Minister: Marv Vose

Mark 12:18-27        

Lord Thompson of Fleet was one of the greatest publishers of hisera.  At one time he owned some 285 publications in England, Scotland,Canada and the United States. 

One day, he invited a group of distinguished editors, writers andbusinessmen to a luncheon in the sumptuous dining room of The Times inLondon.  He also invited one clergyman--Norman Vincent Peale.  You may ormay not be familiar with that name, but for decades he dominated thereligious landscape of America.  He wrote the book entitled, The Power ofPositive Thinking.  It was a bestseller and sold millions of copies.  Peoplestill enjoy reading it today.  He wrote about faith, but he called it by adifferent name.  He spoke and published and had a tremendous impact on thelives of people.  So he fit right in with this prestigious crowd.      

The conversation ranged over a wide variety of themes--worldaffairs, politics and the economy.  Suddenly in the midst of all of thisgood-natured banter, Thomson said, "Dr. Peale, I am an old man, and one ofthese days I'm going to die."  The room suddenly became quiet.  Thomsoncontinued.  "I want to know: is there an afterlife?"  (The Positive Power ofJesus Christ, by Norman Vincent Peale)

That's a good question, isn't it?  A really good question.  And mostof us have asked it at one time or another.  Maybe we asked the questionwhen we lost a loved one.  Maybe we were thinking about our own lives.Maybe we asked someone else or maybe it was just one of those internalquestions we asked of ourselves.        

But what would you do if someone asked you the question?  How wouldyou answer the question?  What would you say?  Would you get red in the facewith sweaty palms and then mumble something under your breath like, "I'm notreally sure."  Or would you say, "I don't know much about things like that.Why don't you go ask my minister?"   

Would you be more confident and refer to scripture and say, "This iswhat I believe about an afterlife, because this is what the Bible says!"  Orwould you use your own experience and say, "This is what I have experiencedand this is what my experience leads me to believe."  Would you say that?       

It's an important question, isn't it? It's one that everybody askssooner or later.  You may not get asked the question, but everyone asks itof someone. Or maybe they just ask it of themselves.   

It's a question that has been around for a long, long time.  And itis a universal question.  If you have ever gone to Egypt and seen thePyramids, you know that they were constructed to help the person who diedmake the transition into the next life.  All of the loot and all of thepeople embedded in the pyramid were supposed to make the next life better.     If you go to China, you'll want to see the terra cotta warriors.They were discovered in 1974 when a villager was digging for water, but whata find!  There are thousands upon thousands of these full-size warriors madefrom clay.  And each one is unique-none of them are the same.  They stand inrow after row after row.  There are archers and horsemen and warriorscarrying spears.  When they were first made all of them were painted, butover the years the paint has faded.  All of those warriors were designed toprotect their king when he died and went into the next life.  Fascinating,isn't it?           

Jesus was confronted with the same issue.  The Sadducees came with ahypothetical question.  Actually, it wasn't much of a question.  It wasreally a set-up.  They were trying to make the idea of another life lookridiculous.          

This passage of scripture is absolutely fascinating, but it takes alittle bit of background to understand it.  The Sadducees were the oneasking the question.  They were a relatively small religious party.  Most ofthem were priests at the temple.  They were wealthy and sophisticated.  Manyof them collaborated with the Romans during the occupation.  And they onlyused the Pentateuch for their scripture.  That was all that they foundauthoritative.  If you are unfamiliar with the Pentateuch, it is the firstfive books of our Bible.  Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers andDeuteronomy.  And in those first five books of the Bible, they said therewas no reference to the resurrection of the dead, so this life was all therewas!  That was their position.           

So they came to Jesus with a hypothetical question that would affirmtheir point of view.  They ask him what is supposed to happen if there areseven brothers.  The first one dies without children, so the second brothermarries the widow.  That was the old law and it was designed to carry on thefamily name and hang on to the family's property.  And so in theirhypothetical question, they make all 7 brothers die.  And then they want toknow whose wife she is supposed to be in the next life!  They assume anyanswer would be absurd.     Jesus is really blunt with them.  He says, in essence, "You don'tknow the Bible or God's power."  Marriage is out.  We are like angels-notangels-but like them.     And then Jesus makes an argument that sounds really strange to us,but it would have made perfect sense to the Sadducees.  He quotes from theBook of Exodus, which the Sadducees considered authoritative.  He talksabout the burning bush and how God said to Moses, "I am the God of Abraham,the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."  And since He is God of the livingand not the dead, all of those folks must be alive! 

Now, that may not convince us, but it was a brilliant argument forthe Sadducees!  It used their scripture.  It used the rabbinic way ofdebate.  It is absolutely brilliant.  Now if Jesus were answering our question today, he might very welluse a different approach, because we think differently and we have adifferent culture and a different mindset.   

