A Different Take on Easter // Merchants of Hope, Part 3

As we start to think about Easter this week on the program, we’re going to take a bit of a different tack. It’s a time when we don’t just look back on what Jesus did, but when we also look forward to what Jesus purchased for us in this amazing transaction of grace, that we call … Easter.

Reunited with Jesus

Hope is one of the most important things to our wellbeing that there is. It’s a feeling or an expectation or a desire for good things to happen in our futures. You know when you sit there, and you daydream about this or that, it’s always about good things, isn’t it? It’s as though you’re creating a photo-album in your mind of the good things that you want to happen to you in the future. Worry and fear is pretty much the same, but that photo-album is full of dark and negative images. When we lose hope in the future, we often lose the will to go on. That’s why hope for tomorrow is such an important part of who we are.

It’s really interesting. The word hope appears around 133 times throughout the Bible, but it’s meaning is a little different to what we’re used to today. See, when we talk about hope, when we hope for something, it has that sense of uncertainty about it generally. ‘I hope I’ll get a promotion at work. I hope the scans didn’t detect cancer. I hope that my kids will grow up to lead healthy, productive, successful lives.’

When something is certain, like you know that you’re going on a 2-week holiday starting next Thursday, we look forward to that with anticipation, but when something is uncertain, then we hope that it’ll happen, but the Biblical word for hope doesn’t make any room for uncertainty. The moment you read hope in the Bible, it’s an indication of absolute certainty. As the article on Bible.org says, ‘The word hope in Scripture means a strong, confident expectation’. So you see, there’s a profound difference between the way that we use that word hope today, and the way it’s used in God’s Word. And if we transpose our meaning onto that word hope in Scripture, then we completely miss the point. Take this passage, for instance. Romans 8:24-25:

For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he can see? But if we hope for that we do not see, we wait for it in patience.

Now if you read those words using our modern-day understanding of the meaning of that word hope, it’s not a very helpful passage at all. Let me give you the contemporary version: "For in uncertain hope you were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he hasn’t seen? But if we have a wishy-washy, uncertain hope for what we don’t see, then we’ll wait for it with patience". Now, not only isn’t it helpful, but it just doesn’t make sense because if we wait with a wishy-washy, uncertain hope, then there’s no way we’re going to feel patient on the inside.

So, let’s read it the way it was meant to be read when it was written: "For in a certain, rock-solid hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen isn’t hope, for we don’t hope for what we can’t see. But if we have a strong, certain hope for what we do not see, then we can wait for it with patience". Now that makes sense! Now it’s a help!

So the hope that God talks about, the hope the Holy Spirit puts into our hearts, is a rock-solid, guaranteed, done-deal, it’s going to happen, certain kind of hope. It’s more akin to our understanding of anticipation. You know you’re going on holidays next Thursday, so you anticipate and savour that certainty. That’s what the Biblical word hope actually means, and one of the things that we can hope in with absolute certainty is that when we die, and when Jesus comes again, we will be reunited with Him.

In those days before He was crucified, Jesus told His disciples that He was going away. Now that was a scary thing for them because they could sense the assassination plot, and they were wondering if they were going to be next, but this is what Jesus said to them. John 14:1-3:

‘Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me, for in My Father’s house, there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to Myself, so that where I am, there you also will be.’

So this Jesus who was born as a babe onto the earth for us, this Jesus who died for us and who rose again, this Jesus who sits now at the right hand of the Father, this Jesus whose name is above every other name, to whom every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that He is Lord, this very same Jesus is the one with whom we’ll be reunited on that day. The apostle Paul puts it this way. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18:

For the Lord Himself, with a cry of command, with the archangels’ call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then, we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Forget the dramatic happenings around Christ’s second coming for a moment, as glorious and as wonderful as that day’s certainly going to be. The bit that grabs my heart is this: That we will be with the Lord forever – forever! We will be reunited with Jesus and we will be with Him forever, and ever, and ever, without end. ‘Therefore,’ writes Paul, ‘Therefore encourage one another with these words’.

That’s exactly what I want to do today – to encourage you with these words. Because whatever your present circumstances are, and the disciples when Jesus told them that He was going away – their circumstances were terribly desperate; they were in fear of their very lives ... So, whatever you’re going through at the moment, if you believe in Jesus, then you have the absolute, rock-solid, it’s-a-done-deal hope that one day, you will be reunited with Him. You will dwell with Him forever and ever and ever, amen. Now that’s what I call something to really look forward to.

