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"IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH?"
Intro: What are some of the questions that have been occupying your mind lately. Shall I change jobs? Did I buy enough and the right back to school clothes? Who shall we invite over this week? What if you were too sick to work! And your children were all killed in a car accident; and you had no friends to invite for you had no home?
I. QUESTION IS BORN FROM DESPAIR.
A. Job had been stripped of his family, possessions, health.
1. Life too painful.
a. Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble. He blossoms as a flower and is then cut down.
2. No hope for man.
a. If the tree is cut down it may come up again sprouting out of the trunk.
b. When man is cut down, that is all.
B. What if this life is all there is?
1. Life is a mistake, it would be better if it wasn't.
2. Life is not fair.
a. Good people often suffer.
b. Bad people often prosper.
C. "If a man die...if I knew there was a continuation of life in another dimension or sphere then I would just wait for my change to come."
D. No answer for Job's question.
1. Years later age of philosophy born.
2. Still no answer till.
II. JESUS SAID TO MARTHA "I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE."
A. A most radical statement.
1. "If a man lives and believes in Me he will go on living."
2. Job asked, "if a man dies does he go on living?"
3. Jesus answers, yes! Provided he believes in Me.
4. Jesus challenged Martha, "do you believe this?"
a. Immediately the line is drawn that divides men, those who believe-don't.
1. Those who have eternal life-not.
2. Those who have hope-no.
B. What did Jesus mean?
1. The Bible teaches that the real me is spirit.
a. The body is not the real me, a tent in which I live for a while as I wait for my mansion to be prepared.
b. The body was designed to express me, the medium by which I can express myself.
c. When through age, accident, disease or whatever may incapacitate my body so that it can not fulfill its functions God will release me from this body.
1. Jesus when on the cross dismissed His Spirit from His body.
2. He said no man takes My life, I give it.
d. For the one who believes in Jesus Christ death: is only a metamorphosis-a change of body.
1. As when a butterfly emerges from the cocoon.
2. The caterpillar designed for one environment earth, walking, he may get tired of walking and try to fly. His body limits him.
e. Even so I will move from my tent into my house.
II Cor. 5
f. What kind of body will we have?