It's never said in the Word of God that the soul of the believer sleeps. It's said that the believer sleeps. And that's significant because if we were to ascribe sleeping to any feature of our humanity, it might possibly be ascribed to our bodies, not our souls. You're listening to episode 138 of MidAmerica Reformed Seminary's Roundtable Podcast. In this broadcast, the faculty of MidAmerica discuss Reformed theology and cultural issues, all from a Reformed perspective. I'm Jared Luchaboard, Director of Marketing. Thank you for tuning in. Beginning today and for the next few weeks, you'll hear Dr. Cornelis Venema speak on matters of a heavenly nature. that being the intermediate state and the resurrection of the body. This comes from his spring evening class that he taught in 2015 titled, What Happens After I Die? And in today's episode, Dr. Venema elaborates on what death means for the Christian and examines two erroneous views associated with the death of believers, that being annihilationism and soul sleep. Check it out. We're going to be looking tonight at what sometimes is termed the intermediate state, which is just language used to describe what does the Bible teach happens to believers when they die and enter into the presence of the Lord in the period between their death and the resurrection that we anticipate as believers when Christ comes at the end of the age. they don't immediately find themselves closed with their resurrection bodies but the scriptures that I'm going to suggest to you tonight do does teach the scriptures do teach that believers enjoy to be at home in the body is to be away from the Lord says Paul in this passage to be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord so that will be our topic this evening and there we read For we know that if the tent, which is our earthly home, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened, not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the spirit as a guarantee. So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. I'm going to begin our topic, as I said a moment ago tonight, is what happens when a believer falls asleep in Jesus. What does the Bible tell us about that? What do we know? And what do we not know about that? I was talking recently with a very dear colleague in the ministry, an elderly pastor who had lost his wife not long ago. And he asked me that very question. He described the moments of her passing. She fell asleep peaceably in his presence, but very unexpectedly after a morning worship service. And he said, I just can't get that out of my mind and I would like to know what do you think she saw immediately was her experience upon her death? And I said to him, well, I'm not sure I can answer that question. So you might think that after this evening is over, I came tonight expecting this fellow. He knows more than I do. Perhaps he can give me the answer to all of my questions. Well, I have to tell you right up front that I'm not going to tell you anything that God has not first told us in his word. And what he has not told us, there I shall remain silent. But what he has told us is enough, and it's very, very good news. So I hope that at least encourages you a little bit. But I am not going to appeal, that's my point here, in this evening or any of our subsequent evenings together to what today is a very popular subject, what are termed often near-death experiences. I think there was recently a fellow who wrote a book about his near-death experience called Proof of Heaven. Now he's being challenged as to the veracity, the truthfulness of his experience and story, but we do not want to found our hope or base our expectation as Christians whether genuine or ingenuine, is not my point, upon the testimony that people make regarding this or that experience that they claim to have had. We have to, in the area of our topic, dealing with the future according to God's promise based on the gospel, we have to, as much as in any area whatsoever of Bible teaching, discipline our minds to say within the boundaries, the limits, of what God, who alone knows and can teach us concerning this topic. what is taught in the Word of God concerning death. Now I want to begin with some comments about, by way of introduction background to the question, how does the scripture, how do the scriptures regard and what do they teach us respecting the reality of death? You know, of course, that we live in a society, in a culture, it's not unique to ours, but it's certainly true of others as well, that does everything it can to avoid the topic. The topic is what happens after I die. I think it was the comedian, this is probably a bad thing for me to say, Woody Allen, who once quipped in one of his movies that, I'm not afraid of death, I just would rather not be there when it happens. It's a topic that we, as much as possible, suppress, we avoid. We find it uncomfortable. We don't address it head on. And yet, it is the most obvious, inescapable, unavoidable reality with which all of us will ultimately have to do. And it's interesting that in the word of God, the portrait of death is always that of an unmitigated evil. It is actually by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 denominated our last enemy. Why is that? Well, we were created for life. When God created