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All right. Now, as a community, as a family of Jesus followers, we try to really be honest with one another. I want you to know that my highest value when I preach is not to make you feel comfortable. You're like, oh man. Listen, I'm not comfortable studying it, so you have to be uncomfortable listening to it, okay? When I study God's word, it makes me uncomfortable. It messes with me, and it should because I'm human and God is God, and there's things that He's gonna challenge and push on our lives that we need to change, that we need to adjust, that we need to shift. And as I've said before, we don't lower God's word to fit our lives and make ourselves more comfortable. We raise our lives to fit God's word, okay? Because this is truth. But let me say this this morning. The topic that we're gonna address this morning is hard. It's a hard topic, it's a tough one, it's it's challenging on many levels, but I want you to know that I fear God more than you. First. Secondly, I love you enough to speak truth, right? So I fear God more than you. I tell my kids that all the time. Because I know that at the end of the day, I'm gonna give account to God, not to you. But then I also know that God has put a love in my heart for people, and I want them to know the truth so that they have the opportunity to decide what they're gonna do with that truth. Okay? So it would be unloving for me not to tell you what we're gonna talk about this morning. So if you have your Bible, why don't you go ahead and open it up to 1 Corinthians chapter 15? We're gonna read a little section from a familiar passage in just a minute. But I want to start out by saying this. Um, we as a culture don't really know what to do with death. We're we're very wigged out by it, and for good reason, because death is a very odd thing. It's a very hard thing to deal with. What's so fascinating to me, uh, maybe you've noticed this, is that we watch television shows and movies uh that that basically show us death. Uh maybe they're war movies, uh, maybe they're there are these these uh experiences, but where people are dying, and in some ways we've almost gotten desensitized to the reality of death in human life, but then also there's this component that we we just really don't know how to do with deal with death in real life. Uh and and let me let me tell you what I mean by that. Uh, as people start to break down, and by the way, we all will, no matter how uh beautiful you are, how handsome you are, your life over time is gonna break down. Uh you're gonna eventually start to feel the aches and the pains of that. I know when I crossed over 30, something happened, and all of a sudden I was like, when I wake up in the morning, things hurt. It's weird, okay? And I'm like, I'm 30, I don't feel like I'm old, but I'm starting to feel the weight of getting older, okay? Now, here's the thing, you guys in the room, you get this. Your life is going to do that. Whenever people start to break down and mentally their capacities start to go away and they're physically, their body starts to struggle. In our culture, we kind of tuck people away out of sight so that we don't have to confront that. Now, I'm not saying that nursing homes and care facilities are wrong or bad. I'm just saying that as a culture, that's kind of tends to be our MO, is kind of tuck people away, and then we don't have to look at it every day and deal with it and confront the fact that we're not going to last forever. But even beyond that, when we do have to confront death, and I did a funeral last week and I told you about that, just of a little child, uh baby, it wasn't didn't make it even 24 hours, and was brutal, it was hard, it was heartbreaking. But when we confront death, you know, we do these interesting things with death. I mean if you've ever really stopped and thought about this. But first off, if if you if you have someone who dies, you know, we we try to make them look like they're alive. So like we put makeup on them and we dress them up and then we put them in a casket and we open it up, and people walk by and they say, they look so good. They're dead. Okay? I don't mean to offend anybody this morning. I'm just telling you, they're they're dead. And part of why we do that is because we we really don't know what to do with that. We don't really know how to handle that. And so we we make these, you have these moments where we try to just sort of gloss over the fact that they're they're dead, right? And we do them in these beautiful gardens, these memorial gardens with flowers and and lots of life things around it, as if to say, like, it's okay. It's it's all good. You know, we just kind of focus on the pretty stuff. But death is our greatest enemy. Death is our greatest enemy, and and it hurts and it's hard, and it's it's it's suffering that we endure. And so, in our attempts to try to block it out, we sometimes forget the reality of just how deep death hurts, and that we can't avoid it. It's unavoidable. Sometimes we even say to people things like this well, at least they're in a better place. And the truth of the matter is, is we may not be sure that they're in a better place. Not every time. Not every person that dies is in a better place. And we're gonna talk about that this morning. 