“Knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me.”
I must put off my tent,
If God were to destroy our “tent,” that is, destroy our earthly body, He will give us another body – “a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Co 5:1). That body is the permanent body that we will receive at the first resurrection. The tent in which we now live is temporal and subject to death. Our bodies will return to dust when they drop our present bodies into the grave. Our eternal body will never have a cessation point. It will be like the resurrected body of Jesus Christ (Php 3:21).
PRINCIPLE:
When Christians die, they immediately enter God’s presence in heaven.
APPLICATION:
When we go out to the cemetery to bury our loved one, we should not go under the delusion that we buried the person of our loved one there in that cold, icy grave. If you have a religion like that, trade it in. Find the truth as it is in Scripture. Your body goes to the grave, but your soul and spirit go to be with the Lord. If a non-Christian dies, they go to a Christless eternity. When a Christian dies, he goes immediately and instantaneously into the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ,
2 Co 5:8, “We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present [face-to-face] with the Lord.”
No Christian should be apprehensive of death. The moment death strikes the believer’s body, they go non-stop into the presence of the Lord Jesus. There is no break in time between death and a Christian entering the presence of the Lord Jesus. We say, “Good night” here and instantaneously “Good morning” there.
He 2:14-15, “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”
