17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
5:1 For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3 if indeed by putting it on1 we may not be found naked. 4 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. 5 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
6 So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. 10 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.
17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
5:1 For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3 if indeed by putting it on1 we may not be found naked. 4 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. 5 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
6 So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. 10 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.
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Joel Brooks:
If you would, pray with me. Father, we ask that you would bless the very reading of your word. Even now, it began penetrating our hearts and minds. God, I pray that you would speak clearly to us in this moment. I ask that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore.
Joel Brooks:
Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. I wanna begin by reading somewhat of a lengthy quote, from a book I've been rereading the last couple of weeks. It's the den the denial of death, by Ernest Becker.
Joel Brooks:
I actually won a Pulitzer Prize. It's a fantastic book in its own way. It's unique. Ernest Becker was not a Christian, he he was actually an atheist, so he didn't believe in God at all, but he had some pretty profound truths as he thought about the subject of death. And so here's the quote.
Joel Brooks:
Man is a worm and food for worms. This is a paradox. He is out of nature and hopelessly in it. He is dual up in the stars and yet housed in a heart pumping breath gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways.
Joel Brooks:
The strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches, and it bleeds, and it will decay, and it will die. Man is literally split in 2. He has a awareness of his own splendid uniqueness and that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet, he goes back into the grounds a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction as as they lack a symbolic identity in the self consciousness that goes with it.
Joel Brooks:
They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause. Inside, they are anonymous. And even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating as it were in a state of dumb being.
Joel Brooks:
This is what it has made. It's so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don't know that death is happening, and they continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective in its conceptual and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness.
Joel Brooks:
A few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish and it's over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams, and even the most sun filled days, now that's something else. And at his conclusion, he talks about how modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of this awareness of death. Or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing. Now, for a non Christian earnest Becker is awfully close to the truth.
Joel Brooks:
And his inner being, it says that he knows that we are somehow unique. We are somehow majestic over the rest of creation. We're higher than the animals yet. He looks at our fate and he sees it's the same as all of them. His body's gonna break down and rot just like their body, and it it didn't seem right.
Joel Brooks:
He actually uses the phrase, it's, it's alien. Our bodies feel alien to us Be because it doesn't match up what we long for, which is not to die. And he says this leads him to this, quote, painful contradiction. And it has caused Ernest Becker to be terrified of death. Now, C.
Joel Brooks:
S. Lewis actually writes about something pretty similar. C. S. Lewis was also a pretty deep thinker, and he thought of these things also, and it actually led him to a very hopeful conclusion.
Joel Brooks:
Lewis looked at his own body, and he actually uses the same phrase. He says it feels alien to him, as if it doesn't belong in this world. But by alien, he says, he means that it's, it's thoughts and it's desires seem to not match up with what this world offers. And so he concluded in a sermon called the weight of glory this. A man's physical hunger does not prove that a man will get bread.
Joel Brooks:
I mean, he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man's hunger proves that he comes from a race, which repairs its body by eating and does indeed inhabit a world where eatable substance exists. In the same way, though, I do not believe that my desire for heaven or paradise proves I shall enjoy it. I think it's a pretty good indication that such a thing exists. And he would expound on this even more in his book, mere Christianity.
Joel Brooks:
When he says, if I find in myself desires, which nothing in this world can satisfy, then the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world. So both CS Lewis and Ernest Becker, they would look at their life and they would realize that their body feels alien to them. And one of them, it drove to despair, and the other, it drove to great hope. Well, this hope is a real hope. And Paul unpacks this more in 2nd Corinthians chapter 5.
Joel Brooks:
He's already written to the Corinthians in his previous letter, 1st Corinthians 15, about resurrection. He's wrote at it, wrote about it at great length, an entire chapter about the resurrection, but apparently, the Corinthians still weren't quite getting it. And so he writes a little bit more and I'm glad because I don't always really get this. I mean, resurrection is so unique. There's no other religion.
Joel Brooks:
There's no other philosophy that says anything close to the Christian hope of resurrection. There are some that talk about an afterlife or heaven in some general way, but nothing like what we believe that we will be given new bodies. And it was just absurd then as it is now. It took just as much faith then to believe that as it as it does now. This is one of the reasons that Paul is just hammering this in, because it happens, happened to Jesus and it will happen to us.