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Let's look at what Paul has to say to us. This is from a passage that we typically would teach around Easter because it's talking about the resurrection. And when Paul gets to the end of the passage, he gives this great uh section that just encourages me and gets me so fired up this morning. So let me just read it to you from chapter 15, verse 51 in 1 Corinthians. Listen, I am telling you a mystery. We will not all fall asleep. As in, we will not all die, is what he's saying. Okay, just think fall asleep. He's talking about death here. We will not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed in a moment, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised, incorruptible, and we will be changed. For this corruptible must be clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal must be clothed with immortality, and this when this corruptible is clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal is clothed with immortality, then the saying that is written will take place. That's like a tongue twister this morning, right? Death has been swallowed up in victory. Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting? Now the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord's work, knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. It's an encouraging word this morning, isn't it? But I want to talk for a minute about the other side of the coin. What happens when we die? What happens? Do you know? If you're a naturalist, you just say things like this Well, when we die, we just go away. That's the end of the story. Nothing happens. Basically, you die and you're done. And the only hope you have of having anything lasting is that you've invested in people that leaves a legacy. And so your offspring, your family, your friends, those who are still here on the earth, somehow they live out the values or the beauty of who you were as a person while you were here on the earth. But beyond that, it's game over, it's lights out, you're all done. That's what the naturalists would say. The reincarnationists would say, Well, no, you actually get another shot at this thing. You're gonna keep coming back until you can finally do it right. You're gonna get another time and another time and another time. And eventually maybe you can pay off your karma debt and maybe eventually achieve nirvana. That's what reincarnationists would say. Or you could be universalist, which really just says, hey, look, everybody's eventually gonna end up in heaven. No matter what, your story, no matter where you're going, everybody's eventually going to arrive in this place of pleasure, this paradise, this spot where we can all just go and gather there. And I don't know what we're gonna do there, but it's gonna be awesome, and we'll all get there no matter what you've done in this life. Or in Catholicism, Catholicism says you actually go to purgatory. It says you go to purgatory, you go to an intermediate state. And in intermediate state, this is the interesting thing if you don't know this about Catholicism, you go there and you actually pay for the sins that Christ has already paid for. You pay for the sins that you've committed, and hopefully, if someone prays for you and you do a good job there, you'll get out. Get out earlier. That's what Catholicism teaches, just to be really honest and clear with you this morning. And there's others, because in the last few decades, we've kind of become enamored with the idea of angels, that when you die, you become an angel. You know, you trade in your clothes and in your life for a little fleece diaper and uh a cloud to sit on and twinkle a little harp, you know, shoot some little arrows at people, um, or whatever it is that you do, and every now and then you show back up on the earth and you protect people or you give them messages that God has for them. You have these little assignments to do in that way until Christ returns, right? Some people believe that. It's not in the Bible, just in case you didn't know that. That's not what the Bible teaches us. We don't become angels, okay? So what happens to us when we die? Well, let me just be really brief and clear this morning. That the first thing that happens is that our physical bodies, this is real encouraging, our physical bodies go into the ground and they begin to decay. When you die, this physical tent, as Paul calls it, goes into the ground and it begins to decay. This may be a morbid thought, but if you were to dig up a grave of a believer in Jesus and an unbeliever in Jesus, and you were to uncover that grave, guess what you would find? A body that is decaying, right? Because the body goes into the ground and it decays. And it's there. It doesn't go anywhere. In fact, Ecclesiastes 3 verse 20 says it this way: all are going to the same place. All come from the dust and all return to the dust. So our physical bodies begin the process of breaking down and go back to the earth from which they came. But something happens when we die. It's very fascinating, and it's the way that God's made us. And I know that there are groups of people in the world who promote this idea that all we are is a physical