Look down there in the last line
of chapter, verse 3. David said, truly as the Lord
liveth and as thy soul liveth, there is but a step between me
and death. David and Jonathan, why he came
to Jonathan was because he had a covenant with Jonathan. He
could trust Jonathan. Jonathan would be faithful to
him. Jonathan would protect him and preserve him. But now Jonathan's
father had promised Jonathan that David wouldn't die. As the
Lord liveth, I will not harm David. Told us in verse 8, chapter
18, if I'm not mistaken. And you know, David, or Jonathan,
Saul tried to put David to death three different times. Three
different times. And he had such, you know, when
the Lord departed from him, he had such a state of mind and
fear and anxiety and paranoia and unhappiness that he just,
he lost his mind. His whole purpose from then on
was to do nothing but kill David. And David, from this day on,
was nothing but a fugitive from Saul. Saul hunted him just like,
well, he said he hunted me down as a partridge. Hunted me down
as an animal. And so he tried to end everything
that happened. God preserved him. God preserved
him. And then, you know, and this
happened until the very end of Saul's life. that our David spent
the rest of his time as long as Saul was living hiding from
Saul. Jonathan was loyal to David And
I'll tell you what, it was as a house divided. His father wanted
David dead, Jonathan wanted to protect him. Jonathan loved him. Jonathan was in covenant with
him. Jonathan was faithful to him. And I'll tell you something,
the gospel has parted many a family. The gospel has parted many a
husband and wife, many a son and daughter. It's made a great
difference between people in life. Our Lord Jesus said it
this way, If a man loves his father, his mother, his mother,
brother, sister more than me, he's not worthy of me. He don't
even think about it. And that's what Jonathan did.
He wanted to protect David and love David and told David everything
his father had intended. And saw their house was so divided,
I'm going to kill him. Jonathan said, no. What has he
done? What has he done? And oh, and that's why Samuel
said, Jonathan said to him here, he said, Lord, you're not going
to die. You're not going to die. And David said, as your soul
lives and as the Lord's souls live, there's just a step between
me and death. You know, there's two people
in the scriptures that did not die. Just two people. There was Enoch and Elijah. Enoch,
the scripture says, was not, for the Lord took him. And Elijah
went to heaven in a chariot of fire. God come down and got him
and carried him away in a chariot of fire. Carried him all the
way to Cologne. And that's why you know... And that's why you
know in Ecclesiastes... Let's look over... You all know
Ecclesiastes is the book before the book of Proverbs. When you
get to Proverbs, just go right back before that and you're in
Ecclesiastes. Look what it says here in Ecclesiastes
3. You know, it's not a good thing
to talk about death, but yet it's something that's inevitable. Something that's inevitable.
David knew the uncertainties of his life. And we don't, you
know, the only thing we know certain in this life is our relationship
with God in Christ. God in Christ and often myself
when I get in an automobile especially when I get in an automobile and
and I you know I'm always thinking well will this be the day that
I have a wreck and mangle myself or mangle somebody else I often
think of that every single time especially if I'm going far away
but look what he said here in Ecclesiastes 3 and verse 1 to
everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under
the heaven. Now listen to it. A time to be
born. There's a time for everybody
to be born. And then there's a time to die. There's a time
to be born and a time to die. And I tell you what, and you
know we need to hold on to everything in this world just real, real
loosely. Because everything we got We're
going to leave it behind. John Chapman said the other day,
and I haven't put it in the bulletin yet, but I will. He said, you
never see a U-Haul following a hearse. You don't do it. You don't do it. And I'll tell
you what, there's no place in this life, now this is strange,
I know it is. But sometimes we want to go home,
and other times we want to live, and we hold on to life tenaciously.
Whenever we find out something's wrong with us, we run to a doctor.