us, as you know in the account given us in Genesis, and he placed us in Adam in paradise in that garden where he could enjoy communion with God and also exercise dominion over the creation and he was given a wife to be his companion a help to him to live in communion together with their God and in service glorifying him and enjoying him they were created for life they were not subject yet to death. Now Adam was not yet in a state of perfection. He did not yet enjoy that eternal life that signified in that tree. Remember in chapter 3 there's that tree of life from which Adam is not given access after he and Eve fell into sin, lest, as the passage says, they should live forever. because that tree has generally been regarded by interpreters of the scripture as a kind of sacrament or a sign, a visible testimony of that destiny and purpose for which God first created us in Adam that we should enjoy as in soul bodies. Remember God creates Adam from the dust of the ground and he breathes into him the breath of life and he becomes a living the text says in Genesis a living soul so everything about us as image bearers of God in our unique position created for life fellowship and service to the living God and stewardly care of the creation that God entrusted to Adam under his authority was about life unending life Life were we to have been obedient that would have issued, sprung forth, blossomed forth ultimately into life without end. But what does Paul tell us in Romans 6 verse 13? The wages of sin are death, but the free gift of God is eternal life, which reminds us that the gospel The good news that comes to us in the word of God and throughout the scriptures and finally in Jesus Christ is that God has in his grace, by virtue of our having sinned and having become liable to death, Paul puts it this way in Romans 5, we are under the dominion or the reign of death. And death cannot be escaped were we left to ourselves. Death is something that terminates, that undoes, that tears apart the fabric of our existence as in-souled bodies, separating body and soul, separating us from life in this good world that God created. Ending our prospects left to ourselves of life flourishing in the presence and in fellowship with God. My whole point here is to appreciate the gospel and its promises that are yes and amen in Jesus Christ as it relates to our hope for victory over death. We have to remember the bleak and dark backdrop against which those promises can be appreciated and embraced with joy. The whole purpose of our Lord's coming is that he might, says Paul in 2 Timothy 1 verse 10, that he might abolish death and bring life and immortality to light through the gospel. That's the promise that's held out to us in Christ, that life and immortality, communion with God, victory over death and all that death represents becomes ours through fellowship by faith with Christ. Now, just as an aside, you know, of course, as I said a moment ago, though this may be all very straightforward and obvious to you if you're familiar with the teaching of the Word of God, it is not generally acknowledged which is one of the reasons why the gospel is also sometimes muted in a culture like the one in which we find ourselves. This takes you back a little ways. I'm an older person, so I probably erred already in mentioning the name, even the very name, Woody Allen, but some of you may remember John Lennon. Rather a well-known song of the Beatles from way back when I'm old enough to remember those days His one of his most famous songs was the song imagine Listen to a couple of the lines from that song Imagine there's no hell below Imagine all the people living in And I would insert the word only for today. That's an imagination for sure. The idea being that death is simply part of life. We come to life. We eventually wither and die. And that's the circle of life and death that is the inevitable circumstance of creatures in this kind of a world. In other words, in a modern worldview sort of context death we endeavor to domesticate it to tame it to act as though it's simply a part of life and while I'm on a roll here with contemporary media you remember Forrest Gump now Forrest Gump's homely wisdom says my mama says dying is just a part of living You see what's missing in the whole picture is that we are uniquely as creatures come from the hand of God bearing his image created for life without end in communion with God in the fullness of our integrity as creatures formed from the dust into whom God breathed the breath of life. In order for death and all that death represents biblically to be overcome and immortality in life to be ours through the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, we need not only to be brought into fellowship with the living God through Christ and by his indwelling spirit, So that even when we die, as we'll see this evening, physically, and the body is dissolved and separated from our persons, our souls or spirits, and we enjoy being at home with the Lord, being in the presence of the living Lord Jesus Christ, that's not the end of the story. That's not the fullness of our hope and expectation for what happens to us when we die. that may be good, may even as the Bible teaches in some respects be better than life in this body. Paul says for me to live