body, that we don't have a soul. But that's not what the Bible teaches us. The Bible teaches us that we have a body and we have a soul and that that makes the complete person. Those two things are not divorced, if you will. They're not two separate things in this life, like you are body, and you are soul, and they're inseparable. But at death, your body and your soul are separated. Your body goes into the ground and your soul goes somewhere else. And for believers in Jesus and unbelievers, it's two different places. Are you hearing me? Okay, so here's what happens according to Scripture is that if you are a believer in Jesus, your body goes into the ground, and your soul goes to be with God. It goes to be with God to begin experiencing eternal happiness. Isn't that an awesome thought? Paul says it this way in the book of 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and he says this in a couple other places, but he says this, and we are confident and satisfied to be out of the body and at home with the Lord. What he says is that when we leave our bodies, we go to be home with God. To be absent from the body is to be present with God. That's what we learn from the scripture. So there is a series of mysterious things that God does, but he separates our body and our soul, and our souls with him, and our bodies in the ground. But we begin to experience eternal happiness at the point of death. But what about unbelievers? What does the Bible teach us about unbelievers and where do their bodies go? Well, it says in Scripture that the unbeliever's soul goes immediately to face God's just punishment. Remember what I said. I want to be honest with you this morning. I want to speak truth to you because I don't know what you've been told, I don't know what you've been taught, but the Bible clearly says to us that unbelievers go, their souls go immediately to just punishment. How do we know this? Well, there's one passage where Jesus is actually telling a parable, he's telling us a story, and he gives us some insight into this. It's in Luke chapter 16. I encourage you to go read it. It's a sobering passage as we remember that this life is temporary, but eternity does exist, and we all are going to exist somewhere. And here's what it says to us. Chapter 16 of the book of Luke, verse 22. One day the poor man died. There was a poor man, and there was a rich man, and his name was Lazarus, okay? One day the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham's side. Where's Abraham? He's with God, right? He's with God. The rich man also died and was buried. And being in torment in Hades, he looked up and he saw Abraham a long way off with Lazarus at his side. Father Abraham, he called out, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in an agony in this flame. Now I'll be honest. It's really easy for me to read that and go, okay, I get it, and move on. But that's the broken, messed up part of me that just reads this passage and isn't in the moment just one, overwhelmed with incredible gratitude, but two, overwhelmed with incredible compassion for those who do not know Jesus. What a vivid story that God would put in his word to remind us that everyone will go somewhere. And for those who do not believe in Jesus, it's not a pretty scene. In fact, he says, I'm tormented in this flame. Could you just bring me just a tip of water on your finger? Could you just bring that to me? We can't ignore these passages in the Bible because they tell us about the reality of eternity and where people are going to spend it. This morning, I don't know where you find yourself, but I pray that as you think about this, you would remember to use the Bible to look to the Bible to tell you what to believe about these things. But what happens if Christ returns before you die? It's very possible. It's possible that before you die, Christ could return. That would be awesome, actually. And we'll talk about why in just a minute. But think about that to not have to go through some of the suffering of this life and to physically expire. But here's what we know that God does give us some instructions and does give us some insight on what happens if he returns. But the first thing I need you to know this morning is that we don't know when that's gonna be. And people make hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars off speculating, giving their reasons why they think people are, you know, that Christ is gonna return. But it says in the Bible that Christ will physically return, he will literally come back. And as we've said this before, he's not gonna come back as a little infant baby. Okay? He's gonna come back as a victorious king, righteous judge, a warrior. It's gonna be a little different scene than the first time around. And here's what we know is that we just don't have an idea fully when that time will happen. Now, I don't know if you guys were like this. I kind of joked about this before, but when I was a kid, when it says that no one knows the day or the hour, um, my my thought was, well, then if I'm thinking right now that he's gonna come back, then he can't come back right now because I'm thinking that he's gonna come back right now. Anybody ever play that game? Okay, so as long as I'm thinking about the fact