How to Face Death Confidently Part 2

Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to Face Death Confidently Part 2. He will be reading out of 2nd Corinthians 5:1-8.

Jesus Christ brings hope to all who love Him and believe in Him. We can have confidence because we have a future hope. We live confidently in this world with all of its problems and all of its issues because of a future hope with Jesus Christ.

Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders with Hope Worth Having. We’re going to be back into 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verses 1 through 8 and we’re still studying how to face death confidently. We know that God has a purpose in our life and that when His plan for our life has come to an end here on this earth, then He promotes us to heaven.

But yet God wants us to see heaven as something that we are gaining, not something that we are losing. So I want you to join me as we dig in and learn more about how to face death confidently. The Spirit of God has been put into our hearts, guaranteeing what is to come.

God Himself is preparing us for the experience of putting off immortality and embracing eternity. As a down payment, He is guaranteeing the Holy Spirit in our lives and He has given us this inner resource that we might be sustained and to be able to move forward for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now let’s understand that because the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which indwells every believer, every believer that confesses Christ as Lord, every person that has put their faith in Jesus Christ has the Spirit of God living in them.

This indwelling Spirit in your heart and my heart is a foretaste of What is to come when we live with Jesus Christ forever and ever and ever? Think of it in this way, that there have been many moments and times in your heart that as you have read the scriptures, that the fullness of the spirit has so captured your emotions and your thoughts, that you were overflowing with joy and that you were so illuminated with his truth and his promises.

That is a down payment to what is to come. That is that God is promising us through his spirit that there is coming a fullness that is incomparable in this world. There is coming a presence of God that is so full and delightful and joyful for the believer and that it’s not momentary It is not just high points in your walk with Christ, but it is constant, it is consistent every day as you live in the presence of Jesus Christ.

So we have the treasure of eternity awaiting us in heaven, but until then, God has given us the Spirit, the Holy Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come for every believer. Now the problem is we as believers don’t always live in the fullness of the Spirit.

And the problem is not that somehow you and I need to go out and get more of the Spirit because you have all the Spirit that you need. For the fullness of the Spirit already lives in you, but it’s just a matter, does the Spirit have you?

And the key to you enjoying the fullness of the Spirit and walking in the Spirit and being filled with the Spirit, the key is your life being fully surrendered to Jesus Christ. So many believers are discouraged.

So many believers are ready to give up and quit because they are not walking in the Spirit. They choose rather to walk in the flesh. The flesh will let you down. The flesh will fail you. But you as a believer, you have the resource of the Spirit of God.

And the Spirit of God will not leave you comfortless, but rather just the opposite. It is the Spirit of God who comforts us when we are grieving. It is the Spirit of God who guides us as we are seeking the will of God.

It is the Spirit of God who even prays for us that when we cannot articulate the right words to. of Jesus Christ because our heart is so burdened or so overwhelmed with the emotions. The Bible teaches us that the Spirit of God takes our groanings from our heart.

It is not a special, special spiritual language, it’s just the Spirit of God knows our hearts and reveals our prayers and our hearts to an Almighty God and an advocate named Jesus Christ who loves and cares for us and he reveals that request unto him.

The Spirit of God illuminates us. The Spirit of God helps me to understand the Bible. When you come to the Scriptures, you should open your Bible and pray. The first thing you should do is pray. People say, Pastor, I don’t understand the Bible.

Pray, my friends, open the Bible and pray. God, help me to understand your word. Help me to understand the insights and what you want me to learn. It is the Spirit of God that illuminates His truth. So much that the Bible said you don’t even need a teacher, not that you shouldn’t have a pastor.

I don’t wanna get rid of the pastor, amen? We don’t wanna get rid of our Bible study leaders, our Sunday school teachers. But the point is this, that it is the Spirit of God. You don’t have to always have a teacher.

You don’t always have to have your pastor there teaching you the Bible 24 seven. Because you have the greatest teacher already living inside of you. It is the Spirit of God. And if you and I would just seek the Spirit of God, if we would surrender to the Spirit of God, if we would pray and ask the Spirit of God to help us understand.

He would illuminate our minds. He would help us to understand the spiritual truths of God’s word. I want you to understand the Bible teaches us also that the Spirit helps us not only as we pray into God, relating to the burdens and the heaviness of life, but the Bible just teaches us in general that we are to know that we have the access and resource of the Spirit in general prayer.