Joel Brooks:
Let's look at verse 1 closely. Paul says, for we know that in 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. So Paul uses this imagery of a tent to describe his body, and which makes sense. Remember, Paul was a tent maker.
Joel Brooks:
He went around making tents. He worked really hard making what would be temporary dwellings. A tent isn't a permanent home. And Paul was was a great tent maker, I'm sure. But no matter how much effort and skill he put into building a tent, time would wear it down.
Joel Brooks:
The sun, the rain, the wind is eventually going to break down a tent. It's a temporary dwelling. So this is how Paul describes our body. And in contrast to this, he says that we have waiting for us, not a tent, but we have waiting for us a building from God. A building that's that's not made with hands and it's eternal in the heavens.
Joel Brooks:
And so Paul, he says, my hope is not in a tent. My hope is someday I will get to move into another body, a permanent body that will last forever. And you can't compare a house with a tent. And when Paul says that this house or this building is not made with human hands, he's saying it's it's not made from the materials of this world. You know, we came from dust and to dust, we shall return, but our new body is not like that.
Joel Brooks:
It's not made from the elements of this world. It's made from the elements of heaven and it's going to last forever. And so Paul, as he's unpacking this, he's saying, I long for that body. That's that's where his hope is going. And this hope is is so different than the hope that so many Christians have now.
Joel Brooks:
Yeah. You know, over and over, you you hear the Christian hope is that we're going to go off to heaven when we die. That's, that's how we talk about hope is when to go off to heaven, when we die, where our soul's going to go, that someday our souls are going to be, we'll use the language, freed from this mortal body. And it's going to, to go up into heavenly bliss where we'll enjoy our sweet bye and bye. But that was not the hope of the early church.
Joel Brooks:
It wasn't the hope of Paul. His hope was not that our souls are gonna float up in the air to some generic heaven. We're gonna, you know, maybe lie around on the clouds, play a harp for all of eternity. His hope was much more fixed and real than that vagueness that we often hear at funerals nowadays. That philosophy of floating up in the air is far more Plato than it is the hope of Paul.
Joel Brooks:
Paul here explains that his hope is firmly placed on this one thing. Jesus will raise his body, and he's gonna be given a real body, a better body that's never going to break down. It can last forever. It's it's a body that can finally carry the weight of glory. Because our bodies can't carry that weight.
Joel Brooks:
In verse 4, he actually explains how he really doesn't want to be a disembodied spirit. He doesn't want that, you know, Oprah Winfrey view of heaven. He wants something real. He says, for while we are still in this tent or this body, we we groan being burdened. Not that we should be unclothed, the bet, but that we should be further closed.
Joel Brooks:
So that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. So Paul is saying, although this life is hard, his goal is not to just get rid of the body. He's he's switching metaphors here. Now now he's using clothing to replace the image of tint. He's saying his his he doesn't wanna be unclothed, he doesn't wanna just throw off his body.
Joel Brooks:
He wants to be further clothed. He doesn't wanna be a disembodied spirit. He actually wants this new resurrected body. Now this is the same imagery that Paul uses in 1st Corinthians 15, when he says, this perishable perishable body must put on imperishable. And this mortal body must put on immortality.
Joel Brooks:
That's the same way of saying we must be further clothed. So he doesn't want to just shed his body. He wants a new one. Now, how does this work? How does this whole resurrection work?
Joel Brooks:
What does our resurrection bodies look like? I get I guess the best way to understand what these resurrected bodies will look like is to look at Jesus who actually had a resurrected body. All throughout scripture, Jesus is called the first fruits. And that means that when his body got his body and he rose from the grave, he's the first of the many fruits that will come. We will all come later.
Joel Brooks:
We're having received the same body. Philippians 3/20 says this, the lord Jesus Christ will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body. So one day we're going to have a glorious body just like Jesus. And if you look at Jesus's body, he didn't just, he didn't just throw off his old body and get an entirely new one. It's not what happened.
Joel Brooks:
Alright. This is gonna get really tricky because what we're talking about is is pretty amazing stuff, and it's kinda tricky and complex. But Jesus' body looked enough like his old one that the disciples recognized him. But it wasn't exactly like his old body. But they were able to recognize him.
Joel Brooks:
It was new, it was perfect, yet, you noticed Jesus still had scars. So he said, Thomas, come feel my scars. Thomas, put your hands in my side. And so there there there's an element from his old body that moves over to his new body, so it's perfect, yet it still has the scars from his former life. Jesus could do things like eat fish in his resurrected body.