that he's gonna come back, yeah, he's gonna come back right now, then you know, he's not. I was like, quit thinking about that so he can come back. No. Okay, silliness, I get it, right? But here's the thing we don't know. In fact, it even goes for this far in scripture where it says in Matthew chapter 24, verse 36, now concerning that day and hour, no one knows. You hear that? No one knows. Neither the angels in heaven, the angels don't know. Now, this is what's wild, nor the Son. Who's the Son? Jesus. Jesus doesn't even know. I can't wrap my brain around that. He's the Godhead, he's part of the Trinity. It says he doesn't even know when that time will be when the Father will say, Okay, go get your kids. Go get your bride. We're having a wedding. Right? Jesus doesn't know that because for whatever reason, God has decided in the mystery of things that he is the father, he knows. And it says, accept the father only, Matthew 24, verse 36. So in the scripture, we don't know when he's gonna come back. And here's the thing: every generation has said, oh, he's coming back. Every generation has said, oh, he's coming back now. Look how bad things are. I mean, look at all these wars, look at these bad things, these disasters. Catch this. Listen, every generation from the first century on has said he's coming back. In fact, all of the apostles lived with this in mind. They heard this conversation that Jesus was having with Peter whenever he was re- basically coming back to him and saying, Hey, you deny me three times. I'm gonna reinstall you, I'm gonna make sure that you're good. I'm gonna kind of make sure that everything's good. And he says something very interesting. He says, What if he doesn't die before I return? He's talking about the Apostle John. And so all the early church basically lived thinking, well, he could come back any moment. He could come back any day. In fact, he probably will before we even die. But that's been going on now for a long time, over 2,000 years. And he still hasn't come back. While we don't know when he's gonna come back, we do know this. He will come back, and it's gonna happen in the twinkling of an eye, it's gonna happen fast. It's gonna happen like a thief in the night. In fact, 1 Thessalonians 5, 2 says this for you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. And we also know this that things are gonna get worse before they get better. Things are gonna get worse before they get better. I'll be honest, I'm not excited about that reality. I'm not excited about the deepening depravity and the festering of sin in this life. I'm not excited about that. I don't think you are either. Because we see the suffering, we see the pain, we see the hardship that comes when sin has its way in humanity. But we do know that it's gonna get worse, but then Christ is going to return. And when he returns, just as our bodies and souls were separated, the Bible tells us that our bodies and souls will be reunited. Our bodies and souls will be reunited. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 16 says it this way For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout. I wonder what that shout's gonna be like. Woo-hoo! Going to get my bride, the church, right? Says he's going to descend with a shout, with the archangel's voice, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Now that's an interesting thought. What he's saying is the dead in Christ, those who are in the ground, the bodies have been put into the ground. They are there decaying. But they're gonna come out of the grave. That's gonna be a freaky moment. These bodies are gonna come out of the grave, and what? They're gonna be reunited with their souls. As we ultimately we are reunited with Jesus. That is gonna be a fun, fun time. Oh, it's gonna be awesome. As we are reunited with our souls and we are reunited with Christ. But here's the thing it also says that those who are still living, they're gonna be caught up in the air as well. In the clouds to meet the Lord. So people like Matt Altman, who was up here, our elder earlier, he's gonna get there faster than a lot of people because he's just gonna do the toothpick. You know, he's kind of thin. He's gonna shooting up like a rocket ship, okay? Listen. I joke, but we're gonna go in the sky. We're gonna meet him in the sky, and it's gonna be a it's gonna be a glorious day. It's gonna be a glorious moment. But our bodies and our souls will be reunited. And I have to just say this really quickly to remind us, uh, because I'm gonna come back in a second and talk about this restoration piece. Um, this reminds us that our bodies are important. Some people are like, I can't wait to not have to deal with this body anymore. Why did God give me this body?

