Word of Salvation – March 2025
What Happens When We Die?
Sermon by Rev. John Westendorp on W.C.F. ch.32 & 2Corinthians 4:16-5:9
Reading: 2Corinthians 4:16 – 5:9; Ecclesiastes 12:1-8
Westminster Confession of Faith – ch.32
Singing: BoW.367 O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder
– BoW.429 Seek ye first the Kingdom of God
– BoW.211 I love You Lord
– BoW.090a O God our help in ages past
Theme: The Biblical revelation of what happens after believers die and before the end time judgment comes.
Introd: In 2007 in the US, someone did a survey on people’s expectations about what happens after we die.
It showed that most people believe in heaven and most people expect to go there.
Some 86% of those surveyed believed in heaven. Of these 88% believed they will go there
However only 29% said that it is people who believe in Jesus who will go to heaven.
A further 10% thought that everyone gets to go there.
The figures for Australia are probably considerably lower.
Our society is arguably more secular and non-Christian.
We have atheists and secularists who say there is nothing after death. We just cease to be.
Many Aussies have been influenced by Eastern mysticism and they believe in reincarnation.
That is becoming an increasingly popular view in our day and age.
(At a funeral eulogy I attended someone spoke of the deceased coming back as a dolphin).
We also have many in our society who confess that they just do not know.
I have a newspaper clipping from a journalist who lost her sister-in-law in an accident.
She writes:
”There was a phone call in the night. There was a car accident on Dandenong Road.
Sue died. Where is she now? She’s nowhere. Perhaps that’s what death is – being nowhere.”
The article ends with the same haunting question: “Where is she now…?”
For so many people today death is just a huge question mark.
Many who talk about heaven just hope that what they’ve heard about it is true.
But press them on the matter… and they’re not sure anymore. It’s a big mystery.
We who know our Bible don’t have to ask where we go after death.
Scripture is very clear on what happens and where we end up.
A] DEATH AS SEPARATION.
- In the O.T. the details about the afterlife are rather sketchy.
It does tell us a few things though… and even those few things are already encouraging for us.
A good place to start is that interesting twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes.
It’s a call to remember our Creator in the days of our youth.
And then it has that very vivid picture of people ageing and eventually dying.
Death is pictured there in poetic terms that are rather stark and graphic.
It speaks of it in terms of the silver cord being severed.
Our live hangs by a thread… and one day that thread is cut.
It speaks of it as the golden bowl being broken.
Our lives are like a precious golden bowl but that bowl breaks one day.
When we die it’s like a pitcher being smashed at the spring.
Or it’s like a wheel that now lies there broken and useless.
And then the writer makes this very telling remark about what happens after we die:
“Then the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”
Here is the Biblical teaching that we human beings are made up of two parts.
Back in Genesis 2 God made us from the dust of the earth and then breathed a spirit into us.
We consist of body and spirit.
(Here I won’t get side-tracked by a discussion of the difference between soul and spirit.)
According to Ecclesiastes you consist of both.
A body made from the dust of the earth and a spirit given by God.
And in that way God made us to live in fellowship with Him for ever and ever.
But things went horribly wrong in Genesis 3.
We sinned and ate from the forbidden tree… and a punishment was attached to that.
God had said: ”The day you eat of it you will surely die.”
So after his rebellion God told Adam that he would return to the ground.
“…since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
IOW: After death our body breaks down and returns to the elements we were made from.
- But the writer of Ecclesiastes knows something that is not said in Genesis 3.
He has learned that the spirit returns to God who gave it. There is a part of us that lives on.
So at death a separation takes place… a separation of body and spirit.
In 2 Corinthians 5 Paul speaks of death as being absent from the body.
Paul agrees: Body and soul are temporarily separated… the body decays but the spirit lives on.
This teaching that the spirit returns to God who gave it is already wonderfully encouraging.
It puts the lie to those sad words of that journalist.
She wrote:
Where is she now? She’s nowhere. Perhaps that’s what death is – being nowhere.
Wrong! Already back in the OT the author of Ecclesiastes knew better.
There is a part of us that is not extinguished at death.
There is a spiritual part of us that returns to God.
So these words of Ecclesiastes contradict the materialist who believes that death is the absolute end.
We don’t only exist on a physical and material level.
We live also at a spiritual level… and that is true even after we die.
From the rest of the Bible we know that this spirit existence is a state of incompleteness.