If Jesus were talking to us today, he might just use common sense.And common sense is something we understand! Try this on for common sense.If we believe in a loving God, there is really no alternative, but to havean afterlife.  Let me explain what I mean.  I spent 7 years building acomputer desk. It really did take me that long.  I may be slow, but I'm notvery good either!  Anyway, I would work a few minutes here and an hourthere, so it took a long time.  I was the one who bought the oak.  I was theone who cut up all of the pieces.  I was the one who sanded and finished allof the wood.  I put it together.  I glued all of the pieces together.  Ittook me about 7 years to get all of that done, because I didn't have a wholelot of time.  It took so long that I had to move twice during the buildingof that desk.  We would move and I would bind up those pieces of oak andcarry them to the next place. But finally, after 7 years, it was done.  Itwasn't perfect.  There are lots of flaws in it, but I made it.  I like it!I had done it.           

Now let's try to imagine this scene.  Let's say I get the desk doneand I invite over my carpentry friends to look at it.  We all admire it andcheck out all of the imperfections and then I ask one of the guys with apickup truck if he will help me.  He agrees and we load that desk into theback of his pickup.  We drive out to the landfill east of town, pay the feeand drive into the landfill, get out of the truck and dump the desk into thelandfill.  Then we drive off leaving my pride and joy sitting there in thelandfill amidst all of the trash and garbage.    

Now what do you think the chances of that happening are?  NONE!  Itwould never happen!  I invested 7 years of my life in that desk.  I paid forthe oak.  I worked the wood!  I'm not tossing it!  No Way!  In fact, thatcomputer desk sits in my office and I enjoy it everyday!           

Now let's shift.  God creates you.  God gives you life.  God spendsyour entire lifetime growing you up in faith, developing you into a more andmore Christ-like person.  And then at the end of you life, God just dumpsyou?  I don't think so!  If I wouldn't do that to a computer desk, Godcertainly wouldn't do that to one of His own!  It's just common sense.

You could use scripture to answer a question about the afterlife.You could use this scripture we read today or you could use lots of others.The Apostle Paul was very clear that there is another life.  In his firstletter to the church in Corinth, he says, "If only for this life we havehope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.  But Christ hasindeed been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of those who have fallenasleep."  The resurrection of Jesus was the cornerstone of Paul's faith.The afterlife was fundamental in all of his beliefs and in the beliefs ofthe early Christian church.          

A mother was watching her two children play next door.  They werebuilding a house there and the basement had been dug out so there was a bighole.  As Mom washed dishes, she watched her son take a little doll, putsome water on it and then toss it into the big hole.  Then his little sisterwould run down into the hole, get the doll and bring it back up.  Then theywould repeat it all over again.  Now Mom is a good Mom, so she issuspicious!  She goes outside and asks, "What are you playing?"  Theyrespond, "We are playing baptism."  So the Mom says, "Do it again for me."The little sister brings the doll up again, hands it to her brother, whosprinkles it with water, waves his hands over it and says, "In the name ofthe Father and the Son and In the Hole He goes" and then he tossed the dollinto the hole.  Don't you just love that story?    But you see the point.  Why would God invest so much in us and thencast us aside after the brief little life we lead on this planet? If that iswhat we believe, then we are indeed worthy of pity.  But we don't.  We knowwe have eternity.          

Would you like to know how Rev. Peale answered the question?  Atfirst he wasn't sure, Lord Thomson was serious, but when he sensed that thiswas a genuine question, he replied this way.  He said, "I believe in thepromises in the Bible. But beyond the Biblical is the evidence ofintelligence and common sense."  Then he proceeded to tell this littleparable.  He said, "Suppose someone came to an unborn baby and said, ' Youcannot stay here long.  In a few months you will be born, or as you maythink of it, die out of your present state.'           

"The baby might stubbornly say, 'I don't want to leave here.  I'mwarm, loved and happy.  I don't want to be what you call born, or what Icall died, out of this place.'         But the baby is born.  He does die out of his present life.  Andwhat does he find?  He feels strong, loving arms beneath him.  He looks upand sees a beautiful face, tender with love.  He is welcomed and cared forand says, 'How foolish I was.  This is a wonderful place to which I havecome.      

But the years pass and eventually he becomes an old man.  Someonesays, 'You are going to die, or as we call it, be born out of this placeinto another.'  And you can guess what the response is.  I don't want toleave this place.  I love this world--the dawn and sunset, the moon, thestarlight. But in due time, he does leave this place and finds himself in anew place filled with goodness and grace.  And before long he will exclaim,'Why this is wonderful!  Here I want to remain forever.'  It makes sense,doesn't it?           

We know that is the right answer.  There is something deep downinside of us that tells us for certain that eternity is ours.  ThorntonWilder in one of his plays has a character say this.  "I don't care whatthey say with their mouths--everybody knows that something is eternal.  Andit ain't houses, and it ain't names, and it ain't earth and it ain't evenstars...Everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal and thatsomething has to do with human beings.  All the greatest people who everlived have been telling us that for five thousand years...There is somethingway down deep that's eternal about every human being."  We know that isright, don't we?  When we are willing to dig deep enough, we know that isthe answer and what joy there is in that! 

But Lord Thomson wasn't quite finished yet.  He had anotherquestion.  He asked, "Do you think I will like it over there?"  That's agood question, isn't it?  What do you think the answer to that was?  Whatwould your answer be?          

Come back next week and we'll talk about it!