Joel Brooks:
He could be embraced in his resurrected body, yet he could also walk through walls in his resurrected body. And so there's some carry over from this former life, but it's a new and improved glorious body. As Paul would say, he's been further clothed, and this is what awaits everybody who has been given the spirit of God. The the best analogy that I can think of to illustrate this is I knew a man, his name is mister Jackson. I always just call him mister Jackson.
Joel Brooks:
He was an older guy, but he was full of strength, full of vigor. He used to work a farm, and the guy was strong as an ox. When I would shake his hand, he could crush every bone in my body, you could just feel it. Well, mister Jackson got cancer. And it had been a few years since I had seen him, and I had gone back to see him, and his body had just kind of rotted away.
Joel Brooks:
His face was gaunt, his muscles were gone, and I looked at him and I could still see it was him, but he was a shadow of the man that he was. Just a shadow. And what Paul is saying is the resurrection is like that in reverse. He's saying right now, you are shadows, just mere shadows of the people that you will become when you're clothed in a glorious body. Of course, nobody explains this better than c s Lewis in his book, The Great Divorce.
Joel Brooks:
I love it. He switches the imagery. Those who are in heaven have solid bodies. Those on earth look like ghosts. And when they try to go into heaven, they realize just how transparent they are and how almost unreal and lack of substance they are.
Joel Brooks:
They're a shadow, and they can't even move a pebble in heaven. Walking on the very grass hurts their feet because they don't have enough weight to bend it. That's what it will be like. We will be given these new, very real bodies. So how does this happen?
Joel Brooks:
How are we to receive these bodies? It's a great question. Paul actually says it's a foolish question in 1st Corinthians 15. I I thought it was a pretty good question, but Paul says, you you you fool like it's so obvious, you know, but I'll explain it to you anyway. And so in 1 Corinthians 15, he says, your body's like a seed.
Joel Brooks:
He just uses a very simple analogy, like he's talking to a child, which he is. It's like, your body's like a seed. Well, picture, you know, an acorn. It's got to be planted in the ground just like you have to die, but what's going to spring out from it is going to be massive and beautiful and have strength. That's what your resurrected body will look like.
Joel Brooks:
But first, you have to die. Now, the the fact that we are going to be given these new bodies, that we're not just gonna float around some disembodied spirit in the future. These resurrected bodies tell us a whole lot about our eternal state, how we're gonna spend all of eternity. Like, have you ever asked this question? Why exactly do we need a body after this life?
Joel Brooks:
I mean, why can't we just be some disembodied spirit and be freed from this? Why do we actually need a body? I wanna look at that in a little more detail in the weeks ahead when we go through the Lord's prayer, when we look at, you know, our father in heaven or when we look at thy kingdom come, but let let me give you just a a brief answer now. We need a body because there's going to be work to be done. Because we're still going to need to work just as Adam, just as Eve were put in the garden to work it, and to till the garden and and to bring out the fruitfulness of the earth.
Joel Brooks:
When we are given our new bodies, there will be a new earth that will need to be worked. If if if you take even remotely seriously the language throughout the whole new testament that says we will reign with Christ, Reign is a verb. It means you will be doing something, and part of our reign means that there will be projects to undergo. There will be real work to do, and no longer will the earth be under a curse and it will be toil, but it will all be done in joy into the glory of god. That's what awaits us.
Joel Brooks:
This isn't some pie in the sky hope. This is a real fixed hope. There's nothing like it in any other philosophy or religion, but until this happens, Paul says that while we're here in this life, we're going to groan. We're going to groan. Look at verse 2.
Joel Brooks:
Verse 2 says, for in this tent, we groan. Look at verse 4, while we are still in this tent, we groan being burdened. So so while we are awaiting to finally someday receive our resurrected bodies, we are groaning. Now groaning is not a positive thing in case you were wondering. This is a a negative thing to groan.
Joel Brooks:
You groan when you're in pain. And the reason for this groaning that Paul is talking about is is not because his joints are hurting or he's getting arthritis or anything like that. That's that's not the source of the pain. It's that while we are in this life, we're absent from the Lord. Look at verse 6.
Joel Brooks:
So so we're always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. That's why we groan. We're, we're away from the Lord. But this verse seems to be in contradiction to verse 5.