is Christ, to die is gain. Imagine that, that there's a sense in which death itself, far from separating us from fellowship with God, brings us to a place where we enjoy a more intimate communion, absent the body, in the presence of the Lord. But that's not the end of the story. That wouldn't be the fullness of immortality in life. Because we are creatures formed from the dust. We were creatures created for whom our bodies are a necessary and integral part of who we are as creatures. And the good news of the gospel is God is going to make us new. reform and fashion us and even this mortal body will be as we participate in the fruit of Christ's work in his resurrection he the first fruits even our bodies will be closed with immortality and so the story that we're telling this evening regarding the intermediate state is the first stage you might say subsequent to death in the victory life immortality that is ours through Christ but it's not the end of the story and I think oftentimes we miss the full and rich breadth, depth, and extent of the life and immortality that is ours in Christ and the promise held out to us with respect to our future. Our future is not ultimately accomplished until every believer, not one left remaining, comes to have a full share in the full benefit reality of what Christ has obtained for us. When death, our last enemy, in all of its manifestation and expression, has been vanquished or Christ has won the victory over it. Now that we've had just a overview of the biblical understanding of death, death which ends life in the body in unbroken living communion with God and those who are gods, that Christ brings life and immortality There is, and I couldn't be on a little bit of, not a slippery slope, but I was once told by one of my high school teachers, when I was misbehaving in high school class, he was affectionately known by us students as the bear, because he was a fearsome sort, and when he spoke, we all paid attention. And he just looked up from his bushy eyebrows and said, Venema, You're treading on thin ice, and I may be doing that here when I touch upon a topic, the immortality of the soul, that I might confuse you, I might even make you wonder, well, what is Venema really getting at here? What I'm getting at here is in connection with a point I just made, that eternal life in fellowship with God, through Christ, in and by his indwelling spirit, promises more than what will be ours in the intermediate state upon death, absent, being closed with the fullness of our immortality, when this body, which is mortal, which is liable to death and consequence of our having sinned, will put on immortality. Or as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 as well, this perishable will put on imperishable. Here's the interesting thing. that we often neglect to properly acknowledge. When the Bible uses the language of immortality, particularly in the New Testament, it ultimately speaks not of some part of our being human, our soul or our spirit when separated from the body, enjoying ongoing and unbroken in spite of death, fellowship with God, that language is reserved precisely for what God does in the resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15, 54, I've alluded to it several times. Paul says it's the great chapter on the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep, says Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. Toward the end of the chapter, he says, describing the resurrection of the body, When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying will come true, death has been swallowed up in victory." Now, if I was to summarize that, what Paul is telling us is that death has not been fully defeated or vanquished. and its consequences effects in terms of God's curse and judgment upon us because of our sins, the wages that we must pay. It has not been overcome simply in the intermediate state. Our immortality includes also, that's the point I'm wanting to stress very much here, the resurrection of the body. Now we sometimes use the language of the immortality of the soul to express a biblical truth. So that's where I'm needing to guard myself against someone or another tonight thinking, well, what's Dr. Venema saying? Is he saying that the soul doesn't continue to enjoy life? Our persons do not go to be in the presence of the Lord? In our soul being separated from the body? After all, that's the language of our confessions. The question is asked in the Heidelberg Catechism, What comfort does the resurrection of the body afford you? And there the answer is that not only my soul, that harkens back to the very first question and answer, what's your only comfort in life and in death? That I belong both in body and in soul, notice that by the way, We belong entirely and wholly with all that we are, bodies and souls, our own prized and purchased property of Jesus Christ. I belong both in body and in soul to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who is fully satisfied for all my sins. So here it says, what's the comfort of the resurrection? That's the particular interest of the question. It starts this way, that not only my soul after this life shall immediately be taken up to Christ its head, but also that this my body, raised by the power of Christ, shall again be