Whenever we find out something's seriously wrong with us, we run
to two or three doctors. And when we have a loved one
that seems to be sick or in some kind of a trouble, we want them
to be taken care of. But it's all just a futile effort
because in the end, we're going to die. We're going to die. And
you know I work out all the time. I've been doing it for years
and years. So if I die, I'm going to die healthy. Old age will get me. But I'll
tell you, I do know, but that's why David said, there's
hardly a step between me and death. I want to deal with three,
three undeniable realities that we have to deal with in this
life. First of all, there's a step between us and death. It's an
inevitable step. One of these days we're going
to take that step, that last step. It's going to happen. And it's an uncertain step. And
then it's a final step. When you take that step, that's
the last one you'll take and nothing will be undone from then
on. And David was stating the obvious here. He said, there
is but a step between me and death. Now beloved, we're all
going to die. There's no doubt about it. But
I tell you something, God didn't create us to die. He put Adam
in the garden and He created that life. He put the life of
God in Adam. And he had a good life. He had
an abundant life. A glorious life in the very presence
of God. But when he sinned against God,
a curse came on us. And what is that curse that came
on us because of sin? Death. And death is a curse. It's a penalty. It's a reflection
of our guilt. And without there had been any
transgression, there'd be no death. But since the fall of
Adam, death is universal. And no matter where you go on
this earth, the condition of man is that they die. They die. And I tell you what, you know,
you go through Genesis when the first person, and this is dying. that died was Adam. He lived
930 years and he died. Then he begat a son. You go down
through there a verse or two and he died. Down another verse
or two and he died. The only place where you find
where people did not die is in the Lord Jesus Christ. People
don't die in Christ. We die in this body, but people
without Christ, I mean it's an awful, awful curse. And I tell
you what, the word died, die, death, etc. is found over 1,200
times in this book. That sounds like God's got something
to say about that. Don't you reckon? He talks about
death in the Revelation. And He talks about life in the
Revelation. Paul talked about death a lot
of times. He said, though I die daily,
die every day, yet my inward man's renewed over and over and
over again. And the reality of death is certain. We all gonna do it. You know
how many people, how many million people die each year in America?
In America now, about 55 million people die every year in America. About a hundred and fifty six
hundred fifty five hundred fifty six thousand die Today I Listen
to the y'all ever listen to a bitch you were here comes on 1130 and
430 you list the bitch where sometimes they don't have none
Sometimes they have one other times you get on there and they'll
have five or six Five or six But about 155,000 people died
today in America. And about 6,500 die every hour
of every day. Now that sounds like the statistics
is against us if you're going to go by statistics. But we don't
go by statistics. Thank God we don't. But here's
the thing about Death could be our next step. To try to pretend it doesn't
exist is absolute utter foolishness. America and our culture is intoxicated,
just drunk on people being young. Plastic surgeons, and this is
the truth, you see it all the time. I've seen it in people,
I've seen it happen. Plastic surgeons are such in high demand. You know why? They're trying
to make old folks look young. They're trying to get people
to go back from being 60 to 50. 50 to 30. And they do everything
in their power. And that's people that are studying
how to keep people from aging. Wouldn't it be a blessing if
they had some kind of medicine or something you can take and
you'd never age? They're working on that. And
then people spend 20 billion dollars a year, 20 billion dollars
a year on cosmetics to keep their self looking young. Dye their hair? I'm not trying
you, I'm not trying you, I'm just telling you. These are things
that people are doing to do what? To stay young. To look young. And for a man who don't know
Christ, that ought to invoke the greatest fear. That ought
to scare you to death. It's appointed on the man who
wants to die, and after this, the judgment. And it's a fearful
thing to fall into the hands of who? The living God. Huh? For the lost man, his life is
vanity. It's just like a wind. He lives,
he dies, and he perishes. No different than a beast. The
Proverbs says this, when a wicked man dies his expectation goes
with him. And the hope of a strong man
perishes. A life that's not with God and
saved by God and saved in Christ absolutely has no purpose or
meaning other than just marking time in this world. That's all
it amounts to. They're just marking time. And
they're just passing through this world. And they're like
a hog. He just eats and eats and eats
and never looks up to see where his food's coming from. He's
like a chicken. Peck, peck, peck, peck, peck.
And he never can look up to see who's put the food on the ground.
That's man without Christ. That's man without God. Barnard
used to say, a man without Christ is crazy. He's insane. Who in
the world if he had a way for God to save him and not perish
and have some purpose and joy and peace in his life, why wouldn't
he come to Christ? Oh, that's what Solomon concluded.
Vanity of vanity is all is vanity. He said, I set my mind to know
wisdom. And you know what I found out
about it after knowing wisdom? It's just madness. Foolishness. And he said, I'm going to sit
down and I'm going to try every pleasure there is to try. And
you know what he said? It was absolutely futile. In
pleasure, what does it accomplish? Huh? Look at Ecclesiastes 2.11.
Let's look at this here a minute. I want you to see this. Ecclesiastes
2.11. I hope you remember where it's
at. But here in Ecclesiastes 2.11.