A New Body

Eternity, as things turn out, is rather a long time. Right now, the oldest person I know in my circle of friends has just turned a hundred years old. This woman is a great lady with a sharp wit; I love her dearly, but at aged one hundred, her body ... Well, it’s starting to show the signs of her age, you understand.

She walks with a walking-frame and she’s kind of stooped over, her eyesight isn’t as good as it used to be and of course, she has just a few more wrinkles than the rest of us. Her body is in pretty good nick for her age (a hundred years old), but as you’d expect, age is taking its toll. One day, she (like you and me) will return to dust. That amazingly complex, finely-tuned body that we’ve all been given, that has served us all so well, one day will be no more.

So the question then arises, ok; we die, so what happens then? The Bible promises resurrection. That’s the point of Jesus rising from the dead. The writer of the book of Hebrews puts it this way. Hebrews 1:18:

He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He might come to have first place in everything.

So, how does that work? You’re dead, your body’s decayed either in a coffin or through cremation, and then one day Jesus returns. You and I are raised with Him, but what do we do for a body? It might on the one hand seem like a bit of a strange esoteric question for us to ask and answer, but hey; it’s a very real question, because this resurrection thing isn’t a theory.

I know, I know; most of us think that our death is a long, long way off, unless (I guess) we’ve just celebrated our hundredth birthday. We push these things way off to the side because it’s all about living life today, and the things we can buy and the fun we can have, and the things we need to tick off our to-do list today and tomorrow and all the busyness of life.

But friend, listen to me. One day that will stop dead, if you’ll pardon the not-so-gentle pun. One day, none of those things will matter any more and indeed the only thing, the only thing that will matter, is our relationship with Jesus or not. Full stop, end of story.

So, on that day, what are you and I going to do for a body? Well, here’s the answer. The apostle Paul writing in 1 Corinthians 15:35-58:

But some will ask, ‘How are the dead to be raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies, and as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed perhaps of wheat or of some kind of grain, but God gives it a body as He has chosen, and to each kind of seed, He gives its own body. Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, another for fish. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is entirely another. There is one glory of the sun, and there is another glory for the moon, there’s another glory for the stars – indeed, star differs from star in glory. So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.

Thus it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being’; the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit, but it’s not the spiritual that is first, but the physical and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth (a man of dust); the second man, Jesus, is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have been born in the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.

What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: Flesh and blood can’t inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I will tell you a mystery: We will not all die, but we will all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and be changed, for this perishable body must put on imperishability, and the mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, o death, is your victory? Where, o death, is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the Law. But thanks be to God, who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immoveable, always excelling in the work of the Lord because you know that in the Lord, your labour is not in vain.

So you and I, if we believe in Jesus, will receive an imperishable spiritual body, through which we will inherit the kingdom of God – a body that won’t age like the one we have today. We see that in Jesus: His resurrection-body, the body He had after He was crucified and rose again ... He had a body; he ate food; His body bore scars of His crucifixion, and yet, He didn’t seem particularly bound by physical restraints like locked doors and distances.

Will our bodies be exactly like His? Will we look the same as we look now? Those things, we don’t quite know, but this we do know: That the body we receive will be a new body, and one that will be good enough to last us for ... well, pretty much all eternity.

So those of you with a few aches and pains, I think this is pretty good news. Don’t you? A new body that’s completely imperishable. One that won’t decay, won’t wrinkle, won’t get sick, won’t hurt, won’t give up over years, decades, hundreds of years, millennia, billions, trillions of years – eternity, that you and I are going to need it for. My friend, I don’t know about you, but I think this is absolutely brilliant news.

A New Heaven and Earth

We tend to think and live and behave as though this life we’re living right now is going to go on forever and ever. Here’s a little tip: It’s not, and in fact the things we take for granted (this great planet we live in, the sun getting up every morning, the moon), one day, all those will be gone too.

So then what? Some people find these sorts of discussions a little ... well, unsettling, the idea of Armageddon. We’re all wary of those doomsday cults, all preparing for the end of the world next Thursday or the week after. How many times have you seen one of those on the evening news? And of course, they’re always wrong. We’re still here, right?

