Alright, go with me if you would
back to 2 Timothy chapter 4. 2 Timothy 4. For obvious reasons,
the thought of dying in the Lord has been very heavily on all
of our minds. At the funeral Monday, Brother
Tom preached from this text. He preached from verses 4 to
6. It was the text that Brother
Henry requested to be preached at his funeral. And one line
in the text stuck out to me, and I've been thinking about
it ever since. The end of verse 6 says, of my departure is at hand. He said in verse six, I am now
ready to be offered. He said, I'm ready. I'm ready
to be offered. And the time of my departure
is at hand. I would like for us to look this
evening at a believer's departure. A believer's departure, the moment
when a believer departs from this world to the next. What should we expect in that
moment? What should we expect to happen
and expect to experience in that moment? Now, I want to emphasize
the fact that the title of this message is A believer's departure,
not the whole world's departure. This is critical to understand
from the get-go. The whole world will not depart
in this way. Unbelievers have a departure
too. but it's an entirely different
experience. What we're going to look at tonight
is an entirely different experience from an unbeliever's departure. Believers depart to acceptance. Unbelievers depart to rejection. Believers depart to life. Unbelievers depart to death. Believers depart to be welcomed
in. Unbelievers depart to be cast
out. So they're two totally different
experiences, just completely opposite. Now, what makes the
difference in whether a person departs as an unbeliever or a
believer? What makes the difference? There
are two types of people on this earth. You can sum up everybody
into two categories, believers and unbelievers. What makes the
difference in whether or not a person is a believer or an
unbeliever? Well, an unbeliever is a person
who has been left in his original, sinful, natural state. Every soul is born into this
world an unbeliever. Every person. We were all unbelievers. There was a time in our lives
when we were unbelievers. All men and women are naturally
sinful. When we naturally gravitate to
the things of this world and the things of this flesh, what
we are gravitating toward is everything that is against God.
We move, we naturally move away from God and against His Word
and against His way. That's what a sinner is. To say
someone is a sinner, what that means is he is a sinner against
God. Not just a sinner against mankind. or a sinner against the laws
of the land. He is a sinner against God. David said, Against thee and
thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. Well
David, didn't you do it to a man whose wife you took? Yeah, but
it was against you. Sinners against God. Alright,
now that's all of us in the condition we're born in. That's all of
us. We're all born sinners. If God leaves us in the condition
that we were born into, all He has to do is leave us alone.
If God just leaves us alone and lets us go do what we want to
do and live like we want to live and believe what we want to believe, then we will die as sinners against
God. We'll leave this earth. as sinners
against God. We will leave this world as sinners
against His Word and sinners against His way. That's what
an unbeliever is. A believer believes every word
that has proceeded out of the mouth of God. You tell people,
and you can read it, everybody has a Bible, you say, open up
to this page, and you show it to them and say, this is what
God wrote. And they say, well, I don't believe
that. That's an unbeliever. Believers believe God. Whatever it says, they believe
it. A believer sees what he is according to
God's Word. God says we're all sinners against
Him. A believer says, Amen, I am. A believer sees what he needs. He sees what his desperate need
is. he sees Christ to be his only
hope. He doesn't see good deeds and
he doesn't see all the things that man naturally thinks will
get you into heaven. A believer sees Christ to be
his only hope. And he says within his heart,
I cannot leave this world without him. That's what a believer says.
I cannot depart without Christ. That's a believer. I bow to His Word. I bow to His
way. That's a believer. Whatever His
terms are, I bow to His terms. This is how He said salvation
is possible. A believer says, I bow to it. Whatever you say, I bow to it.
So that's the difference in an unbeliever and a believer. Now what does it take for a person
to become a believer? If everybody starts out as unbelievers,
what does it take for a person to become a believer? Does he decide to be a believer? No. Ephesians 2 verse 8 says,
Faith is not of yourselves. It is not of yourselves. Alright,
well can he work his way to become a believer? If he can't just
decide, can he earn it? Can he work his way to becoming
a believer? No. Ephesians 2 verse 9 says,
Not of works, lest any man should boast. Alright, well then how
does an unbeliever become a believer? Here's how. before the foundation
of the world, before this earth was ever spoken into existence. God had to choose to make that
particular unbeliever a believer. And He had to give that sinful
unbeliever to Christ His Son. He put the sinner in Christ and
He put all of His sin on Christ. And then Christ had to die in
order to pay for that sin. Christ had to put away that rebellion
against God by the blood of His own death. That's what it took.
