I submit that the most wonderful “undiscovered” Scripture verse is Psalm 17:15. It is the final word of a psalm in which the writer is bemoaning enemies who torment his existence, disregard God altogether, and run their lives by gutter ethics. These men, he says, want only what this life can offer. He calls them “men of this world whose portion is in this life,” and says they are satisfied too easily. They are content “with children and leave their abundance to their babes.”

Now, notice the next sentence, and be struck by the contrast of what will satisfy him.

“But as for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;

I will be satisfied with your likeness when I awake.”

I remind our readers–a diverse group if ever one existed–that this is the Word of God, a wonderful insight found in the inspired Scripture, and therefore to be valued as something far beyond the ravings of a beseiged yet hopeful individual. Psalm 17:15 contains a three-fold promise (at least three) of what we may expect after we close our eyes for the last time and thus end our earthly pilgrimage, as the old-timers used to put it.

Last night I drove to the funeral home and stood by the casket of 80-year-old Catherine, a forty-year member of the church I belong to and pastored for nearly 14 years. She was as fine a Christian lady as I have ever met. The mortician and his staff had done well by her, she looked as lovely in death as she had in life, and the family was pleased. But she was lifeless. Today, Catherine’s family and friends shall gather and pay tribute to her life, and remind ourselves of the hope that she held in Christ and we will shed our tears. Because she is gone.

Gone from here, yes, but not “gone.”

Standing at the little podium in that funeral parlor, I might do as I have done before and point to the exit signs above the doors. “It’s an exit from here, but an entrance into the next life.”

I love the line one of our internet friends left on this website this week. When her nearly-one-hundred-year-old uncle died, his wife, a youthful 92, said of him, “He’s in heaven right now. If he isn’t, they might as well plant it over with johnson grass.” (Ask any Alabama farm boy. The most useless vegetation on the planet.)

The Old Testament gives us glimpses of our eternal existence while the New Testament takes off the wrappings and fairly well emblazons this blessed hope as though on billboards. “Because I live, you too shall live.” “I will come again and receive you unto myself.” “To be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord.” “In my Father’s house are many rooms.” “Come you blessed of the Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” “So shall we ever be with the Lord.”

The New Testament promises of eternal life–and glory in that eternity–run into the hundreds. And yet….

And yet, we love making these discoveries in the Old Testament of nuggets the Father laid there amidst all prophecies, histories, and songs, gems to brighten our day and assure us we are precisely on course with our expectation of far more when we end our work here.

“As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;

I will be satisfied with your likeness when I awake.”

We have three promises here. At least three; you may see more.

1) I shall awake.

In another part of the Old Testament, Job asks, “If a man die, shall he live again?” (Job 14:14) It’s a question asked by every generation in every culture. The answer of history is consistent: man hopes so. Archaeologists continue to unearth ancient graves in which grieving families and whole populations interred their newly deceased and, along with the still body, placed in the tomb paraphernalia to assist in their post-earthly life. Almost every civilization has announced its hopes for some kind of heaven.

“God hath set eternity in their hearts” is how Ecclesiastes 3:11 puts it. The Creator placed inside our deepest center a yearning for Himself. “Thou has made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee,” so testified Augustine in his “Confessions.” Others call it a “God-shaped vacuum” inside our hearts.

Jesus stood outside the home of Jairus and spoke to the mourners. “The child is not dead but only sleeps.” They laughed at the very idea. However remote and primitive we think of them, one thing those people were well acquainted with was death. They knew dead when they saw it. So, they scoffed at such a claim. Who does he think he is? Why, he hasn’t even been inside the house to see for himself. How dare he dispute what we know!

But Jesus knew. Inside, the Lord took the little girl by the hand and said the tenderest words found in any Bible: “Little lamb, arise.” Then she opened her eyes and sat up. No doubt, she gave her parents a huge hug and probably the Lord, too. Jesus said, “Give this child something to eat.” Death famishes a body. (Mark 5:38-43)

You and I can make a list of what we do not know and wonder about the afterlife, a list that would fill many pages. But one of the things we know for certain: in Christ, we shall awaken.

