Sleep of the Dead

Prayer: With expectant hearts and minds, we seek your truth, O God. In this study, help us to be attentive as we listen, careful as we speak, and awake to your wisdom. Open our hearts to your Scripture and give us the courage to change in light of what we read. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

With your group, take turns reading the introduction and text and answering the questions in each section.

Introduction

“For the dead lie there accounting neither days nor years, but when they are awoken,
they will seem to have slept scarcely one minute.” —Martin Luther

What happens when we die?

God tells Adam in the book of Genesis that after he becomes mortal, his fate is to return to dust.¹

But during the time period between the Old and New Testaments, a new belief about the afterlife began to take hold: some Jews began to believe that people are composed of an eternal, immortal soul and a mortal body. According to this belief, the soul both preexists the physical body and remains after the body has died.

The Encyclopedia of Judaism refers to this belief, saying, “Not even a hint of this dualistic view of the human being appears in the Bible.” ²

The belief that the body dies and the soul lives on came to be a part of the Jewish (and later, Christian) religion after much of the Bible was already written. If this is true, the Bible should communicate a different conception of death, one in which souls sleep, awaiting resurrection.

In this study, we will begin at Old Testament conceptions of death and continue through the New Testament to examine Jesus’ and his disciples’ views about what happens
when we die.

Section 1: Two times in chapter 9 of Ecclesiastes (a book of Jewish wisdom and poetry in the Old Testament), the author says that people who are dead don’t think of or know anything.

Ecclesiastes 9:4–6³ 9:4 But whoever is among the living has hope;
a live dog is better than a dead lion.
9:5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead do not know anything;
they have no further reward—and even the memory of them disappears.
9:6 What they loved, as well as what they hated and envied, perished long ago,
and they no longer have a part in anything that happens on earth.

Ecclesiastes 9:10
Whatever you find to do with your hands,
do it with all your might,
because there is neither work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave,
the place where you will eventually go.

Question 1: Why do these verses say that “a live dog is better than a dead lion”?

Question 2: According to verse 10, how should we humans act in light of our coming death?

Section 2: In Job’s worldview, all the dead rest in the same place.

Job 3:11–19
3:11 “Why did I not die at birth,
and why did I not expire
as I came out of the womb?
3:12 Why did the knees welcome me,
and why were there two breasts
that I might nurse at them?
3:13 For now I would be lying down
and would be quiet,
I would be asleep and then at peace
3:14 with kings and counselors of the earth
who built for themselves places now desolate,
3:15 or with princes who possessed gold,
who filled their palaces with silver.
3:16 Or why was I not buried
like a stillborn infant,
like infants who have never seen the light?
3:17 There the wicked cease from turmoil,
and there the weary are at rest
3:18 There the prisoners relax together;
they do not hear the voice of the oppressor.
3:19 Small and great are there,
and the slave is free from his master

Question 1: This passage says that if Job had died, he would be “lying down” and “quiet …
with kings and counsellors of the earth.” Contrast this view to other afterlife ideas.

Section 3: As he goes to raise his friend Lazarus from the dead, Jesus refers to his condition as “asleep.”

John 11:6–7, 11–14
11:6 So when [Jesus] heard that Lazarus was sick, he remained in the place where he was for two more days. 11:7 Then after this, he said to his disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” … 11:11 After he said this, he added, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. But I am going there to awaken him.” 11:12 Then the disciples replied, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” 11:13 (Now Jesus had been talking about his death, but they thought he had been talking about real sleep.) 11:14 Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died.”

Question 1: Why do you think the Scriptures use the term “sleep” to describe death?

Section 4: Paul instructs Christians to remind the grieving of the fact that the dead will rise when Jesus returns.

1 Thessalonians 4:13–18
4:13 Now we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest who have no hope. 4:14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also we believe that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep as Christians. 4:15 For we tell you this by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep.
4:16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 4:17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be suddenly caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. 4:18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Question 1: In your own words, what is the sequence of events outlined in this passage?