It took the sacrifice of blood, the shedding of blood to put
away that rebellion and that sin. And then in time, God has
to send His Holy Spirit And He does it through the preaching
of His Word. This is the whole reason we're
doing this. This is not a club. We're not
doing this so we can feel like good people because we went to
church this week. This is the whole reason we're
doing this. Through the preaching of the Gospel, God sends His
Spirit and blesses His Word to the heart of one of those sinners
that He chose to make a believer. And the word pierces the heart,
it brings faith. It's a gift that's given, and
that faith convinces the unbeliever of the fact that I am a sinner. Before, he said, I'm not a sinner. Don't call me a sinner, I don't
want to hear that. And then when faith comes, all
of a sudden he cries, I am a sinner. And Christ is the only Savior. I cannot save myself and nobody
else can save me. His blood is my only hope. It's the Spirit that bends the
knee. It's the Spirit that causes the
unbeliever to cry, I need Christ. I need Christ. I need His Word.
I need His way. I believe Him. I believe Him. I believe on Him. God is the
one who makes an unbeliever to be a believer. Alright, it's
the work of God. This is how we can know who the
believers are. They all say, God is the one
who made me to be a believer. I had no part in it. He did all
of it for me. He did all of it in spite of
me. I did not earn it. He freely
gave it. I didn't choose it. He chose
it for me. I would not choose salvation.
I'm talking about me. I would not on my own choose
salvation. I have a sinful nature that loves
sin. A lot of people think, well,
I don't want to go to heaven. It doesn't sound like it's very much fun. That's
because we love sin. So I would not have chosen it.
He chose it for me. That's what it is to be a believer.
All right, now, for every soul that God has caused to be a believer,
there are some things that the Scripture says about the appointed
moment when that believer departs from this world to the next. And it's a moment that every
believer is interested in. Every person here I know because
I am too. Every believer is interested
in this moment. So all I wanna do is just study
it for a minute. We'll just study it together
and see what the word has to say about it. What can we learn
from the scripture about our departure? Well, we know that
it's certain. We know it's absolutely certain. Job 14 verse 5 said, Our days
are determined. The number of our months are
with God. He has appointed our bounds.
We cannot pass. It's coming. It's coming. So what can we know about it?
Look with me if you would at Romans chapter 7. Romans 7. The Apostle Paul said in verse
24, O wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this death? The body that
we currently live in is a body of death. It was conceived in
sin, which means it was conceived in death. It is prone to death. It is prone to sickness. It's
prone to weakness. If it just sits there and you
don't do anything with it, it's just going to get weaker and
weaker and weaker. It's prone to weakness. It is prone to disease. It's a body of death. And when
believers depart from it, they are departing from death. Men and women naturally think
that the departure is death. You know, the soul leaves the
body and there the body lives. And men naturally believes that
the departure is death. That's not what it is at all.
For a child of God, It is a departure from death. Ephesians 2 says,
And you hath He quickened who were dead. That's how we started. He said you walked the whole
course of your life dead. spiritually dead, and dying,
we die. I mean, the longer we walk, the
wrinkles come, and the spots come, and the bones get brittle,
and we're just walking in death. Only now are we made alive in
Christ. So the departure is not a departure
into death. That's kind of what I thought
it was until I really started looking at this. It's not a departure
into death. It is a departure from death. After the departure, all that's
left behind is the death. That's all that's left behind.
The remnants of the death. All of the life departs and all
of the death is left behind. It is a separation from death.
Look with me if you would at 2 Corinthians 5. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 1, it says,
for we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were
dissolved, we have a building of God and house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens. He's talking about a body. He said, if this body was dissolved,
we have one eternal in the heavens. For in this, we grown earnestly
desiring to be clothed upon with our house, which is from heaven,
If so be that being clothed, we shall not be found naked,
a soul without a body. Verse 4, for we that are in this
tabernacle do groan being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed,
but clothed upon that mortality might be swallowed up of life.
Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who
also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are
always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the
body on this earth, we are absent from the Lord, for we walk by
faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and
willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with
the Lord. Wherefore, we labor that whether
present or absent, we may be accepted of Him. He said, if
this earthly house is dissolved, we have an eternal house waiting
for us in the heavens. Now, I cannot rationalize. I cannot comprehend and I cannot
explain the fact that until our Lord returns, There is a period of time where
our physical bodies will lay here in the ground. I can't make
sense of this. It's too far above me. I can't
explain it. Until he comes back, there is
a period of time you can open up a grave and find bones there.