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Why did God give me this body that can't lose weight? Why did God give me this body that doesn't have as many muscles as I'd like it to have? Or why did God give me this body that's just decrepit and broken down? You know, it has its issues. Listen, um, just a side word on this. Your body is important. In fact, the bot the scripture even goes as far as to say your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who's in you. That we should take care of our bodies. We shouldn't worship our bodies, we shouldn't make our bodies the highest goal in that we you know try to make ourselves um uh the center of the world. But we should understand that our bodies are important and how we treat our bodies. We should take care of our bodies while we have them. Because listen, one day your soul's gonna reunite with your body. Now, here's the awesome thing, because everybody's like, oh great. This is what I, yeah. I was hoping that wouldn't happen. I'm gonna have to deal with this for for more for eternity? What? Here's the thing. When we reunite with our bodies, it will be a resurrected body. It will be a resurrected body. And we don't know a lot about this, but we do know that Jesus, when he was resurrected, he came back and was he recognizable? Well, when he was walking on the road to Emmaus, they were kind of like. Like confused. They didn't really realize it was him. We're not completely sure why. But we know this. We know that he had a physical body or a body that appeared to be a physical body, right? That he was able to walk through walls. That's an interesting thought. But that he ate food, and all the men said, Amen, we're gonna eat food in heaven, right? We're gonna eat. Lots of steak in heaven. Okay? No, but here's the thing. We have a resurrected body. And that body will not, this is the cool thing, that body will not break down like this body breaks down. That body will not be sick like this body gets sick. That body will not hurt and ache like this body hurts and aches. Because there will be no more sin in that moment. And all the things that are a result of that sin. So when Christ comes back, two primary things will happen. Number one, judgment. Judgment. This is not a fun topic to discuss, but it's a topic that the Bible speaks clearly on. It's judgment. First, we see that in the Bible in John chapter 5, verse 28, there's other passages that speak to this, but John 5.28 says, Do not be amazed at this, because a time is coming when all who are in the graves will hear his voice, similar to 1 Thessalonians, like we just talked about, and they will come out, and those who have done good things to the resurrection of life, but to those who have done wicked things to the resurrection of judgment. So there's a separation in Matthew, he says it's the separation of the sheep and the goats. That the sheep, those who are God's people, they'll be separated out from those who are the goats, those who are not God's people. And so that initial separation will say, here's the ones who are going to life, and here's the ones who are going to death. But what happens in that after the separation? Well, again, unbelievers, those who have not put their trust in Jesus for salvation, it tells us in Scripture that they will go to punishment. They will experience the wrath of God. They will experience the judgment that is due to those who have not trusted in Christ's sufficient sacrifice on their behalf. I don't know if you realize this or not, but Jesus talked about hell more than anybody else in the Bible. He described it as pain and suffering, as fire, as the place of Gehenna, which is basically a big garbage dump outside of Jerusalem. He described it in these terms that were very vivid, and in terms that you and I, when we hear those things, sometimes we just kind of gloss over, but it is not a place that you want to go. Probably to an error, our younger generation of people have kind of gotten away from this idea that, you know, we should talk about hell. In fact, there's young pastors and leaders who just say, you know, like, I don't want to be a hellfire brimstone. I don't want to scare people to try to make them follow Jesus. Listen, I think we've lost a little bit of that because hell is a real place. It is a place where people will spend eternity. And in fact, I think we should scare the hell out of people. I think we should let people know that there is a reality if we believe this, if we believe what the Bible teaches about it. Are you with me? Because if we don't talk about it, are we being honest with people? And here's the thing when it says that hell is a bad place, it's not joking, it's not messing around. In Revelation chapter 14, just one little bitty snippet that we get, where John is writing down what God has told him to write in his vision. And it says this He will also drink the wine of God's wrath. He's talking specifically about Satan, which is mixed full strength in the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the sight of the holy angels and in the sight of the lamb, and the smoke of their torment will go up forever and ever. There is no rest, day or night. And he clarifies who he's talking about. He says, for those who worship the beast and his image, or anyone who receives the mark of his name. He's specifically saying, for those who do not believe in Jesus Christ, but worship someone. Listen, there's only two teams in the scope of eternity. There's only two teams. There's only two sides in the scope of eternity. There's the winning side that's with Jesus, and there's everybody else who's with Satan. That's it. We try to make it as if there's all these other things you can choose. There's not. It's two sides. It's God or it's