united with my soul and laid like unto the glorious body of Christ. The point here is, it is permissible and it is properly biblical to distinguish the two aspects of the fullness of our human existence as image bearers of God, namely our souls in distinction from our bodies. But we have to be very careful to recognize that the fullness of our humanity, both in creation and in redemption, involves, entails, the renewal, the making immortal, the granting of life to the whole person. Not only the soul, which enjoys communion with the Lord in the state intermediate between death and resurrection, but also, ultimately, at the end of the day, when Christ comes, when this body is raised in immortality and imperishability. I do want to spend a little bit of time to identify a couple of erroneous views that have been fairly frequently espoused in the church regarding the so-called intermediate state. And I'll try to avoid saying too much about the first of them. It has a very fancy title. Sounds like a theologian talking. Annihilationism. And that kind of erroneous teaching that is contrary to what the scriptures teach. Annihilationism takes a variety of forms. There are three of them that are most prominent, one of which you're very familiar with in our society. We live in a world that is materialistic, not in the sense that people want more money all the time and they never have enough. But it's naturalistic. There is no God. The world just is. It has no ultimate explanation. It is just what it is. It has always been and it always will be. Now some speculation about when the world came into being, perhaps 13 billion years ago on the last counting or thereabouts. But we came into existence, human beings that is, homo sapiens, through a long process of macro evolution which governed by the law of the survival of the fittest somehow or another, out of the primordial soup and stuff of chaotic and meaningless matter, we emerged over a long, long period of time. Well, we returned to the soup from which we came. That's the kind of annihilationism that is most common in our culture. We're just a collection of molecules comprised of atomic particles and subatomic particles banging about in some sort of rather interestingly organized fashion, but there is no God who created us after his image for fellowship with himself, nor is there any expectation that death is not the cessation of our existence. We are annihilated. We cease to be. We live only in the memory of those who survive us. We have no further existence. We return to the stuff in whatever its configuration from whence we originally emerged. That's the end of the story. Now that's pretty common in our culture. That's rather rife in certainly the naturalistic worldview that prevails in a lot of the special sciences and ours is a culture that has a high regard for science and whatever it is that the scientists may wish to teach us. It's very common today among Christians even to say that even or to say rather that only believers who through faith in Jesus Christ and on account of his work enjoy life not only after death but in the resurrection in the world to come, the new heavens and the new earth. When God ultimately punishes the wicked and impenitent however difficult it may be for us to conceive of that they are consumed quite literally that is annihilated in the same way that the fire that burns and destroys whatever is in its wake and what you have left is a remainder ashes so eternal Punishment is eternal in its result, but not in its experience. So those who are put away from God's presence, separated from his presence under his judgment, they too are, in a manner of speaking, annihilated. They cease to be. They don't experience any kind of continuing existence under the wrath of God in torment and agony in hell. They're simply annihilated. So that's one particular doctrine, but it's, I'm judging it to be, I'm suggesting to you, erroneous. The Bible does not teach that believers cease to exist. Incidentally, I read a book just recently where an author said, well, we don't cease to exist, though he's a physicalist or has a materialistic sort of conception of the world. We continue to live in God's memory. God knows us exactly and who we were. And so when the resurrection comes, even though upon death we cease to exist, he's an annihilationist in that sense, God will bring us like he first created us out of nothing into the new creature he wills us to be. But in the state intermediate between death and resurrection, we only exist in a manner of speaking in God's mind. Well, that's not the scripture's teaching either, as I'm going to argue. Now, I have to get quickly to that. It's interesting that in the scriptures, Old Testament and New, one of the most common ways of referring not to the death of the unbelieving. It's never employed. It's a euphemism for death. It's a way of speaking well of the death of those who are believers. When they die, they rest. they fall asleep. It's very common in the one of the most popular passages in the New Testament in the area of the subject of the future. 