Our bodies lay in the ground on this earth, but we have a
body in heaven. These bodies will rise again. They will rise again. Job said,
Though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I'm going to
see God, whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold,
and not another. Luke 21, 18 says, Not a hair
of your head shall perish. God is going to redeem all of
the cells of His people. Not a hair of your head is going
to perish. It's all coming back. 1 Thessalonians
4 says, These bodies shall rise from the ground, and will stand
on the earth again, and will watch the Lord when He returns.
But with that, the scripture says right here, to be absent
from this body is to be present with the Lord in an eternal body
that we have in the heavens. I cannot explain it. I can't
explain it. But I do know this, if God says
that's how it is, that's how it is. I believe God. That's
what He said and that's what it is. Here's what we can learn
from it. There is no waiting period. God's people are not just in
a spiritual coma, waiting for Him to return to finally meet
Him in the air. The moment the believer departs,
He's in the presence of the Lord, the moment he departs. As a matter
of fact, the Lord himself is the one who comes and gets the
believer for the departure. He said in Isaiah 46, I will
carry and deliver you. People talk about crossing that
great river of death, and that's a scary thought to me. In my
flesh, that's a scary thought to me. But He said, I'll carry
you across it. And that, honestly, that brings
so much comfort to me. I love knowing that. The moment
it's time to enter into the unknown, He's going to pick me up into
it and carry me over, carry all of His people over. Just like
David said in Psalm 23, though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. You're with me. And
that's how it'll be for us. He's with me. No fear. So this moment is a departure
from death, and it's a departure to the presence of the Lord.
Go with me to 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15. Verse 35 says, But some man will say, How are
the dead raised up, and with what body do they come? Thou
fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die. And that which thou sowest, thou
sowest not that body that shall be, but bear grain, it may chance
of wheat, or of some other grain. But God giveth it a body, as
it hath pleased Him, and to every seed His own body." What he's
saying is, if you want a stalk of corn with three ears on it,
you don't plant a stalk with three ears on it, you plant a
seed. And then once that seed dies
in the ground, it comes forth as a stalk with three ears on
it. Verse 38, God giveth it a body
as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed His own body. All
flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh
of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another
of birds. There are also celestial bodies
and bodies terrestrial. But the glory of the celestial
is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There
is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon, and another
glory of the stars, for one star differeth from another star in
glory. So also is the resurrection of
the dead. It is sown in corruption, it
is raised in incorruption." When we put these bodies in the ground,
they don't look anything like us. They try to do the best work
that they can. I'm an advocate for a closed
casket. If there's an open casket, that's
fine. But these bodies just don't look
anything like us. They go in in corruption. and they continue to corrupt.
They go in, in corruption, and they just keep on corrupting.
But on the day that they come back out, you cannot imagine
the beauty. You cannot imagine how beautiful
these bodies are going to be. They're going to have the sweet
smell of life, literally. No spots, no wrinkles, no decay
of any kind, and the reason is because they will all be raised
in incorruption. Not possible to be corrupted.
Verse 43 says, it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is
raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it
is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body and there
is a spiritual body. Explain that to me. I can't. I can't. I don't know exactly
what that means except to say that there's a difference. There's
a difference in a body of death and a body of life. There's a
difference. A body of sinfulness and a body of sinlessness. The
best description of it is right here, verse 45. And so it is
written, the first man Adam was made a living soul, the last
Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which
is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that
which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth,
earthy, the second man is the Lord from heaven. It's His body. As is the earthy, such are they
also that are earthy, and as is the heavenly, such are they
also that are heavenly. As we have borne the image of
the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now
this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Verse 51 says, Behold, I show
you a mystery. This is the departure. All right,
this is that moment. This is what happens in a believer's
departure. This is what he experiences.
Verse 51. Behold, I show you a mystery.
We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. Whether the body lays down in
sleep or we remain alive until the Lord returns, either way,
This is a believer's departure. The end of verse 51 says, we
shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye. It's going to happen that fast. Now if the Lord returns, if we
are of those who are still walking on this earth when He returns,
verse 52 says, it goes on to say, "...at the last trump, for
the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible,
and we shall be changed." Either way, whether we sleep
or whether we don't sleep, verse 53 says, this corruptible must
put on incorruption. And this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall
have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on
immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written,
death is swallowed up in victory. In a moment so fast, it's over
before you ever knew it started. You know how something just,
it's over before you ever knew it started. Death is gonna be
swallowed up in victory. Everything that looks like and
feels like and smells like death is swallowed up in victory. And
the believer immediately realizes, verse 55, O death, where is thy
sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Number one, he realizes that
didn't hurt. That's the first thing he realizes,
that didn't hurt. The second thing he realizes
is, All of my life on earth, throughout that whole life on
earth, sin brought thorns to my flesh. All the pricks and
the pain of sin, all of a sudden He goes, where are they? Where's the stain? What happened
to it? The fear of death, the fear of
the grave. We don't realize it, but the
fear of the grave Shadows everything we do. We
don't drive down the road without putting a seatbelt on. We don't
tell our kids goodbye without saying, now listen, you need
to be really careful about this and this and this and this. It's
the fear of the grave. And then all of a sudden you
realize, where's the fear of the grave? Where is the sting of sin? I
don't feel it anymore. Have you ever had, I know you
have, you've had a terrible nightmare. I mean a terrible, terrible nightmare.
