessarily good?

Maybe, may not be.

But if we translated this for ourselves, in our context, the years of our life are 70, or if by reason of strength, 90, or maybe 100, yet their span, the course, is but toil and trouble.

See, that's reality.

You, your life and mine, we have moments of great joy and moments of victory.

And yet this is a sad and sorry and broken world.

And I am not who I want to be, I am not who I am intended to be, I am not who I will be.

I'm in the process of getting from here to there, and the focus of the scriptures is on living in the here and now in light of the there and then.

And so he says, um, their span is but toil and trouble.

And listen, and soon they are gone, the days of our lives.

Soon they are gone, and we fly away.

Fly away, bye-bye, fly away.

Now this is not gruesome, this is not, this is sobering perhaps, but it's reality.

It comes quickly and it goes even more quickly, and the longer it goes, the more quickly it seems to go.

And then he says in verse 12, so teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Understanding the limited number of our days, paying attention to the fact that our life is not forever in this world, helps engender, helps stimulate, helps build into us a heart of wisdom, of wisdom.

That's why I want to say you will not know how to live well unless you know how to deal well with the brevity of life and the proximity of death.

You will not know how to deal appropriately with life now if you don't ever deal with the reality, the elephants, that the years of our lives are limited and they fly away, and we gain wisdom as we see this life in the context of life to come and life eternal.

Ecclesiastes 7 verse 2.

Ecclesiastes 7:2

Um let me uh turn to that.

This is a verse that you won't like.

There's lots of verses you probably don't like in the Bible.

Oh well, get used to it.

Because God knows what we need, and he gives us what we need, not just what we want.

And one of the things that he says, Ecclesiastes 7, 2, it is better, listen, it is better to go to a house of mourning, M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G, not mourning like first part of the day.

It's better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting.

If we were to translate that into our setting, it's better to go to a funeral than it is to go to a party.

That's actually what he's saying.

And he says, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.

The living will incorporate in his understanding that that is the end of this phase of life.

And it's better to deal with the reality of the proximity of death and the reality of our passing than it is to just go and have fun somewhere.

Now, this is not saying parties are wrong and don't have any enjoyment.

But if all we do is divert ourselves, just have fun, diversion, entertain ourselves, veg in front of the television, or go to a party and you have no idea what is said the next day or anything, and if all we're doing is shutting away the reality of the funeral, it's better to go to a house of mourning than it is to a festival.

It helps us live right and understand the realities of life.

The wise person contemplates the nature of life after death while the fool insists on ignoring the elephant.

Are we wise or are we foolish?

We may be uneasy with all of this.

God is not.

And what God says, he says very clearly.

Job asks the right question.

Job chapter 14, verse 14.

Job 14:14

He says, uh, if a man dies, will he live again?

See, that's a funeral question, not a party question.

If he dies, will he live again?

Is there really life after death?

No.

We're gonna spend the next six or seven weeks talking about this.

Um I want to simply say is that when we look into the scriptures, the answer is unequivocally yes, with a thousand exclamation points.

All men live forever somewhere.

We will see this.

This ought to be part of our thinking.

All men live forever somewhere.

All women live forever somewhere, all children live forever somewhere, all of our associates at work live forever somewhere.

All of our neighbors.

And if we would get an understanding of the significance of that, it would change the way we look at ourselves and the way we look at other people.

That person who is so difficult, that person who you can barely tolerate, is going to live forever somewhere.

We'll pick up this theme and work with it much further.

Uh, but the reality is all men live forever somewhere.

We'll look at these verses.

Jesus, speaking to Martha at Lazarus' grave, asks a slightly different funeral question.

Everyone who believes in me shall never die.

Do you believe this?

Now, what does that mean?

We have to unpack it.

What does it mean to die?

What does it mean to live?

But Jesus asks an appointed question to one of his followers.

Everyone who believes in me shall never die.

Do you believe this?

And that question we have to wrestle with.

We're going to spend weeks wrestling with that question.

What does it mean?

How does that impact us?

If we really believe in life after death, how does that affect us now?

How does that affect how you live?

How does that affect the activities of your life, the priorities of life, the way you spend your time?

How does it affect the way you deal with your body falling apart, with suffering, with getting a doctor's report that is the last doctor's report you wanted to get?

How does it deal with the fact that we grow old, we die, accidents happen, illnesses come?

How do we deal with that?

We can only deal with that in the broader context of life, death, and the life to come.

How does this life function in light of life to come?

When we have desires that are not fulfilled?

When we have longings that we're keenly aware of, and yet they don't find their fulfillment?

What does that mean?

How do we deal with that?

We'll be talking about that because in effect all of those groanings point us forward to that which is to come.

Paul said in Romans 8, the suffering of this present world is not worthy to be compared to the glory that is about to be revealed.

We groan, we and all creation are subjected to futility.

We die, things fall apart.

Second law of thermodynamics, entropy, things fall apart.

You, me, the world around us.

And he says, we groan and we wait with eager anticipation for the full revelation of the sons of God.

C.S.

Lewis has talked about hearing a tune or being aware of a tune that we've not yet really heard.

The aroma of a flower that we've never seen.

We begin to get in touch with that which is to come through the groanings and the needs and the pains that we have in this life.

Well, I've done enough damage here, right now.

I would urge you, I would urge you to not push away the elephant in the room.

I would urge you to open yourself up to what God has to say about it.

I would urge you to wrap your minds around a view of the world and a view of life and of death, a view of the future, a view of the present in light of the future that is better by far.

Better by far.

I do not look forward to the process of dying.

But I deeply desire that which death brings.

It is better by far.

And if all we do is live for the here and now, we can't possibly live the life that God wants us to live.

So I hope you have the courage to come back next week and the week after, and don't chase me out of town.

Let me ask you to stand for the benediction.

The benediction, kind of like our marching orders.

Things to think about as we leave.

And so, my friends, go into the world in peace.

Yes, peace.

Go into the world in peace.

Have courage.

Hold on to that which is good.

Honor all men, all of whom will live somewhere forever.

Support the weak, strengthen the faint hearted, help the suffering, restore the wandering, comfort the grieving, share the gospel.

And may the grace and the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us all.

God bless, my friends.

God bless.