Heaven Study Guide 1: What Happens When I die?
Community Group Study Guide — What Happens When I Die? (Heaven Week 1)
2 Corinthians 5:1-9 and Psalm 90
Study Information:
There has been a surge of stories of people who claim to have come back from a near death experience with explanations of what happens after we die. These stories often get turned into bestselling books or popular articles because deep down many of us are fascinated and have some certainty about what happens after we die. When put under a lens of scrutiny many of these stories do not hold up and are filled with dubious circumstances, vague speculation or repeated imagery like bright lights, warmth or being surrounded by friends and family. The good news is that we do not have to speculate about what happens after we die or rely on stories of near death experiences because God has told us in his word what we can expect and that can give us great comfort in the face of suffering and death. Throughout our series on Heaven we will look at various aspects of what happens after death from what is called the intermediate state, to what it means to behold God and the experience of New Creation. This first study guide will explore what happens between death and New Creation for those who are followers of Jesus which is often called “the intermediate state.”
The Reality of Death
Psalm 90:1-4, 10 and Romans 6:23
You may have heard the expression that two things are inevitable, death and taxes. Death exists because of sin’s presence in the world and since every human being is “in Adam” we experience death (Romans 5:12-21, 6:23). Some of us treat death as “natural” because everyone dies but God does not speak about death as being natural or a friend in the Bible. Death is spoken of as an enemy and intruder that will be defeated. This means that we were designed to experience everlasting life with God. That plan was interrupted by Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden and it is what God worked to restore in his plan of redemption in Jesus Christ.
Psalm 90 is a great reflection on death, judgement, and God’s steadfast love for his people. The psalm begins with a reflection on God’s eternal nature in contrast with the finiteness of human lives. God is from everlasting to everlasting whereas man returns to dust (Psalm 90:2-3). This psalm also gives comfort to the people of God that the wicked will not last but with that we’re counseled to remember the shortness of our lives. “The years of our life or seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty… teach us to number our days (Psalm 90:10-12).” Even a full life is still short in comparison with eternity and Biblical wisdom is to number our days and live with eternity in mind.
When we die our physical bodies cease to function and our body and spirit are temporarily separated. Who we are in between death and New Creation is immaterial in nature yet has a conscious awareness and is in God’s presence, more on that later. Paul described this as “being naked” in 2 Corinthians 5:3-4 to emphasize that this was not the normal state of things. Our future is not a disembodied existence as a floating spirit in a land of clouds, rather God promises a resurrected body in a New Creation where the New Heaven and New Earth are joined. But for a period of time after death we will have our physical bodies cease to function and those bodies will “return to the dust.”
So what happens after followers of Jesus die?
Heaven: the Intermediate State
Some Christians think that when we die that it is kind of like going to sleep where you do not really know much about what happened until you wake up in the morning with a foggy sense of some dreams and that time passed. They call this the “sleep theory” and emphasize that we experience the time between death and New Creation as one experiences sleep, when we are resurrected for New Creation we experience that as a sort of “waking up.” This comes from how the Biblical writers refer to the death of Christians “sleep” and passages like Daniel 12:2. However, the clearer passages in the Bible describe a better and more hopeful picture than that. When we die we go to be with Jesus in heaven and from there wait for our future resurrected body and eternity in New Creation. This is the in-between or intermediate state. Heaven is a place we go to be with God and await New Creation.
Paul wrote that we can be of good courage in the face of death because while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord and when we are away from the body we are at home with the Lord (2 Cor 5:6-8). Meaning that we can derive courage from the reality that what awaits us after death is Jesus Christ himself and his presence. We do not have to go purge off our sins or experience the time as sleep, rather we get to spend it with Jesus. Likewise, in the book of Philippians, when Paul faced a potential death sentence he wrote that it was better for him to die and be with Christ (Phil 1:27). We can take from these passages that when we die we will experience what was best described as “being home” and that it is far better than what we experience in this world right now. This state between death and New Creation is what the Bible calls heaven, which is the place where God dwells. As children you possibly thought that heaven was a place in the clouds. That comes from cartoons and movies and likely came about because the Bible described Jesus as “ascending” in the sky to heaven in Acts 1:9. However, it is probably best to think of heaven not as a physical location somewhere on earth or in the universe and to see it as a different plane of existence that we cannot even really imagine fully.
What will we be doing in heaven during the intermediate state? Will it be boring?! Many of us wouldn’t want to go to heaven based on how movies and cartoons portray it. Most of the time it is portrayed more like the Buddhist concept of Nirvana rather than how the Bible talks about it hence, one of the reasons we’re teaching through this series. We know heaven will contain at least four things and will not be boring because boredom cannot exist in God’s presence.
First, heaven will be a place of worship. Worship in the Bible is more than singing, it consist of direction of our lives being oriented towards God. This means that we should experience a supernatural ability to love God and to receive God’s love. Imagine being undivided in your lover for God and love for people, that is a little bit of what heaven will be like.
Second, heaven is about God’s presence. Jesus told his disciples in John 14 that he left to prepare a place for them and used language of rooms, houses and dwellings to talk about abiding with him. Heaven will be heaven because God will be there. God’s presence will fill heaven in such a way that we will have no desire to sin. We also will have infinite opportunities to grow in our knowledge and love for God for eternity.
Third, we will have some awareness of worldly events. Hebrew 12:1-3 talks about a great cloud of witnesses looking down on those who are running their race. Likewise we read of martyred saints gathered around God’s throne in Revelation looking down on the events of the world crying out “how long o Lord?!” This seems to indicate an ongoing awareness of what is unfolding on earth between their death and New Creation.
Finally, we will long for and wait for New Creation and the resurrection of our physical bodies. We await for the renewal of all creation and being reunited to a physical body (Col 1:20). This type of waiting is not a sin or because God’s presence is deficient, instead it is that our being away from the body is an abnormal state of human existence. God designed us to be physical beings inhabitant a physical world and to be fully human encompasses that reality.
So, what happens when you die? You go to heaven and are with the Lord if you are a follower of Jesus because your sins are forgiven, you’ve been reconciled to God and Christ has gone before you to make a dwelling place for you. However, that is not our final stop, we long for a wait for God to make all things new with the New Heaven and New Earth where we will receive our renewed physical bodies made in the image of Jesus’s resurrected body (1 Corinthians 15:49).
At your community group:
Take 15-20 minutes to share about how God has been at work in your life, prayer concerns and pray for one another.
How did God speak to you through the scripture and the sermon this week?
Discussion Questions:
2 Corinthians 5:1-9 and Psalm 90
Based on 2 Corinthians and Psalm 90, how would you answer the question “What happens when a Christian dies?”
How does reflecting on the shortness of human life help us live with eternity in mind?
Paul described what happens after death as being “far better.” In what ways do you have a hard time believing that and what about heaven (the intermediate state) do you look forward to the most?
What questions do you have about heaven that you’re hoping to learn in this series and why do you think those questions interest your right now?