One that is so bad even a grown man or a grown woman is scared
to death. Running, hiding in fear, something's
after you, someone's after you, who knows? Something like that.
And in the twinkling of an eye, you wake up. That's what waking
up is, it's the twinkling of an eye. You wake up and you realize
you're no longer in that situation. Immediately, relief comes over
you. Oh, that was a dream. An immediate sense of relief. That's what the departure will
feel like. An immediate sense of, The sting of the sin and the
fear of the grave, it will immediately be over. It's immediate relief. And it's not just relief, it's
victory. Verse 56 says, The sting of death
is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to
God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Many of you are passionate sports
fans. You know that feeling whenever
your basketball team is losing by two points? And the clock
is counting down, three, two, and one of your team players
is on the other side of the court, and he just heaves the ball with
everything he has, and it goes... That's what the departure will
feel like, except for the fact that that ain't nothing. I mean
that ain't nothing. It's an immediate feeling of
victory. It's in the twinkling of an eye.
You go from utter depression to utter victory. That fast. But it's not possible for a man's
mouth to describe the victory. Eye hath not seen, ear hath not
heard, neither has entered into the heart of man. What that moment's
gonna feel like. I'll stop trying to describe
it. When Paul told the Philippians
that to depart and to be with Christ was far better, what we
need to understand about that is the scripture never exaggerates. If anything, it always under
exaggerates. Always. When it says, many shall
be saved. It means a number no man can
number. It doesn't mean more than a few.
It means a number no man can number. And when it says that
to depart and to be with Christ is far better, it means an absolute
state of euphoria that it's not possible for a man's mouth to
utter. It's an indescribable feeling. When it comes to a believer's
departure, not only is there nothing to fear, our Lord said, I told you there's
nothing to fear. Not only is there nothing to
fear, but it is going to be the greatest moment you've ever experienced
in your life. You cannot imagine how much happiness
is going to flood you in the twinkling of an eye. You honestly
cannot imagine how much contentment and satisfaction is gonna come
over you in the twinkling of an eye. And this is the reason
why, if you'll go with me to Psalm 17. Psalm 17, verse 15, it says,
As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied when I awake
with thy likeness. He's soon in the twinkling of
an eye. we are going to be in His likeness, just like Him. That brings happiness right now. Just the thought of that brings
happiness. But here's the difference. It's one thing to imagine it,
and it's another thing to experience it. We can only imagine what it's
going to be like to behold His face in righteousness. But the moment we experience
it, It will change us forever. The moment we behold His face
in righteousness, it will change us forever. And the reason is
because we will see Him as He is. And we'll be just like Him. That's what we can expect to
look forward to. The moment, the time that our
departure comes. And that's why Paul said, I'm
ready. He said, I'm ready to be offered. The time of my departure
is at hand. When our time comes, we will
be ready. I'm going to close with this,
but I'm going to tell you this. When our time comes, we will
be ready. My mother passed away the morning
of November the 25th, 2000. Not very shortly before that. It wasn't far at all. We were
in the living room together. I was on the couch. She was in
her chair. We were both reading the word. And all of a sudden she started
laughing. And I said, I said, what is it? She said, nothing.
And she just had this big old smile on her face, and I said,
really, what is it? She said, no, I can't tell you. I said,
well, you got my curiosity up. Really, what is it? She said,
I'm getting excited. I'm getting so excited. When our time comes, You will
want it. You will be excited. If it's
not your time, you can't enter into that. You don't really want
it. You think you want it. But when
it really is time, you're going to want it. You're going to be
excited. It's going to be the greatest moment of your life,
greatest thing that's ever happened to you. And for all eternity,
it's going to be glory and victory and happiness, contentment, perfection. It's going to be perfect. All
right, let's all stand together.