It has to be: God made us body and soul. They belong together.
So this time of separation is abnormal – and therefore it is temporary.
Ecclesiastes doesn’t tell us that… we have to wait for the fuller revelation of the N.T.
B] TWO SOUL DESTINIES.
- In fact there are some other problems with Ecclesiastes 12.
Notice that it makes no distinction between believer and unbeliever.
You have that profound poetry about the silver cord and the golden bowl.
But that applies equally to believer and unbeliever… churchgoer and atheist.
In fact that’s part of the warning of this chapter of Ecclesiastes.
It is a call to remember one’s Creator in the days of one’s youth.
It’s calling people to sort things out with God before it’s too late.
And the bottom line of that is that after death your spirit returns to God.
IOW you’d better be prepared for that moment when, in your spirit, you face God.
When we get to the N.T. we are given much more light on the subject.
God’s revelation of what happens after death has progressed.
In the meantime Jesus has come and He gave us additional teaching on the subject.
So we today know things that the writer of Ecclesiastes didn’t know.
So when we read Paul we find there words that are of immense comfort.
We even find Paul longing for that day when his spirit will be with God.
That’s especially because it will mean being with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul laments in vs.6 that while we are still at home in the body we are absent from the Lord.
And he says in vs.8 that he would rather be absent from the body and at home with the Lord.
It is because of this that the W.C.F. says that after death the believer is conscious, active and happy.
It says that we will be done with sin and will have been made perfect in holiness.
So we will be fit for God’s presence and see His face in light and glory.
At this point I have a disagreement with those Christians who believe in soul sleep.
They believe that at death we fall asleep and don’t wake up until Jesus comes.
I find that view very hard to reconcile with Paul’s language in Corinthians.
And the W.C.F. has no time for that view either.
It spells out loud and clear that the soul does not sleep.
- Of course all of this is dramatically different for the unbeliever.
Okay there are some similarities.
He too is conscious and active… but he will find himself in a state of punishment.
At death he commences a foretaste of the punishment awaiting him at the end time judgment.
We notice that particularly in the story Jesus told of the rich man and Lazarus.
The rich man finds himself in that place of punishment.
BTW I find it interesting that the story of the rich man and Lazarus is not spoken of as a parable.
In many ways it has all the marks of a parable.
But Luke does not begin by saying: Then Jesus told them this parable…!
It’s almost as if Jesus is giving us a glimpse of a real situation in hell that actually happened.
But in any case the situation of the rich man is very clear.
He is in torment… and he can do nothing about his situation.
And he is in that horrible place as a result of the life he lived on earth.
So for both believer and unbeliever Ecclesiastes 12 holds true:
“The dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”
For both there is a separation of body and spirit.
But that’s where the similarity ends.
The believer will find himself in a place more wonderful than we could ever imagine.
The unbeliever finds himself in a place that is worse than his worst nightmare.
That’s why I often cringe when I listen to the talk of the relatives of a deceased unbeliever.
They will often say: Well, at least his suffering is over!
No! If he died in rebellion against Jesus his sufferings are only beginning.
C] DESTINIES FIXED AND EXCLUSIVE.
- The point is that there are two distinctly different destinies… and those destinies are fixed.
Of course those destinies are – in a sense – not final.
Two other things still need to happen first before they become final.
– The resurrection of the body still needs to happen.
Those spirits that returned to God need to be reunited with their bodies.
– And the final end-time judgment still needs to happen.
God still wants to publicly declare why people find themselves in either of those places.
So they are not final but… they are irreversible. Someone has compared it to a sailboat out on the sea.
I’m amazed at the way a sailboat can sail almost into the wind.
But it all depends on the set of the sail.
If the sail is set correctly then it will make the harbour.
If the sail isn’t set properly then the boat will be lost out to sea.
So too the sails of life need to set to Jesus to make the harbour of eternal joy.
The point is that our eternal destiny is permanently set here and now in this life.
And when that separation of body and spirit takes place our destiny is fixed… forever.
The Bible knows nothing of people being given a second chance after they die.
That means that no Christian can be lost after death and no unbeliever saved after death.
The destiny was determined by the choices they made in this life.
And what happens at death
is just one more step in a move in totally opposite directions
that will be confirmed by God at the last Judgement.
- One other thing needs to be said at this point.
Our curiosity often gets the better of us… especially as children.