Joel Brooks:
We look at verse 5, it says, he has prepared us for this very thing in God, who has given us the spirit as a guarantee. So verse 5 says that God's spirit is inside of us and it's this guarantee or this deposit. And yet in verse 6, he says that we're absent from the Lord. So which is it is, is God close to us so close to us? We would even describe him as in us or is the Lord absent from us?
Joel Brooks:
And the answer to that question is yes. Yes. God is both. The spirit of God is inside of us and that makes his presence real to us. However, it's just a small deposit.
Joel Brooks:
It's just it's just the guarantee of what's to come. It's it's it's not the the full thing. And so we feel his absence. So we need these new spiritual bodies in order to bear the full spiritual weight of God's presence to come. Have you ever wondered why in, you know, Ephesians 3, which is Paul is talking about us knowing the love of God, and really it's all about life of being filled with the spirit, he uses the phrase, he goes, God, strengthen our inner being.
Joel Brooks:
Says you gotta make us strong. And then, and then he says it again, and God, you gotta strengthen us so that, so that we might know the fullness of your spirit. Fullness of God. Why in the world is Paul saying when he looks at us, God, you've got to strengthen us if we wanna, wanna experience your fullness. He's saying because we have earthly mortal bodies and they cannot take the fullness of you unless you hold us together.
Joel Brooks:
Unless you supernaturally hold us together, we cannot receive more of you. But one day we won't have that problem anymore. As we are given these spiritual bodies, we will be able to be filled to the brink. We'll be able to carry that full weight of glory. But until then we groan.
Joel Brooks:
So there's a real way in which we can experience God's presence, but it is nothing compared to what awaits us. And I want you to hear me on this. Please hear me on this Part of the normal Christian experience is feeling the absence of God. Okay? Part of the normal Christian experience is at times feeling the absence of God.
Joel Brooks:
Don't ever think for a moment that just because you're a Christian, you're you're never gonna go through a time where you don't feel his presence. Yes. There's gonna be times of joy. There's gonna be times of joy unspeakable, but at the same time, we're not there yet. And we groan.
Joel Brooks:
If you only knew joy, if you only knew healing, you would never groan. But while we're in this body, we groan. That's why Paul says that we must walk by faith and not by sight. You can't walk by how you feel at the moment. You can't walk by what you're experiencing or seeing in the moment.
Joel Brooks:
You have to walk by faith. And that means enduring some times of suffering, enduring times of groaning, knowing that there's an end to it. Now, verse 8, Paul says something unusual. You know, he's he's said a lot of things that are unusual. This one's even more unusual.
Joel Brooks:
Says, yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the lord. Well, Paul's already explained what he wants. He wants a resurrected body. That's his first preference. But what he is saying here is if if I can't get a resurrected body right off the bat, like, if Christ doesn't come right now and give me that, I guess the second best option is for me to die and to be a disembodied spirit temporarily in the presence of the Lord, waiting on my resurrected body.
Joel Brooks:
That's what he's saying. So first choice, want a resurrected body now. 2nd choice, I'd like to die and just go ahead and be with the lord without my body, hoping and waiting for my new body to come. That's what happens. When you die, right now, you go up to heaven, where you wait.
Joel Brooks:
It's not your final state. You're going there and you're waiting. Paul says this in Philippians 3/20 when he says, but our citizenship is in heaven, and from it, we await. So our citizenship is in heaven, and so when we get up to heaven, we wait. What are we waiting for?
Joel Brooks:
It says, we wait for the lord Jesus Christ who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body. We wait for the day when we are given a resurrected body. Now let me just ask you, I mean, take a take a step back from this and just ask a question. Does Paul seem terrified of death? I mean, is he trying to deny death?
Joel Brooks:
He's saying he actually wants it. He says, for me to live is Christ, to die is gain. He's not scared of death, and neither should we. Paul understood the joys of what awaited him. Too much to want to just stay here in this body and think, you know what?
Joel Brooks:
I I want a new body, but first, I'd really like to travel and see the world, or I'd really like to get married first. I mean, those things pale in comparison. But some of us, especially in the 21st century in America, we have nibbled so much on the things of this world, we've lost our appetite and our desire for what awaits. This leads us to verse 10, in which Paul says that everyone must appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Every king, every dictator, every servant, every everybody must appear before the judgment seat of Christ.
Joel Brooks:
He says, for we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or bad. Find it interesting when Jesus was on trial before Pilate, The Bible goes to great lengths to just say, he kept his mouth shut, he kept his mouth shut, he did not open his mouth. But then Pilate says this, he goes, Jesus, don't you know that I have the power to crucify you or I have the power to set you free? And Jesus says, no. No.