Jesus stood outside the tomb of his friend Lazarus who died four days earlier. Once again, he had assured the mourners they could fold their tents and put away their crying towels because Lazarus was doing just fine. Then, he called with a loud voice, “Lazarus! Come forth!” The mourners then saw something they never quit talking about for the rest of their lives.

I used to wonder why the Lord doesn’t do that any longer, why he no longer calls people out of the dead to himself. Then it hit me.

He still does. Only now, he’s on the other side of the tomb.

Jesus said, “The hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” (John 5:25)

When I close my eyes here, I open them there.

2) I shall see Jesus.

Not long ago, I heard a pastor deliver an Easter sermon on Job’s question, “If a man die, shall he live again?” It was a good sermon in many respects, but I wanted so much to interrupt to suggest that he include in the message the answer which Job himself provided a little further on.

“As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take his stand on the earth.

Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God;

Whom I myself shall behold;

And whom my eyes will see and not another.”

(Job 19:24-27)

We can well call that just one more Old Testament glimpse into eternal life, of which the Hebrew Scriptures seem to have so many. The New Testament, however, the repository of our faith, is no longer content with letting slits of light sift through the curtain; it splits the curtain, throws back the covers and says, “There it is! Eternal life! Enjoy! Come on in!”

Try this text, for example, from I John chapter 3, verse 2. “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. But we know that when he appears, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”

Jesus Christ will appear, we will see him as he is, and we shall be changed into his likeness. Forget about all those things we don’t know concerning the afterlife; this is enough for us.

“I shall behold thy face in righteousness.” Jesus will be clothed in righteousness when we see Him, dressed in the full apparel of Heaven’s glory. What will that be like?

“I can only imagine.”

3) I shall be satisfied.

Whatever it will be like, whatever God has planned, and whatever we shall become, it will be perfect and it will be enough. There will be no dissatisfied customers wanting their money back, no one walking out of heaven with a sagging counenance. There is no complaints window in Heaven, no refund counter.

We have the word of the Lord Jesus Christ on this. “If it were not so, I would have told you.” (John 14:2) As a preacher of old said, “We have the word of a gentleman on this.”

So much in this world leaves us dissatisfied. You see a long-anticipated movie or play or opera and halfway through are ready to walk out. You feel cheated. It was not what you expected. A great evening on the town, eating at a famous restaurant, visiting with your friends, driving the car you saved for and could not wait to own, moving into the new house, receiving that degree or raise or promotion. You thought it would fulfill you, but it didn’t. Something inside you remains empty.

It can be disconcerting. Such emptiness has convinced some people there is nothing on earth that can fill that void and that this existence is hopeless. More than one has taken the suicide route, so despairing they were, so convinced of life’s roads all being cul-de-sacs.

God made you for himself, friend, and nothing in this earthly existence can occupy the spot inside your heart of hearts which he put there and which he reserved for himself. He made you for better things than this world offers.

“We who are in this earthly existence do groan,” Paul said. “We yearn to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven.” (II Corinthians 5:2)

Several times in the Old Testament when some person died, the Bible will say what Genesis 25:6 records of Abraham. “He breathed his last and died in a ripe old age, an old man and satisfied (with life), and he was gathered to his people.”

The “with life” we put in parenthesis, but our Bible prints those words in italics to indicate they are not in the original. The scholars felt the sense of that sentence called for their insertion. We beg to differ. The writer was simply saying of the Patriarch Abraham that he lived a full life, got to be a very old man, and died satisfied. What could be better.

And yet, there was to be “much better”–much that was better–awaiting him. If Abraham thought he was satisfied with what God had done in his life on earth, think how pleased he was to find all that awaited him on the other side.

So, this is what I shall talk about at Catherine’s funeral. The audience, small or large, will be focused on a subject some keep pushing to the back of their minds: life and death. For a few minutes at least, the matter comes front and center.

Gloria Gaither says, “Only at births and deaths do we get real about life.”

Time to get real. Thank God we’re talking about reality when we open the Book and speak of Heaven.

Kenneth Chafin used to tell the preacher boys in his seminary classes, “When you stand at the graveside of a saint, speak up strongly and make the gospel clear–you’ve got the only message in town.”

Amen. He believed it then; he knows it now.