“ This Ole House” Sunday, 01 May 2022 10:00 a.m.
We are concluding our series: “Resurrection: Power Over Death.” this Sunday. Last week we spoke of the fact that God the Father had a plan and a purpose for His Son Jesus. He would not leave His soul and spirit in sheol, nor would He allow the body of His Son to undergo decomposition. He raised up the soul and spirit of His Son on the third day and united it to a glorified body which lay in the grave; and Jesus walked out alive.
On this final Sunday of this series, I want to deal with the issue of what happens to us, as believers, when we die. Back in the 1950s Stuart Hamblen wrote a popular song entitled:” This Ole House.” Story goes that he was out hunting and found an old dilapidated cabin and inside was the body of an old man who had recently passed on and his guard dog was standing over his body. And the song is not just about the old dilapidated house, but its also a reflection on our body as well; that this “house” that we live in for however many years God grants us has an expiry date.
2 Corinthians 5:1 For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
There is a crisis that is taking place within this earthly body as we grow older, as we realize that someday we will reach the expiry date. The joints are sore and the hair is sparse, the eyes are faint and the hearing is weak and so on. We groan in the natural because of the crisis of change that is occurring. Paul says that in the spiritual realm; for those who are believers, there is a groaning as well. That word “groaning'' means an inward pressure. We feel the pressure of something approaching. For the believer it is a good or pleasant pressure; at least it should be. Because we know that this earthly tent won't last and there is a desire to have an eternal tent or clothing given to us.
We have a certainty that while we are here in this body that one day, we will be present with the Lord. And we have the absolute confidence that when we die and this body fails that we will be in the presence of the Lord. We walk by faith not by sight. We can't see it physically, in our mind maybe we can't comprehend it but we know it's a certainty, it will happen.
Join us in person on Sunday at 10:00 a.m. or via livestream by going to https://www.firstbaptistsudbury.com and clicking on livestream for “This Ole House.”
Kevin