Joel Brooks:
When when Pilate says, don't you know I'm I'm the judge here? Jesus says, no. You have no power unless it has temporarily been given you. But that power is for Jesus, and he will reclaim it. And I love it.
Joel Brooks:
Afterward, it says, and Pilate sought to release him. So what does the judgment look like for Christians? If you're gonna be judged for everything, what what is it gonna look like for us? It's important for us because Paul says, you know, when we're living in this life, when he's fine, like I really would like to die, I'd rather be with Jesus, but while I'm in here, if I'm going to be here, I'm going to glorify God. I'm going to do the best I can with my body because I'm gonna be judged for it.
Joel Brooks:
But what does that judgment look like? Well, for Christians, it's not a judgment of sin because like we opened the service with in Romans 8, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We will not be condemned for our sin. Jesus has paid the penalty, so we will not receive the penalty for our sin. It's been dealt with.
Joel Brooks:
Our sins have been thrown as far as the east is from the west. They're not brought in remembrance. So that's not the type of judgment that Christians need to fear. Yet we are still going to be judged. And this judgment looks like this.
Joel Brooks:
Paul explains it in 1st Corinthians 3. Let me read it. It says no one can lay a foundation other than that, which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. That's the gospel. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw.
Joel Brooks:
Each one's work will become manifest for the day we'll disclose it. That's the day of judgment. We'll disclose it because it will be revealed by fire. And the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.
Joel Brooks:
If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss. Though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. This is what Paul is saying. On that day, that final day, and there is a end to history, it's that day. We are all moving forward this one day.
Joel Brooks:
Jesus will judge each of us. And he uses fire to illustrate what this judgment is going to look like. He says that he's gonna put you before him, and he's going to set to fire everything you have ever done in this life. It's going to burn it. So all the things that were done out of faith, things that were done out of worship to the Lord.
Joel Brooks:
They're like the precious metals. They're like the gold and they're like the silver. They are the things that will survive the fire, the things that will endure, but all of the other things, which make up so much of our life, all of the other things that we have spent so much anxiety over in our life will be burned up. It won't stand it. So every decision you have made, every word you have spoken, every labor you have endeavored, every purchase you have made, the whole sum of your life will be brought before and Jesus will set it on fire.
Joel Brooks:
How much of your life is going to burn? How much of the things you spend so much time fixating on, stressing over, thinking about? How much of that is just wood and straw and it's going to burn? Versus the things that are done in faith, the things that are done in worship, the sacrifices we make for him, which will stand that test. And what Jesus is saying is I'm gonna burn it all.
Joel Brooks:
And what remains is your reward? What remains as your reward? Just as you know, look at, look at your resurrected body as the model of this, just as part of your resurrected body is present or part of your old body is present in the resurrected body to come, you know, Jesus still had the scars. Well, part of our life and the works we do contribute to the rewards that we have when we receive our resurrected body. And it's not gonna be like, wow, I get extra jewels to put in my crown.
Joel Brooks:
Jewels mean nothing to me. I could care less about jewels. Think of it more in lines of the investment I have made in deepening this friendship and, and fanning to flame these affections for God that carries over. My reward is the affection. My reward is the intimacy.
Joel Brooks:
That is my reward. Those things cannot be burned up. So Paul is is telling these Corinthians, he's saying, look at your life in light of the incredible hope we have. Live a life of courage. Says it twice.
Joel Brooks:
Live a life of courage. That doesn't mean that you don't go through scary things. It means that, yes, you're gonna go through suffering. You're gonna go through scary things, but we have courage and wanna go through it in faith because we know of what awaits us. And we know that our whole life is going to be burned up.
Joel Brooks:
Work for what will remain, not for what was gonna go up. Invest your life there. For Paul, that day was so fixated on his mind, He lived his whole life in view of that. And I pray it'd be ours. Pray with me.
Joel Brooks:
Lord, I confess, and it hurts me to confess, that the vast majority of my life is gonna go up in smoke. So many of my pursuits, my labors, my affections, the things I'm so anxious over are just fit to be burned. God, I don't want that. In light of eternity and what awaits us, give us eyes to see. Give us the faith we need to live a life pleasing to you.
Joel Brooks:
I pray we would believe the words we just read, the words we have just heard you speak to us. And I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.