You know, the only people who truly, truly
know this is people who know Christ. But when a man dies, all his
plans, all his preparations are unfulfilled and left behind for
somebody else. Look what it says here in verse
11. Ecclesiastes 2.11. Then I looked on all the works
that my hands had wrought, and all the labor that I had labored
to do, Man alive. We can all do that. And behold,
all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no prophet
under the sun. No prophet. But our man, when
he dies without Christ, and he dies without hope, dies without
anything going on, it's like that rich man who said, soul,
take your ease. Eat, drink, and be merry. You've
got things laid up for many, many years. And that very night,
that very night, God said, you fool! You fool! This night, your soul is required
of you. Required of you. Huh? Oh, I tell
you, that for those who know Christ, those who trust Christ,
those who've been washed in the blood, been regenerated by the
Spirit of God, Death. Death has lost its power and
its fear. It really has. Now this doesn't
mean to say death. We say death, come on and get
me. We don't do that. Most of us don't. But what David
was expressing was true. And the thing is that he knowed
that Saul was going to hound him to death if God didn't preserve
him and save him. And you can go through so many
Psalms when he was talking about when Saul was after him. So it's
an inevitable step. We're going to take that step
and it's going to be our last one. It's going to be our last
one. Everybody in this building has
got somebody that you did not know was going to go that day. But they went. They took that
last step. It might have been the last step
before they got in bed. It might have been the last step
when they got out of bed. and not always in an inevitable
step, but it's an uncertain step. It's uncertain. We don't know
what's going to happen. And I'm certainly thankful for that.
I'm glad I don't know the future. I am so glad. That's why I said,
boast not thyself of tomorrow. You don't know what a day is
going to take for it. And say that old man like Bruce preached
here one time, go to now you men and say, I'll go here and
I'll go yonder and I'll buy and I'll sell and I'll get gain.
Well, as you should say, if the Lord will, I will do such and
such a thing. And oh, most of us pretend that
death lies way, way out in the future. And everyone I'm preaching to
expects to be alive tomorrow. I expect to wake up in the morning.
I really do. I think I'll live tomorrow. Very
few of that 155,000 people who died today didn't expect that
that was going to be their final day. Didn't suspect it. That's
why God said unto that rich man, said, oh, you fool, this night
thy soul shall be right. Then, then, who shall those things
be which you've provided? And you know, because of this,
And it said over in Ecclesiastes 8 and 11, because an execution
is not speedily done against the sons of men. When God don't,
you know, people say, well, if I'm doing wrong, let God strike
me with light. God don't operate that way. And
he said, because a sentence against evil men is not executed speedily,
their heart is more set to do evil. And because men, the death
is so uncertain and they don't know when it's going to happen,
that's why they don't get urgent about the gospel. That's why
my son's not urgent about the gospel. That's why your children ain't
often about the gospel. It's because they're young and
they got, and oh, we got a whole life ahead of us. A whole life
ahead of us. You know the first funeral I
had when I was in the state of Tennessee? I'm gonna tell you,
the first funeral I had was a six-year-old girl. Little Lisa Lushman. Paul and
Patty's baby. She had leukemia. She had this
beautiful blue eye, beautiful. Cobalt blue eyes and blonde hair,
six years old. Second funeral I had, a man took
a .357 magnet and put it right there. Couldn't even put his
head back together. That's uncertain when it's going
to happen. It really is. And that's why, because people
just don't, they think it's not going to happen to them. It's
not going to come. That's why they don't sense the urgency
of the gospel. They believe they got lots and
lots of time to consider such things. And I hope you do. I hope you do, but just suppose
you don't. Huh? Just suppose you don't. I tell you, the truth is, death
can come any time God sends it. Anytime God sends it. And sometimes He lets us know
that you've got a certain amount of time. And other times He lets
you, He told Hezekiah, set your house in order Hezekiah. Somebody told me the other day,
that's what the doctors told him. They gave him bad news,
said go home and set your house in order. You ain't gonna make
it. The man that was supposed to
come here, I don't mean, I don't want to be morbid. I want us
to stress this idea, this concept of death and how urgent it is
that we and our loved ones believe the gospel. And that we get the
gospel to them some way, somehow, witness to them, beg them, plead
them, tell them something to get them to show how precarious
life is. But oh, I tell you, just Death could be here any minute.
It really could. You know that fellow that was
coming in here, Bobby Barr, is going to come in here and do
this sealing for us. Well, I met him here in 1977.
