Transcription
As I look out across the vast number of grave markers in the cemetery, I wonder how many of them knew the Lord Jesus Christ. Many, uh, Christian men and women are buried here. I know because I labored with many of them. There are so many Christian missionaries, pastors, evangelists, lay people that are buried here. In their lifetime, they served Jesus Christ so effectively and extended the kingdom of God, and their work lives on today.
None of us like cemeteries because they remind us of very sad moments in our life when we laid to rest someone we dearly love. It's never easy to lose a family member, to lose a dear friend. And death is such an incredible reality. We realize the scripture says it's appointed unto man once to die, and after that, the judgment. Death is such a difficult experience. I have officiated at a graveside service for a child who died in infancy. A 16-year-old girl committed suicide. A 29-year-old mother, uh, left behind her grieving husband and two small daughters. Uh, it's not an easy experience, and we ask the question why. This side of eternity, we won't really know a lot of the answers to the question why. As humans, we all experience pain, Christians and non-Christians alike, but as Christians, we have this great hope of our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
I'm not being morbid, but in all probability, if the Lord doesn't come first, this will be the cemetery where my body also will be committed to the ground. When it's committed here, it will not remain here forever. For the scriptures give us this great assurance from Paul's writings to the Thessalonians: for the Lord will come down from heaven with a loud command, with a voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord. That's why our doctrinal statement says, "The resurrection of those who have fallen asleep in Christ and their translation together with those who are alive and remain under the coming of the Lord is the imminent and blessed hope of the church." That's the teaching of the Bible. I trust that I will be in that second shift, that I will be among the living when the Lord returns. Like the early church, I'm not looking for the undertaker, but I'm looking for the Upper. The Lord is going to descend from heaven, and many of these graves are going to be open on that day. What an incredible day that's going to be. This cemetery is going to look a lot different, as will cemeteries all over the world, as those who have trusted in Jesus Christ rise to meet the Lord in the air. And what an incredible reunion it's going to be. Not just with the Lord, but with those we love who've gone on before us: our mother and father, or brother or sister, or grandparent, or aunt or uncle, or cousin, or or friends. What an incredible joy to be reunited, not just for a short space of time like a day, but for all eternity.
You see, the coming again of Jesus Christ is the blessed hope of the church. Do you have that hope in you? If you were to die this day or if the Lord were to return, are you confident that your eternal home would be with Jesus in heaven? You see, hope has many definitions. One being hope as a wish, the other being hope as a stated reality. Standing in this cemetery, we are confronted with a powerful mystery. On the one hand, there are Christian bodies awaiting the resurrection. And on the other hand, the Apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians chapter 5:8 that we are away from the body and at home with the Lord. In these ten words, "away from the body and at home with the Lord," we learn that death is not the end. Purgatory does not exist, for there is no intermediate state, and reincarnation is not possible because we are with the Lord. And finally, the soul is not sleeping. We are with the Lord. We're faced with a question: How can we be at home with the Lord and yet our bodies be awaiting the resurrection? Scripture is clear that, uh, if we die first, we have a conscious awareness of the Lord's presence. I'm going to leave this mystery to an all-powerful Lord who will one day sort it out for us. But the key thing is simply this: At any moment, the Lord may call us home. Either through his coming and we're alive to meet him or through the gateway of death.
One day I visited one of our elderly prisoners when I was pastor. She was in the hospital. She was within a couple of days of death. She asked me, she said, "Pastor, do you think we're living at the end of time?" And I reflected on that question and I realized that she was living at the end of her time. And in reality, we're all living at the end of time because the Lord could come today, or he could take us home to be with him today by means of death. That's why I never get caught up in speculation about the when the end time is or who the antichrist is going to be because, as a factual matter, we're all living at the end of time. We're living at the end of our time. And the important thing is that we are ready.
