There is much speculation and controversy between the moment we die and the time when Jesus comes again, in which we will receive our eternal spiritual bodies. In writing earlier to the Corinthians, Paul laid out the teaching on the resurrection in detail in 1 Corinthians 15. He also describes the difference between our earthly bodies and spiritual ones.

1 Corinthians 15:42-44, 50-54

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 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. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

At first, the early church assumed that Jesus would return soon, but then days turned into weeks, months and years, and believers were dying. The question arose, so what happens to those who die before Jesus comes back?

Paul answers that question in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

“Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the 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 we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore, encourage one another with these words.”

Yet this triggered another question: So, what happens to those believers who physically die before Jesus’ return? This was a deep concern in the lives of first-century Christians and has created much confusion that persists to this day. Theologians call this the intermediate state.

There is a growing fascination with the afterlife. Let me begin by mentioning three false ideas, then move to our text today, and give us the biblical picture of the intermediate state.

John Piper writes in his book The Roots of Endurance that he shared some of the challenges facing Charles Simeon (1759-1836), the pastor of Trinity Church in Cambridge, England. “I heard that he stayed in the same church as pastor for fifty-four years and that in the first twelve years there was so much opposition from his congregation that 'pewholders' locked their pews, stayed away, and forced him to preach to a standing congregation who fit in the building where they could. …So I confess at the outset that I have a spiritual and pastoral aim in this chapter, as in the whole book. I want to encourage you—as I pursue this myself—to receive and obey Romans 12:12, “Be patient in tribulation.” May Simeon’s life and ministry help us see persecution, opposition, slander, misunderstanding, disappointment, self-recrimination, weakness, and danger as the normal portion of faithful Christian living and ministry. I want us to see a beleaguered triumph in the life of a man who was a sinner like us and who, year after year, in his trials, “grew downward” in humility and upward in adoration of Christ and who did not yield to bitterness or to the temptation to leave his charge for fifty-four years. …I need this inspiration from another century, because I know that I am, in great measure, a child of my times. And one of the pervasive marks of our times is emotional fragility. It hangs in the air that we breathe. We are easily hurt. We put and mope easily. We blame easily. We break easily. Our marriages break easily. Our faith breaks easily. Our happiness breaks easily. And our commitment to the church breaks easily. We are easily disheartened, and it seems we have little capacity for surviving and thriving in the face of criticism and opposition.”

What we are about to discover is how to not only survive but also thrive in difficult times and situations. We need to discover how to have joy in life’s most challenging moments, as James explains in his letter.

James 1:2-4

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,

Because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

We are going to continue our series on 2 Corinthians, where Paul is under great pressure, scrutiny, and criticism, and he now explains the very nature of Christian life and ministry. It is a life in which, despite hardships, our character may transform as we look to Jesus for wisdom and strength to persevere. Here is where we see God’s manifested glory most evidently in our lives. There are three elements to God’s work of glory, revealing itself through a transforming life and ministry.

It is amazing to discover the people that God chooses. It usually is the people others pass over. That was certainly true for David when Samuel came to anoint one of Jesse's sons to become the next king; even his father didn’t bother to have David stand before the prophet. God generally chooses the weak and the nobodies of our world to manifest his grace, glory, and power. Kent Huges points out: “The Lord called Moses despite his inarticulateness, then no one can claim the prophets’ excuses (Gideon’s military weakness, Isaiah’s sin, Jeremiah’s youth, or Ezekiel’s trepidation), or the weaknesses we may offer, as valid reasons to duck God’s respective call.”

Scott Hafemann echoes that same sentiment: “Indeed, the call of Moses demonstrates that these very obstacles are an essential part of the call itself, illustrating clearly that God’s grace, not the prophet’s strength, is the source of his sufficiency.”

Paul is able to balance his negative declaration, “Not that we are sufficient in ourselves,” with the positive counterpoint, “but our sufficiency is from God” (v. 5). And Paul goes on to explain that his sufficiency comes from two things: 1) the sufficiency of the new covenant and 2) the sufficiency of the Spirit.” What we discover is that God’s transforming glory is expressed through human weakness so that people will come to understand that it is the power of God’s grace working through our lives that brings about God’s power and virtues.

Scott Hafemann explains the amazing grace of God’s covenant with us and our need to move from our self-sufficiency to total dependency on God. “The contemporary significance of our passage revolves around one central, all-determining point: God is the source and supply of our lives, as demonstrated by his calling and equipping his people for service in a covenant relationship with him. The call of God takes place in Christ; the service takes place by means of the Spirit. This is true whether one is an apostle called to be a minister of the new covenant in the first century or a believer called to be faithful in service to others in the twenty-first. Though inherently offensive to the self-reliance and self-glorification that are so much a part of modern culture (and every culture since the Fall), Paul’s stark reminder is that we cannot claim anything as coming from ourselves (cf. Rom. 11:36; Eph. 2:8–10). All things come from God (cf. 1 Cor. 8:6; 2 Cor. 1:21). Nothing we have is earned; everything is a gift (1 Cor. 4:7).

Many of us have heard the Christmas Story of Jesus, born to a virgin named Mary, two thousand years ago. That first Christmas night, while shepherds were watching over their flocks, they had an angelic visitation announcing the birth of the Messiah, the Christ. Born in the little town of Bethlehem, they would find him in a manger and off they ran to see this wondrous birth. In Matthew's gospel, we discover, sometime later, that magi [we call them wise men] from the east, who saw the star announcing the birth of the King of the Jews, travelled to pay homage to him. Mark doesn't go into these early details of the birth of Jesus, but begins his gospel with the preparation that we needed for people to receive their Messiah.

The first Christmas did not happen in a vacuum. We do not understand the need for the Christmas story simply from the birth of Christ. We need to go to the beginning of the human story to really understand why God, in the person of Jesus Christ, had to come to earth. What necessitated the need for God to become a Man, live a sinless life and die a cruel death? The Bible states that we, as human beings, are the crowning achievement of His creation. We are made in the image of God.

However, even in the sinless paradise that man found himself in, there came a temptation— the temptation was simply that God, our Creator, was withholding from the created. God’s goodness was challenged, and as a result, the first human couple rebelled from an amazing, transparent and sinless life to one now tainted and ultimately corrupted by evil. The result was that the image of God was marred in us as humans, and now sin works at dehumanizing us. What I mean by that statement is that in creating us as human we are to reflect the nature and goodness of our Creator.

Now, with the birth of sin in the human family, sickness, alienation, and death were the outcomes for all generations. But God in His great mercy and love had designed a plan to reclaim us all from this terrible state through the substitutionary sacrifice of the Son of God.

Beginnings are often very fragile times and open to blatant temptations or subtle spiritual attacks. We see that in the early life of Jesus, as Herod tried to murder him. Instead, Herod killed all the little boys two and under in the little town of Bethlehem because of the visit by the Magi. The enemy is always threatened when God is implementing His plans through the lives of His children.