He's going to come in here and do this for us. He got ahold
of me Monday morning and said, I can't do it. I just can't do
it. Wednesday afternoon his wife
took him to the doctor and on his way back to the house he
died in the car in the seat beside his wife. His wife certainly didn't expect
that. He didn't expect it. But it's certain. It's an uncertain
step that we're all going to take. But David was no safer
from death when he was taking care of the sheepfold and taking
care of his father's sheep than he was when Saul was after him. And I tell you, this is something
that we, you know, death casts a shadow over our entire lives. It does. It does. From the time
we're young, we hear about people and we know ourselves. And just
like a beast, like a wild beast that's on our trail, it goes
after us with relentless pursuit. He could be hiding around the
corner on the next step. And here's the thing about it.
Old Jonathan Edwards preached a message called Sinners in the
Hand of an Angry God. And he says, God's got you holed
by a spider's web out over hell. Just a spider web. And all he's got to do is just
let that spider web break and you're gone. Y'all listen to it sometimes.
It'll stir you up. But I'll tell you what, he said
this. And that's all we live by. We live life by thread. It's a little thread. And all the advances that we have
in science and medicine, you know how the chances of death
are? 100%. I don't care how good the doctors
are and how good science is. The rate of death is 100%. And I don't mean to sound, I don't
want you to, you know. And let me say this. It's the final step. It's the
final step. The Bible, like I said, it mentions
dying, death. We're dead over 1,200 times. And it's always present. It's
always a present danger. And I think we ought to think
about it. I really think God's people do think about it. We
consider the reality of eternity. The reality of eternity is a
long, long, long time. It's a long time. And then to
get into eternity, when you go into eternity without Christ,
It's an eternal punishment, eternal perishing. And I'll tell you
what, this is the thing that folks need to understand. Now
be no coming back and making any corrections. Now be no coming
back and saying, I'm going to undo this and I'm going to undo
that. When a man's gone, he ain't going
to come back and take his eraser out and say, I'm going to erase
that and I'm going to erase this and I'm going to put this in
and put that out. No, no. That's not the way it works. That rich man, he lifted up his
eyes in hell. And you know what he said? He
said, if he asked, would he let Lazarus come dip his finger in
water and just one little drop on his parched tongue? And he
says, no, there's a great gulf fixed between us. And you had
your good things in life and he had his evil things. And he
said, well, I'll tell you what you do. Would you let someone,
let Lazarus go and let someone tell my five brothers about this
awful place so they won't come here. Do you know what he told
him? He said, if they don't believe
Moses and the prophets, they wouldn't believe even though
one rose from the dead. Ain't that right? And I tell
you what, and if you don't know Christ, if a soul's here that
don't know Christ, consider your soul, and I mean consider it
with some sense of urgency. Death is, I mean death, death
is approaching quickly and it will strike unexpectedly. I'm
telling you, I was not a person in this building that didn't
think they'd get this old. We didn't think we were going
to get this old. You know, and we're going to
get older if Lord lets us live. But that's what I'm talking about.
Oh my. And it's always, always mostly
unpredictable. And it can come at the unexpected
time. And as soon as you leave this
world, as soon as you leave this world, I have to leave this world,
there's something that has to be dealt with. And you know what
that has to be dealt with? It's sin. Sin has to be dealt
with. It's either going to be dealt
with by the Lord Jesus Christ or be faced by yourself in your
sin. And I tell you what, the only
way in the world that sin can be dealt with is through the
Lord Jesus Christ. He by Himself put away sin by
the sacrifice of Himself. He by Himself, He bore our sins
in His own body. He was made a curse for us to
redeem us and save us from the curse. And that's God's only
Savior. There's no other Savior. And
a man without Christ, he'll stand eternally condemned. And the
gospel, the gospel gives hope now. It gives hope right now. I mean, we were condemned with
Adam. But our Lord Jesus Christ comes and He faced God. You know,
our Lord Jesus Christ tasted death? And you know what it is
to taste death? But for Christ to taste death
meant that when He was forsaken of His Father to Him, that was
the awfulest thing He could have ever faced. to be forsaken of his own father.
That's what it means to taste death. You die without Christ
and then you'll really know what death is. But if you are in Christ,
you'll never know what death is really. That's why Paul said, for me
to die is gain. And to depart be with Christ.