The Bible teaches us to pray in the Spirit, to pray in the Spirit. Why do you feel that sometimes your prayer life is anemic? Why do you feel sometimes that your prayer life is so powerless? It is because again, you are praying in the flesh.

But time and time again, God invites us to pray in the Spirit. How is it that we pray in the Spirit? It’s not magical. It’s not even mystical. It’s not something that all of a sudden the heavens part and this great emotional experience happens in your life.

But it is again the believer surrendering to God, asking the Spirit of God to guide their prayer life. prayer life, to guide their words as they pray in the Spirit, that you would call upon the Spirit of God.

It is okay to pray to the Spirit of God and to pray that the Spirit of God would help you to pray what you should pray and how you should pray. The Bible not only teaches us that the Spirit is a resource in relating to our prayer life and encouragement and helping us to lift our hearts to God, but it is the Spirit who gives us an unction.

That is that He gives us a desire to want to obey God, to want to live for God, the unction of the Spirit, the anointing of the Spirit. Sometimes the Scripture refers to it. So in this life, we need that unction.

We need that anointing because if you’re like me and maybe you’re a little bit different and now I guess we’re all a little bit different, right? But there are times we just don’t feel like doing the right thing or we don’t like feel like that we need to get out and do this for Christ and do that for Christ.

And that is only normal and natural in the flesh. We get tired. We get weary physically. And sometimes even our spirit is defeated and deflated and we need the anointing and the unction of the Spirit of God to birth within us a passion for God and the energy to accomplish what God wants us to do.

So we seek the unction of the Spirit. We seek the anointing of the Spirit. We seek that He would drive us and move us and motivate us that we might be all that He has called us to be for the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is the Spirit that helps us as we are teaching the Bible. Whether we’re teaching it to our children or to a Sunday school class or a Bible study group, whatever it is or one on one in mentoring and discipling others, it should be the desire of our heart that the Spirit of God would fill us and He would anoint us and give us the unction to articulate what He wants in our life to communicate to those who are listening and learning.

When we come to the pulpit, we are constantly praying that the Spirit of God would anoint us and fill us with His unction to communicate His word to you in such an effective way that you could understand it and apply it to your life and that it would be transformative in your life.

That is not just for the pastor. That is for every mother and father. That is for every grandma and grandpa. That is for every Bible teacher. That is for every… Every person that God is calling us to communicate His word, whether one -on -one, small groups, but whatever the circumstance may be.

Now, we’re learning how to face death confidently. We do it as we think of a great deal about heaven. And I would encourage you to read about heaven, study about heaven, learn so much about heaven. Don’t be afraid.

There’s a great book out there that I want every one of you to get. It’s written by Randy Alcorn and it’s just simply entitled, Heaven. Go to Amazon this afternoon or go to your wonderful bookstore and you find it and you get it.

And I’m going to tell you, it is so good. It is so rich as he cross -references every truth he teaches about heaven in the Bible. You will be blessed beyond measure and you could even use that book. As your devotion teachers, you can use that book.

to teach about heaven in your classes. But I want you to know that. But we are confident because we think a great deal about heaven. We are confident because we draw on an inner resource of what God has given us in the power of the Holy Spirit in our life.

But thirdly, and finally, we are confident because we have a future hope. Look at verse six. Now after teaching us about heaven, this new body that is to come, after teaching us about this great resource, the earnest of the Spirit, the down payment of the Holy Spirit of God living inside of every believer, he says in verse six, therefore we are always confident.

As a result of what God has for us, as a result of what God has already given us, we are confident. We are always confident knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.

For we walk by faith, not by sight. For we are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. Christians live in hope. We do not live in despair. I feel so bad for this world and this nation because they don’t have the hope of Jesus Christ.

I feel sad for so many people who are looking for the answers to politicians, only to find that these politicians let them down over and over again. I have to be honest, it reminds me of Lucy setting up the football for Charlie Brown.

And he thinks he’s gonna, this time, this is it. This is gonna be the time. He gets to kick the football only to see that she pulls it back and he goes twirling into the air and falls flat on his face.

And I feel like that is where so many people are. And it is disheartening to me because I know it doesn’t have to be that way, does it? It doesn’t have to be that way because Jesus Christ brings hope to all who love Him and believe in Him.

And this morning, I want you to know that we can have confidence because we have a future hope. We live confidently in this world with all of its problems and all of its issues. We live confident because of a future hope with Jesus Christ.