Well, don’t worry; I’m not one of those. That’s not what I’m going to be talking about today. I’m simply going to the point that the Bible tells us that at some stage, all this stuff we take for granted is going to come to an end, and those who have put their trust in Jesus will spend the rest of eternity with Him in their new resurrection-bodies, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth.

So how does this all turn out? Well, fortunately, we know to some extent how it’s going to end. Have a listen to what God says to us from the last book of the Bible, the second-to-last chapter. Revelation 21:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be His peoples, and God Himself will be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’ And the One who was seated on the throne said: ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also He said: ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then He said to me: ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns of fire and sulphur, which is the second death.

See, there’s the good news, and the bad news. All throughout the Bible, you see God talking about the fact that He wants to be our God, and He wants for us to be His people, and yet over and over again, His people rebelled against Him until eventually, He sent Jesus to dwell in our midst, and then the Holy Spirit to dwell in each man and woman and child who believes in Jesus. But look at how it ends! We are reunited with Jesus. The old earth and old heaven pass away. All things are made new: No pollution, no tsunamis, no earthquakes, no disease, no pain, no suffering, none of that. Jesus, God Himself, in our midst.

And those who persevere and conquer, those who trust in Christ, all of those will inherit this new, perfect creation. And those who don’t, won’t. And then John, the writer of this book of Revelation, goes on to paint this most amazing picture of what this new heaven and new earth will look like. We don’t have time to read it all, so I really encourage you to grab a Bible, grab a cup of tea or coffee over the next couple of days sometime, and sit down, and just immerse yourself in Revelation chapter 21 and 22. The picture that God paints for us there of what’s coming is utterly amazing! Anything we have today, any joy, any beauty, any trials, any pains, just pale into insignificance when you compare them to this. John goes on to write:

I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the LORD God, the Almighty, and the Lamb. And the city has no need of a sun or a moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations, but nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practises abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

I don’t know what you’re looking forward to the most in the future, but this is what I’m looking forward to. As big and as important as all the things going on in my life today and tomorrow seem, they will be completely meaningless when I stand one day, on that day, in the presence of God.

We’ve been given a beautiful world to live in. We’ve been given amazing bodies. God has given us the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and the animals and the beasts and the insects, and the weather and the wind and the sunshine and the rain and the moon and all these amazing things! But friend, one day, one day those will all pass away. They will all be gone: The good, the bad, the ugly, it’ll all be gone, and it’ll be replaced by this. Revelation 22:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the Tree of Life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month. And the leaves of the tree are the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more, but the throne of God and the Lamb will be in it, and His servants will worship Him. They will see His face and His name will be on their foreheads, and there will be no more night. They need no light of lamp or sun, for God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever. And He said to me: ‘These words are trustworthy and true, for the LORD, the God of the spirits of the prophets, He has sent His angel to show His servants what must soon take place. See, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.’

What are you looking forward to in your future? I’ve said this a few times in this series that without hope for the future, our lives cease to have value and meaning and purpose. People who take their own lives do so because they’ve completely lost hope, but look at the hope that we have in Jesus Christ. Have you given your life to Jesus yet? Would you like to? Well, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t give you the opportunity to do just that, so if you want to step into the hope that you can have through Jesus and what He did for you, then why don’t you pray this prayer with me in your heart right now?

Pray to God. Lord, as You’ve shared this amazing picture of what is to come with me today through Your Word, I can’t put this off any longer. I’ve been running from You, and running, but it hasn’t been working, so today Lord is the day that I’ve finally come to my senses. Today, I want to say sorry for all the things that I’ve done wrong, and turn my life over into Your hands. Please forgive me, through the price that Jesus paid for me on the cross, and give me a new life. Put Your Holy Spirit in me. Give me the power to live my life for You. Lead me wherever You will. Call me to whatever You would call me into, and give me the courage to take up my cross and follow You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Friend, if you’ve just prayed that prayer with me, then you are forgiven. You have a new life in Christ. All the old things have passed away; the slate is wiped clean, and all things are new, and you have just stepped into the certain hope of resurrection after death, and a life eternal in the very presence of God. Welcome to the rest of your eternity with Jesus! Let me encourage you to find a Bible-believing church. Become part of a dynamic, vital faith-community to worship and to serve God, and to grow in your relationship with Him. Get ready! Eternity’s coming.