My citizenship's in heaven. Oh my! And I tell you what, Christ
satisfied justice by His own death, by His own blood, and
God saw the tabernacle of His soul and was satisfied. And oh,
without that hope, a man has no hope. Now, believers don't
have to face the judgment, and they don't have to face their
sin. Why not? Christ faced them both for us.
There was both of them. And I tell you our Lord Jesus
Christ removed the curse of sin by taking it upon himself. The
sting of death is sin. You know why death has a sting
in it? Sin. Well, then death, if
there ain't no sin, then the sting has been taken out of it.
Ain't that right? And listen to this. and the power
of sin is the law. Well, Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness to everyone that believes. And that's why
the apostle said, thanks be to God who gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ. Victory over what? Law, death,
hell, and sin, and everything that was against us. Our Lord
Jesus Christ by Himself, by Himself God for us. And if our Lord Jesus
paid the full penalty of our sin, why are we still gonna die? I'll tell you why. That's the
way God's appointed for us to go into His presence. You know, He's removed our condemnation,
but we still gotta die. And you know why? Because we're
in a mortal body. And we got to have an immortal body.
We in a corrupt body, we got to have an incorruptible body.
And as long as we're in this body, we're going to get sick.
We're going to suffer. And once eventually, as Shirley
said this evening, when we was coming to service, he says, you
know, God knows our frame, that we're dust. He said, I got you
out of the dust, and you're going right back to it. Oh my. But I tell you, you know,
that's why Paul said, I carry about with me this body of sin.
No wretched man that I am who's going to deliver me from this
body of sin. And the next line says this,
there's no condemnation to them that are in Christ. And I tell
you one of these days, One of these days, we're going to leave
this old body and everything about it and all the sin that
it's committed in itself, we're going to leave it all behind.
And God is weaning us. Your mama, you've said all the
time, said, God's weaning us. Weaning us off this world. A
mother wants to wean its baby. Gotta get it weaned. Everything
has got to be weaned and God is weaning us off this world. He is making us fall more in
love with Him and Him becoming more precious to us and this
world meaning less and less and less and less. Huh? The best days of our life are
spent on the sound of the gospel and being with the Lord's people.
That's the best days of our lives right now. Everything else is
just The death for the believer, for
the lost man is an enemy, but the believer for death for him
is just a door that will open and take us into the presence
of Christ. Like I told you, like I told
you, you know, Tom Harding was preaching Henry's funeral and
he says, he says, you know, when there's a time to depart, you
know, you have that departure time. And it'll take you a while
to get where you're going. But he says, when a believer
departs here, he arrives at his destination. It departs from
there, just like that. You depart and you arrive. Oh my, what's our attitude toward
it? Oh, for me to live is Christ,
to die is gain. Oh my. If our Lord Jesus Christ
is our bridegroom, we're going to get to go to the wedding feast. If these days are short and it's
just a step between us and death, that's alright. But for those who don't know
Christ, those who don't know God, wouldn't be in your shoes for
this world 10,000 like it. And you know, I want you to look
in Matthew chapter 1. I don't know, and I hate to say
this, it's an awful, awful thing to say. But I don't know of anybody in
my family on either side, my mothers or my dads. You know, you go to Genesis 5
and it says the book of the generation of Adam died, died, died, died. Listen to this. Two books, the
book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the
son of Abraham. Now you go all the way through
that and you don't find anybody dying. Nobody in this community is dying,
but everybody in Adam's family And because of our relationship
to Adam, we're going to die. But because of our relationship
to Christ, we're entering into life, real life, blessed life,
glorious life. Our Father, our precious, precious,
blessed God in heaven, thank you for allowing us to meet here
tonight. I pray that what I said was said in the right attitude,
the right spirit, with the right, hopefully, God, by your grace,
the right motive. Lord, we look to you. Our life is in your hand. You
can do with us that seemeth good to you. You can let us live long
or you can let us live a short time. Our life is in your hands. Our souls is in your hands. And
Lord, there's no other place I would rather for my soul and
my life to be than to be with you and to be in you. Oh, what
a blessed life it is. What a blessed hope it is. What
a precious, precious life it is. God bless these saints. Strengthen
and encourage them in their hearts, in their soul, in their families,
with their children. Help us to be faithful to witness
to our children and our grandchildren. to warn them, to tell them how
much they need Christ, and how uncertain life is. We ask, O
Lord, to give us the grace to do these things. We ask in Christ's
name, Amen. Amazing grace,