Now, again, Romans 8 .23 says this, not only that, but we also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption. the redemption of our body.

Now, when we think of redemption or salvation, I want you to understand it in three different phases of your Christian life. And that is first that there is that moment that you are justified before God.

That is that you came to Christ, you repented of your sins and you believed in Christ. You may not have understood all the dynamics of what Christ has done for you, but you knew in your heart that you were a sinner and you knew in your heart that God loved you and that Christ came to this earth, sent by the Father, died on the cross for you, and that if you would believe in Him, He would forgive you of your sins.

You knew that, you understood that, and it was the Spirit of God that helped you to understand that. And that is what we often refer to as justification. That is the inception, that is the beginning of your salvation.

And so unfortunate that many Christians stop right there. But the second phase of your Christian life is where you’re at right now. It is the sanctification of your life. It is that God is setting you apart to be distinct and different in this world, that you do not think like the world, you do not behave like the world, you do not respond like the world, that you are different and that you have a living hope that is within you because you have a living Savior.

You have a hope within you because you don’t look to the world for your answers, you look to Christ. You don’t look to this world being the end. You don’t think that this is all there is to live for, but you know there is so much more and that’s why you have this hope within you as you walk in this life.

But I want you to understand. there is a third and final phase and it is called the glorification of the believer. The first being justification and then sanctification and then finally the glorification of the believer.

And this is what the apostle is teaching us about as we read in Romans 8 23 waiting for the adoption of the redemption of our body. There’s coming a day church when your body is saved. Now your soul and spirit has been saved and you are being sanctified.

You are being made more and more into the image of Christ day by day as you walk in this life. But there’s coming a day when your body will be saved. But in order for your body to be saved, the glorification of the believer, you got to lay down this whole body so God can give you a new body.

And that is why he says we are eagerly waiting for the redemption of our body. We are waiting for that. We desire that. Now what is so unique about these phases that God has given to us is that when we are justified, we are saved from the penalty of sin, okay?

When we are justified as we become more like Christ, we are saved from the power of sin because as I grow to be more like Jesus, I can say no to the world, no to the devil, no to sin, no to the flesh, and yes to Jesus Christ through the power of the Spirit of God that lives in me.

But one day, I’m gonna be saved from the presence of sin. You see, sin is all around us, church. It’s all around us in this world. There’s temptations, there’s trials, there’s problems. We live in a sin -cursed world.

And if you are dissatisfied with this world, join the group of believers that are also dissatisfied with this world. If you are disheartened with the direction of this nation, then my friends join in with the rest of us who are disheartened with the direction of this nation.

But we refuse to be defeated because we are confident, because our confidence in the future means that we have a strong anticipation of what is to come. One day, church, we are gonna get out of this mess as much as we love America and as much as we love our families and we love our friends.

One day, God is gonna escort us out of this world and God’s people can rejoice in that. The Bible says we’re at home in the body. We are absent from the Lord. Now, that almost seems like a contradiction relating to what we’ve already been taught.

But what he is saying is this, while you’re in this body, you are absent from the physical presence of Jesus. Right now, you and I are absent from the physical presence, and he wants us to know that while we’re at home in this body, absent from the physical presence of the Lord, what are we to do?

We are to serve Christ down here. We are to win the lost. We have an eagerness in our heart that we want to get out of this mess, but we are conflicted because we want to see more people go to heaven, don’t we?

We want to see more people come to Jesus. We want to encourage God’s people. We want to do the work of Christ on this earth. And while we’re at home in this body… And absent from the physical presence of Christ, this is what we do.

Note again the Scriptures. Please come back to verse 7. We walk by faith, church, not by sight. See, if you walk by sight, you’re going to be let down, aren’t you? If you walk by Fox News, CNN, and all the other news channels, you talk about you might as well just give up.

But you and I, we’re different. We walk by faith. Spurgeon, Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher of the 18th century said, those who walk by sight walk alone. Walking by sight is just this, I believe in myself.

Whereas walking by faith is I believe in God. We walk by faith, we don’t have his physical presence with us, but we have his spiritual presence with us. We have him with us and we walk by faith, not by all that’s going on around us.

Our hope in Jesus is the motivation that drives us to work for Christ, witness for Christ in a world that has become so dark. We walk by faith. We live intentionally in a way that is contrary to this world.