In fact, when I look around the cemetery and see the grace of those who have died in Christ, I realize something very powerful coming from the Apostle Paul's words found in 2 Corinthians 5:4 where he says, "What is mortal may be swallowed up by life." So Christians who lie here buried have not been swallowed up by death, but have instead been swallowed up by life.
Several years ago, Billy Graham was being honored by his hometown in Charlotte, North Carolina, at a very special dinner. And after they said nice things about him, Billy Graham stepped to the rostrum and said, "Uh, at this dinner, I'm reminded of the great physicist, Dr. Albert Einstein, Time's Man of the Century, who one day got on a train out of Princeton, and the conductor came along fetching tickets. Einstein looked in his notebook, couldn't find his ticket, uh, then fumbled through his pockets, couldn't find his ticket, and finally the conductor said, 'Oh, Dr. Einstein,' he said, 'It's okay. I know I know who you are. It's fine. I I I know that you would have not gotten on this train without having bought a ticket.'" So, he went on his way through the cabinet until he got to the end, and he looked back, and Einstein was down on his hands and knees looking right underneath the seat for his ticket. And the conductor rushed back and said, "Oh, Dr. Einstein," he said, "Uh," he said, "It's okay." He said, "I know who you are." And Einstein looked at him and said, "Young man, I also know who I am. Uh, what I don't know is where I'm going." And, uh, Billy Graham, uh, made then said, you know, he said, "I have a brand new suit on today, and the next time you see me, we'll be with the suit on. We'll be in a casket." And he said, "But when you come, please know that I not only know who I am, but I know where I'm going."
Yes, as Christians, we do know where we're going. And our last trip is not down into the ground, but up into the air. I'm at the grave of my aunt and uncle, Victor and Ruth Pymire. Victor Plymire went to China to Tibet as a missionary in the year 1908 and served sixteen years before he had his first convert. He came home and married his sweetheart in 1920, had a child in 1921. And John David went back to that region of the world, and when John David was six years of age, he came down with smallpox, and then a week later his wife Grace also came down with smallpox. He buried them both in a single grave outside of town; there was no place for them in the town cemetery; their permission to bury was refused by the town fathers. The ground was frozen so hard in that bitter winter January 1927 that he had strength only to dig a single grave; he buried his boy and his wife in that grave, but he did not give up his work. In May, after burying his wife and child, he sat by that graveside and he wrote in his journal, "Until the furthest nook and corner of Tibet has heard the gospel, my work is not done until every last man, woman, boy, and girl has heard the story of redemption through Jesus Christ; my task is not finished." From that spot, the next day he launched out on a trek through Tibet and took eight months, distributed 100 copies of the Gospel of John, came over to the India side, circled back into China about a year later, met my mother and her sister who were both single, married my mother's sister sometime after that, they went back to Wyan and established the church there. We left in 1949 and never heard what happened to the church until in recent years we went back, and of course my uncle and all my parents are gone, but my cousin and I went back and discovered that the grave became the means of the resurrection of the church; for the present pastor there could not find a title to the church property, but my cousin and my uncle's missionary file found a title to the grave out on the edge of a Tibetan valley, and the title was vested in the name of the church, the Assembly of God Gospel Hall of Hyan. And on the strength of that title deed, the government returned the church property to the church. And sixty-four years later, that title deed became the means by which the church was allowed to reopen. And today, that church is growing and is bearing fruit for Christ.
It's been my cousin's custom for years when initiating a graveside ceremony to carry with me a morning glory seed pack. Uh, this seed pack illustrates what happens in death. Our body is like the seed that is planted in the ground. But it does. Our body at the moment of death doesn't look anything like it will be when it emerges through the resurrection. It's like the seed of the morning glory. The plant that is on the cover is not like the seed. But there's a connection between the seed and its future. The Lord is going to transform our bodies. Paul puts it this way in Philippians chapter 3:21. He says, "Who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body."
Are you living with hope? Are you living with daily expectation that this could be the day? I hear echoing across the centuries the words of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:51 and 52. Listen: I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. What a day that will be.