So our kids will often ask us where heaven really is… and where hell is.
And the truth of the matter is simply that we don’t know because we’re not told.
We have inherited the language of heaven being ‘up there’ and hell being ‘down below’.
But that doesn’t really make much sense when you think of us living on a globe.
That doesn’t mean that people haven’t tried to work it out.
In the Middle Ages a man called Dante wrote some poetry about heaven and hell.
And he included some very detailed maps of the various levels of hell.
Of course he was just guessing. He had a very vivid imagination.
For many years a story has circulated that people have scientific evidence of hell.
In Siberia the Russians supposedly drilled the deepest well ever drilled on earth.
They lowered microphones to record the sounds of the movement ion the earth’s crust.
But the story claims that what they actually picked up was sounds of people screaming in hell.
Apparently the scientists abandoned the drill sight in panic,
It’s a nice story and some people claim that it has led people to embrace the gospel.
But I’ve checked out the story and found that it’s one of those so called ‘urban legends’.
All we can say is that Jesus made clear that heaven and hell are real places.
But we don’t know the details.
And the location of these places isn’t important either.
What is important is to understand that there are no other options.
There are only these two destinies after death.
That means that a lot of other beliefs are simply cancelled out.
The Roman Catholic Church has always taught that there is a place called purgatory.
A place where we are supposedly cleansed of remaining sin.
Well, you’ll look in vain for any reference to that in the Bible.
They also have a theory that there is another place called limbo.
That’s supposed to be the place where unbaptised infants go when they die.
But again you’ll find no reference to that anywhere in Scripture.
It also means that there is no such thing as reincarnation.
Nor is annihilationism true (the teaching that we just cease to be).
There are only these two places: the place for those who die in the Lord.
And the place for those who die in rebellion against His holy majesty.
And at death when body and soul are separated it is either one or the other.
That’s why we need to remember our Creator in the days of our youth.
D] AT THE RESURRECTION.
- Of course there is going to be one exception to Ecclesiastes 12.
One instance… when life here on earth will end without the separation of body and spirit.
That exception is for all those who are still alive when Jesus returns.
Scripture teaches in 2Thessalonians that these people will transformed in an instant.
They will not experience death.
(Some years ago we were talking about this in a Bible study group.
And one of the folk there said: I hope I die before Jesus comes.
Because if I’m alive when Jesus returns I won’t get to experience death.
If I remember rightly he was on his own – we’d all prefer the option of instant transformation.)
However the point that 2Thessalonians wants to make is this.
That the dead will not miss out on the return of Jesus.
Paul says that when Jesus comes he will bring the righteous dead back with Him.
And those who are dead in Christ shall be raised to life.
So at the end of time God will recognise that body and spirit belong together.
And in some miraculous way our bodies will be raised from the dust and reunited with our soul.
We’ll be restored – and then in such a way that it will be to our real identity.
The resurrected you will be the recognisable person that you are. A unique creation.
But of course it will also be in a glorified form.
Here the model is Jesus Christ.
After His resurrection our Lord was still recognised as Jesus.
But He was also raised in glory without the usual human limitations.
And Scripture says that at the resurrection we will be like Him.
We’ll be fully human… but the way God originally made us to be – perfect in every way.
- The other thing that will happen at Jesus’ return is that the great separation shall take place.
IOW – that difference between believer and unbeliever will be formalised.
The end time judgment will take place.
That judgment is not to try and work out who will go where for all eternity.
No! That was already established in this life.
That was determined by people’s attitude to Jesus.
The Judgment Day will rather be a declaration of God’s justice.
It will make clear to the whole world why God saves those who trust in Jesus.
Just as it will make clear to all, God’s justice in condemning those who do not believe.
Scripture teaches that the wicked too will be raised.
But they will be raised to dishonour and to everlasting punishment (John 5:28,29).
And the sad thing about that is that Scripture gives us no reason to hope that it will end.
It’s telling, the words Scripture uses for the fate of those who die as rebels against God.
Their punishment is eternal… it’s everlasting… the fire never goes out.
The sobering reality is that there is no restoration from that fate.
This is something that you and I need not fear.
This is precisely why Jesus came to rescue us. He didn’t come just to be a good role model.
He didn’t come so that we could have health and wealth in this life.
He came to rescue us from an eternity without God and so that we might praise Him forever.
Amen.