1 Thessalonians 4 where Paul's addressing the question, what about those who have fallen asleep? Will they be left out when Christ comes of enjoying the resurrection? It's the rapture passage if you know what that means. People today are very much fixated on the topic of the so-called rapture. We'll leave that to the side. I only mention it because it's a very characteristic passage where death is described for the believer as being like falling asleep. You say, well, then it's not an erroneous view. It's a perfectly proper and biblical way of regarding and understanding what becomes of believers when they die. They fall asleep. Well, here's the problem. Advocates of soul sleep teaching really mean by this understanding that the death of the believer is literally on the order of a kind of falling asleep now you have to be able to remember at least in my case you have to be able to remember what it was like when you were young and you fell asleep your head hits the pillow what happens boom eight hours later You wake up and in the meanwhile you are in a deep slumber and have no sense of any experience or having been in rapport with the world around you. Now when I sleep today, you know, every half hour I have to look at the big lettered clock there and see how many more minutes I have to stay in bed before I get to get up. The idea is, I don't mean to be facetious, The idea is that we go out of any kind of state wherein we might have any felt experience of being in relationship or fellowship either with the Lord or those who, like us, have fallen asleep in the Lord. So you die, and instantaneously, if I may borrow language from another location in the scriptures, in the moment, in the twinkling of an eye, you find yourself awaking at the time of resurrection. And there's no communion, fellowship, conscious experience of life in the presence of the Lord in the state intermediate between your having fallen asleep and your awakening. in the season day of the great judgment and the resurrection. Well, there's a couple problems with that. Let me quickly summarize them. One of the problems is even the very language itself betrays the view. It's never said in the Word of God that the soul of the believer sleeps. It's said that the believer sleeps. And that's significant because if we were to ascribe sleeping to any feature of our humanity, it might possibly be ascribed to our bodies. not our souls. Our souls do not sleep. I have to insert here, even though it makes me go a little over time, a little vignette, but it was a conversation between two of our grandchildren upon the occasion of their great-grandfather's death, and there was a viewing in the church sanctuary. And the little boy, around about three years old, is having a conversation with his sister, who's about five. And as I remember it, he said something to this effect to his sister. Shh. Great-grandpa's sleeping. Little did he know he was actually making a very wise and I think biblically appropriate comment. His body had been separated from his soul. And it was a sleep, but of course she says to her little brother, children, they just don't understand. They just don't understand. The beautiful thing about children, by the way, is they do understand. That's why you have to become like a little child to enter into the kingdom of God. Our topic, quite frankly, brothers and sisters, the state intermediate between death and resurrection and the anticipated hope of the resurrection might by many, by this world's standards of wisdom and insight, be regarded as childish. But it's of the most profound and lasting value that we as believers where faith looks, as Paul in 2 Corinthians 5, upon the things that are not seen, but the things that are eternal, that we believe and are convinced that, no, the soul does not sleep. We don't go out of any felt rapport with our environment. Really, the purpose of the euphemism, it's like the passage in Revelation, well known to us. When those who die in the Lord, they rest, says the Apostle John, what? From their labors. they no longer are in that circumstance Paul describes in 2nd Corinthians 5 is meanwhile we groan like the whole creation is groaning in anticipation of the revelation and redemption of the sons of God because we're not yet in that place where God has made all things new and his redemptive work in Christ has reached its consummation or its conclusion So the point is, it's euphemistic language. They fall asleep, they rest from their labors, and their works follow them. It's language that means to suggest that the death of the believer is the terminus, the end, the moment that every trouble, trial, difficulty, stress, circumstance of groaning by virtue of sin and sin's effects, we can feel it deeply in our very bones and to the core of our being, it comes to an end. I'm suggesting to you that neither of these views comes close to the richness of what the scriptures teach regarding the intermediate state. We are neither annihilated nor are we regarded as literally a state of unconscious sleep in which there is no felt experience of being with the Lord prior to the day of resurrection. Tune in next week as Dr. Venema examines what scripture has to say about the intermediate state, that is, the state of believers before the resurrection. You can find us on our website at midamerica.edu slash podcasts, and wherever you listen to your favorite shows, be sure to search for and subscribe to MidAmerica Reformed Seminary's Roundtable. I'm Jared Luchabor, till next time.