Satan. That's it. And it says to us in Scripture, I have to go off of what the Bible says. It says that those who have put their trust in Jesus that are on the winning side, they're going to be with him and there's going to be pleasure forever with him. And it says that those who have not are going to experience eternal punishment. And let me just say for just a second here. This is huge. Nowhere in the Bible does it give us any idea or inclination that people are going to have another chance to put their trust in Jesus. It doesn't say that anywhere. You cannot find that. It does not tell us anywhere in the Bible that there is going to be another opportunity for people to go, oh, wait, wait, wait. I blew it in this life. Okay, I want to follow Jesus now. I get it. It doesn't say that. Maybe God will do that. Maybe God, I mean, maybe we can be hopeful that He will do that. Maybe there's people in your life that you're hoping like that moment, all of a sudden it'll all hit them. Oh, I should have listened to my neighbor. Oh, I should have listened to my family member. I should have listened to my friend and actually believed that. Maybe that will happen, but the Bible doesn't say that. But what about believers? Where do believers go? If the sheep are going one way and the goats are going one way, what about the sheep? What happens with them? Well, 2 Corinthians 5 says in verse 10 that we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Anybody nervous about that? It says we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad, to be rewarded, okay? Here's what's interesting. The judgment that Christians receive is not one of life or death. It's an award ceremony, according to Scripture. In Revelation chapter 22, Jesus says, Look, I am coming quickly, and my reward is with me to repay each person according to what he has done. Are you hearing that? Now, what he's saying in that passage is that when Jesus comes back and he separates his children from those who are not his children, those who are with him from his enemies, then he's going to actually have an award ceremony and he's going to reward his children for what? For being faithful and for being obedient with what he's told them to do. You see, again, in our young generations of people coming up these days, we want to talk so much about God's grace, and we need to, because God's grace is amazing. We want to talk about how that he forgives and how he loves and how he will take care of us and how he'll bring us into heaven, and that's awesome, and we love that. But listen, there's also gonna be a moment where we're gonna stand before our Maker and He's gonna say, What did you do with what I gave you? And we're gonna be able to either receive rewards or the rest of it's just gonna be burned up. My question to myself this week and to you is Are you investing yourself in things that are just gonna get burned up? Are we investing our lives in the things that at the end of the day are just gonna get thrown into the fire with everything else? That doesn't matter. The way the scripture says is that there's things that will burn away that are the hay, the stubble, the straw, and then there's those things that we did for the kingdom of God that will last forever, that will matter forever. When we invested our money in the things that were gonna last, when we invested our time in the things that were gonna last, we invested our energy so that people would know Jesus. When we do those things, those things are gold. And they will not pass away. But we'll be rewarded. And when we are rewarded, we will take those rewards and we won't say, Hey, look at me, everybody. Because thankfully, in a resurrected body, we won't have that sinful, arrogant pride in us any longer, but God will restore us from that and we will take those rewards and we will lay them down at the feet of Jesus and we will say, Jesus, you are worthy of everything we did. Everything. That's what's gonna happen. Do you understand why I'm so passionate about helping you as a people and helping myself as a people keep our eye on eternity? Because if not, you will waste your energy and your time on stuff that's not gonna last. It's not gonna matter. Clothes won't last, cars won't last, houses won't last, accomplishments won't last, it will not last. But those who do the will of God will stand forever. And his word will stand forever and ever. And it is so easy in our culture to be sucked in to living for right now. It's so easy, but it will not last. Not only is he gonna judge, he's gonna separate, he's gonna punish, and he's gonna reward, but he's gonna restore. He's going to restore, he will make all things new. When Jesus and the Father and the Spirit were there at creation and they created the world, they said this about it. Every time they would create something, they'd say, it is good. It's good. Here's the cool thing. When Jesus comes back, and after the judgment, and he restores all things, he's gonna make everything good again. Now, this is an interesting thought because a lot of people think that we're just gonna live in heaven. That heaven is just gonna be the only thing we worry about, but that's actually not what the Bible teaches. The Bible says there will be a new heavens and a new earth, a