The world wants you to buy into their narrative and the world wants you to be down on everything. The world wants you to be negative. The world wants you to be insecure. But Jesus wants you to be confident in him.

He wants you to walk in hope. He wants you to have the joy of the Lord in your life. He wants you to be excited on what is to come. Now this is important. We live intentionally. We live intentionally church.

We choose that we will walk by faith. We make the decision every day. that we will walk by faith the devil will dangle many sites in front of us but we refuse to walk by sight we refuse to be enticed by the things of this world and we have chosen that in the ordinary life of a Christian that we choose to live by faith because that living by faith is different from the life of the world and the reason that we live differently because we live by faith is because we have learned to introduce faith into everything that we do we live by faith the mundane things and responsibilities of life are all done in faith we have high moments of joy and excitement they are done in faith but we have low moments average moments I mean the Christian life is not in fifth gear 24 seven But no matter what it is and what role we have and responsibilities we have in life, we have learned that we introduce faith into everything that we do.

And so that is why we can have so much hope, because we do not walk by sight, but rather we walk by faith. And then you’ll notice that great last set of words, to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

Now, the ground of our confidence lies in the fact that one day we’re gonna be home with Jesus. One day, every day, day by day, you know, we live by faith. We do our thing by faith. Whatever God called us to do, we may be the guy that mops the phone on the floor, but we do it by faith.

We may be the person who is out there doing our job and we do it by faith. But as we do it, we know to be absent from this body is to be present with God. Remember this church, there is no in between.

There is no going to, you know, some special place like Purgatory and that you need all your friends and family to pray you to get out of that Purgatory. Friends, all that is necessary for your salvation to be in the presence of Jesus has already been accomplished on the cross.

Do not diminish the atoning work of Christ by believing in foolishness like Purgatory. For all that you have put your faith in, in what Christ has done on the cross for you and through his resurrection is culminated in the moment that God calls you out of this world, out of this body and he presents you into the presence of Jesus.

Christ and you my friends are living in the joy of his kingdom and the fullness of his presence and again I know you get tired of me saying this but please please dwell and meditate on this verse in Psalm 1611 in thy presence in thy presence in thy presence is what church fullness of what joy that’s right in thy presence is fullness of joy when you get to heaven you’re not gonna be let down you’re not gonna be disappointed and none of our loved ones are none of them are let down but we hold on to the hope of what the Hebrew writer taught us here we have no continuing city here on this earth Hebrews 1314 we have no continuing city but we seek one we seek one to come now let me just close with this church Many of us may struggle with doubt.

You may doubt in your heart. You may have a sense of insecurity, inferiority. You may be wrestling with fear in your life. But listen, the Bible says if God is for us, who can be against us? And today, before you leave, I want you to know that I’m ordaining each and every one of you as a believer.

To preach a sermon to yourself. I can’t be around you 24 -7. You probably wouldn’t want me 24 -7. Okay? I’d get on your nerves. You pray for Terry. But today, I deputize you to preach to the hardest congregation of all, yourself.

I implore you to preach to yourselves the truth of God’s Word. And here’s your sermon. I am full of confidence today because God the Father has a house for me in the heavens not built by human hand. I am full of confidence today because God the Spirit lives within me and He is a divine deposit of what is to come for me.

I am full of confidence today because God the Son has given meaning to my life as I seek to please Him whether in life or death because He gave His life for me. And I remind you, if all of the Godhead, if all of the Trinity is for you, who can be against you?

Well, these old bodies of ours, they’re not gonna last forever and so we understand that our bodies a tent and one day we’re gonna lay down that tent and we’re gonna embrace an imperishable body, a brand new body that God has for us, and we look forward to that day and that’s what the Apostle wants us to remember as we keep everything in perspective of God’s beautiful purpose for our lives, not only on earth, but as we transition to our eternal life with Jesus Christ because of our faith in Him as our Lord and Savior.

I want to make sure you check out our YouTube channel that is on Hope Worth Having YouTube. Just type in Hope Worth Having and I want you to subscribe to our channel and you’ll get a notification every time we upload new stuff.

Almost every week we’re uploading new stuff, a lot of good content, a lot of information, a lot of different things we’ve preached on, and this sermon itself is right there. You could go back, you can search it, and you can have a chance to hear this sermon in its entirety.

So take advantage of that and I know it will be a blessing to you. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.