Read through the texts again below.⁴

Ecclesiastes 9:4–6
9:4 But whoever is among the living has hope;
a live dog is better than a dead lion.
9:5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead do not know anything;
they have no further reward—and even the memory of them disappears.
9:6 What they loved, as well as what they hated and envied, perished long ago,
and they no longer have a part in anything that happens on earth.

Ecclesiastes 9:10
Whatever you find to do with your hands,
do it with all your might,
because there is neither work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave,
the place where you will eventually go.

Job 3:11–19
3:11 “Why did I not die at birth,
and why did I not expire
as I came out of the womb?
3:12 Why did the knees welcome me,
and why were there two breasts
that I might nurse at them?
3:13 For now I would be lying down
and would be quiet,
I would be asleep and then at peace
3:14 with kings and counselors of the earth
who built for themselves places now desolate,
3:15 or with princes who possessed gold,
who filled their palaces with silver.
3:16 Or why was I not buried
like a stillborn infant,
like infants who have never seen the light?
3:17 There the wicked cease from turmoil,
and there the weary are at rest
3:18 There the prisoners relax together;
they do not hear the voice of the oppressor.
3:19 Small and great are there,
and the slave is free from his master

John 11:6–7, 11–14
11:6 So when [Jesus] heard that Lazarus was sick, he remained in the place where he was for two more days. 11:7 Then after this, he said to his disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” … 11:11 After he said this, he added, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. But I am going there to awaken him.” 11:12 Then the disciples replied, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” 11:13 (Now Jesus had been talking about his death, but they thought he had been talking about real sleep.) 11:14 Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died.”

1 Thessalonians 4:13–18
4:13 Now we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest who have no hope. 4:14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also we believe that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep as Christians. 4:15 For we tell you this by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep.
4:16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 4:17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be suddenly caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. 4:18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Discussion and application questions

1. Have you ever lost someone you love? How might it be comforting to know that a dead loved one is “asleep” instead of watching from somewhere else?
2. The Bible is emphatically opposed to any attempts to contact the dead.⁵
3. If the dead are unconscious, what is God concerned about?
4. Contrast the idea of a corporate (group) resurrection at the coming of Christ with what most people today believe about the afterlife.
5. The biblical metaphor used for death is “sleep.” What could an experience like going under anesthesia for surgery tell us about what death feels like?

Conclusion

Challenge: This week, enjoy the blessings of life and serve God now, remembering your mortality, the peaceful sleep of death, and the resurrection that will happen when Christ returns.

Blessing: May you cherish this precious life, knowing that the dead are resting in peace. May you go in strength knowing that the dead are not lost forever. Jesus will return to awaken his own to enjoy life in the age to come.

Other Scriptures that Teach the Dead Are Asleep

Job 3:11-13; 14:12-15; Psalm 6:4-5; 13:3; 88:10-13; 115:17; Isaiah 38:17-19; Daniel 12:2;
John 5:28-29; Acts 7:60; 13:36; 1 Corinthians 15:6, 17-23, 51-55; 2 Peter 3:3-4

Recommended Books

Life, Death, and Destiny by Warren Prestidge
Heaven Is Not My Home by David Burge
Our Fathers Who Aren’t in Heaven by Anthony Buzzard
Triumph of the Resurrection by Alva Huffer

1. Genesis outlines God’s curse of death on humankind: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat food until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you will return” (3:19).[↩]
2. N. Gillman, “Death and Afterlife, Judaic Doctrines Of,” in The Encyclopedia of Judaism, ed. Jacob Neusner, Alan J. Avery-Peck, and William Scott Green (2nd, Leiden: Brill, 2000), 200.[↩]
3. Scripture and/or notes quoted by permission. Quotations are from the NET Bible® copyright ©1996, 2019 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C.  All rights reserved.[↩]
4. We find that rereading the text is very helpful—please don’t skip this part of the study![↩]
5. The Mosaic law ascribes the death penalty to anyone spiritually involved with the dead: “A man or woman who has in them a spirit of the dead or a familiar spirit must be put to death. They must pelt them with stones; their blood guilt is on themselves” (Leviticus 20:27).[↩]