new earth. So think about this for a second. This is what I love. Would you say that there are things in this life that are beautiful, that are awesome, that are amazing? Let me just give you a few suggestions. What about watching the sun go down and seeing the beautiful sunsets that God paints across the sky? What about when you drive into the mountains and you see these massive mountains with snow caps on the top of them? Is that not beautiful? What about when you hold a newborn baby? What about the moments when you fall in love? What about the moments in this life that just are so sweet, so rich, like when you have a great stake? Listen, all of those moments are just a foretaste. They're just a shadow of things to come. They're not even the real pleasure. In fact, it says in Scripture that He had no mind can perceive, no ear has heard, no eye can even begin to see the things that he has in store for those who love him. Those are just little bitty tastes. What would happen when an earth is restored and no more sin and no more brokenness and no more issues that we fight, and we get to just enjoy it for the beauty and the pleasure that it is. That's what God's gonna do. In fact, it says in Revelation 21, verse 1 through 5. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and the sea no longer existed. And I also saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride, adorned for her husband. You know it's gonna be a big wedding. So all you women in the room, I'll talk about steak. Y'all get excited because we're gonna have a big wedding, okay? It's gonna be a big party. And then I heard a loud voice from the throne. Look, God's dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. God's gonna live with us. We're gonna live with God. And they will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God, and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will no longer exist. No grief, no crying, no pain will exist no longer because the previous things have passed away. And then the one seated on the throne, that would be Jesus, he said, Look, I am making everything new. My grandmother, who battled Lugarig's disease, ALS, for eight years of her life and spent the majority of those years sitting in a chair with a breathing machine breathing for her and a feeding tube stuck in her side, only able to move her pinkies and her eyelids, she's going to be dancing before our Maker. I can't wait for that day. He's gonna restore, he's gonna wipe away every tear. So, what difference does this make for us today? Just two things to remind us as we close. One, we must carefully consider what we have discussed today and make a decision about God's gift to us because it has eternal implications. I don't know what your condition is today as you come into this room. I don't know where you find yourself, I don't know whether you believe in Jesus or not. But let me just tell you, don't take this decision lightly because it has eternal implications. You and I are going to exist forever somewhere. And the scripture says, Romans 6.23, that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. And what I want you to know today is that you've been offered a gift of eternal life. Not because you're good, not because you're good looking, not because you've got your act together, not because you have a lot of information, not because you're sitting in a church service right now, because all that stuff is filthy rags before a holy God. But because he is that gracious and that merciful, and he's made a way through his son Jesus, that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have eternal life. Eternity. Consider that gift. And before you make that decision, remember it has those eternal implications. Secondly, for those of us who have put our trust in Jesus, we need to assess how we should live our temporary lives to prepare others and ourselves for eternal life. Are you, am I living to help others and ourselves prepare for eternity? Or are we just trying to simply make our lives more comfortable here and now? Listen, I don't believe that God is saying to us today that the goal of our Christian lives is to make ourselves miserable. Like, you don't get uh an award for like, I'm gonna make my life, I'm gonna fill my life with the most suffering, and God will be pleased with that. Okay, we don't, that's not what I'm saying to you today. What I am saying to you is whatever you have, your life, your talents, your treasures, your time, all those things, my question to you and to myself is are we using those things to prepare ourselves and others for eternity? Or are we simply just trying to make our lives in the here and now as comfortable as we possibly can and hold on, and everybody else can just fend for themselves. 1 Corinthians 15, 58, the end of the passage that I read at the beginning. He says, Therefore, my dear brothers, be steadfast and movable, always excelling in the Lord's work, knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. I don't want to live a life that's in vain. I don't. Sadly, there's been a lot of times in my life where I have been living in vain. Wasting time, wasting energy, wasting money on stuff that wouldn't last. I want to live a life that matters. And I think you do too.