For he does not know what is to be, for who can tell him how it will be? No man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death. There is no discharge from war, nor will wickedness deliver those who are given to it. All this I observed while applying my heart to all that is done under the sun, when man had power over man to his hurt.
Then I saw the wicked buried. They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity. Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil. Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they fear before him. But it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow, because he does not fear before God. | Ecclesiastes 8:7–13
This Sunday, we finished the book of Daniel, which concluded with a description of the end. In it, it told us that the dead will rise: some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt (12.2). This brings up two issues that every human being must deal with: the certainty of death and what happens after death.
CERTAINTY OF DEATH
I should not need to argue that death comes for us all; I have science and history on my side for this one. We even have little quips that address this: nothing is certain except death and taxes. Yet, while many will agree, few have truly pondered the consequences of this reality. Carl Trueman wrote a great article last week on this called: Deaths delayed. In it he says:
We have clearly become accustomed to remarkably comfortable lives…. And I have often wondered about the significance of “saving lives.” “ Delaying deaths,” while culturally tasteless, is technically more accurate. We are born to die. Death is inevitable, which is why each of us finds it so terrifying.
We are not preventing death, but merely pushing the can down the road. I am all for this effort, but we need to be honest about the fact that there is a day coming where we cannot delay it any longer. As the author of Ecclesiastes reminds us, our impending death casts a shadow over this life. You can’t take your accumulated stuff with you and all you build up will eventually be entrusted to others. Maybe this is why we ignore, or demystify death so often, because to stare it directly in the face is more than we can bear.
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER DEATH
The only thing that can lighten death, is some concept of what may be on the other side. Late in his life, Steve Jobs made it clear that the idea of a life to come is the only hope. He said:
I like to think that something survives after you die. It’s strange to think that you accumulate all this experience, and maybe a little wisdom, and it just goes away. So I really want to believe that something survives, that maybe your consciousness endures. But on the other hand, perhaps it’s like an on-off switch. Click! And you’re gone.
Jobs, known for his overwhelming confidence, success, and well-designed technology (head of Apple), was facing the reality that you can’t take it with you. He proposes two different possibilities of what death holds; two realities that would have cause you to live very differently. I would like to think that something lives on, but maybe it’s just an on/off switch. These are not interchangeable realities.
Either, something survives or click and you’re gone. If death is the end, then this life is about cramming as much into you limited time as possible. It is Carpe Diem on steroids: the moment is all there is.
What the Bible does is promises us something on the other side of death. Not just something, but a very specific future: eternity in perfection with our glorious God. What this does to this life is transforms it into a time to prepare for eternity. We live to learn to trust God and to proclaim the excellencies of He who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2.9b). This doesn’t remove the shadow of death, but it reveals that there is something we can’t see, something beyond the cloud. Trueman describes it this way:
The church is certainly to help people to live, but to live in the shadow of mortality. She must set this earthly realm in the greater context of eternity. She is to prepare people through her preaching, her liturgy, her psalmody, and her sacraments to realize that death is, yes, a terrible, terrifying reality we must all some day face, but that the suffering of this world—or indeed, this passing superficial prosperity many of us enjoy—are but light and momentary ephemera compared to the eternal weight of glory that is to come.
We want to be sure of these promises; we want proof of the glory to come. The greatest proof that we have is what we celebrate this week. Jesus Christ faced death, a death that took on the punishment for human sin, and He died. Three days later, He walked out of the grave as a foreshadowing of what will happen at the end of time. Just as He got out of the grave, all people will awaken, as we saw in Daniel 12: some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. The difference between these two future paths lies in how you view Jesus. The Bible tells us that Jesus is God in the flesh. Philippians 2.6–11 tells us that He took on this flesh in order to rescue His people, saying:
who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Jesus has taken away the sting of death for His people. He has promised that the salvation that He accomplished at the cross, and the victory over death we see in the resurrection, will be fully applied to His people as they are raised to new life to live eternally with Him. The only thing that we need to do is trust and believe in His promises.
Easter is the reminder that death has already been conquered. Death has lost its sting!