Now before we turn to the Word
of God, I want to take this opportunity of my last chance to look into
your faces for at least the immediate future and to express on behalf
of my wife Dorothy and myself the deep gratitude we feel for
the graciousness shown to us in these several weeks that we've
been among you. We've been in more than two or
three of your homes, and we have been treated royally. We have
been fed well. But above all, we have been deeply
enriched by the kind of Christ-centered honest, open-faced Christian
fellowship that we've experienced with a number of you, and for
that we are most grateful. The older one gets, the more
we appreciate God's keeping grace. My knowledge and friendship with
some of you goes way back to the greenhouse days. There aren't
many of you still around, but there are some of you. And to
think that God has kept us in the way all of these decades
is a marvel of His grace. Whatever grace it takes to open
the blind eyes and unstop the deaf ears of an unregenerate
sinner, there is in a sense a concentrated burst of divine grace and power
But that person who's been thoroughly converted, regenerated, indwelt
by the Holy Spirit, has for the rest of his pilgrimage this baggage
of remaining sin. and that that sin does not rise
up and reconquer us, there is only one reason, and that is
the virtue of Christ in the Holy Spirit working in us to will
and to work for God's good pleasure. And when we look back over decades
of God's keeping and restorative grace, It should fill us with
wonder and gratitude, and that's been my experience in these days
that we have been among you. And since your pastor emeritus
does not need to have his words validated by me, nonetheless
I want to validate the commendations he gave you concerning your good
order in the life and ministry and appearance of the church
properties, the efficiency of your deacons. It seems each one
is doing his proper thing at the proper time, And there's
not a lot of scurrying about in a sense that people around
here know what they're doing. Anyone with any sense of what
it's like to manage and to direct and govern a group this size
appreciates what is being done to secure that kind of God-honoring
order in your life as the people of God. So thank you. God willing,
very early on Wednesday morning, we shall be taking a flight back
to Grand Rapids to the tundra of western Michigan. We're going
back to some cold weather, but we will carry back warm memories,
a little bit of color on our faces, and thankful to God for
our four weeks among you. Now, as I wrestled with this
whole question of what I should preach, I went back and forth
and forth and back and back and forth again. But toward the end
of this past week, I became settled in my own mind and heart that
I should both prepare and preach a Bible-saturated, topical sermon
on a very sobering subject, a subject which in the providence of God
was brought forward in our regular Old Testament reading just a
few minutes ago. And because we're addressing
a very sobering theme of Scripture, we need the special help of God
that we may together taste the powers of the age to come. and as a result of it, by God's
grace, be different, having tasted that power. So let's look to
God once more in prayer, asking for His help in the preaching
and listening to the Word of God. Let us pray. Our Father, we remember afresh
the words of our Lord Jesus, who said, Without me, you can
do nothing. And we would own that reality
and pray that in grace, in mercy, and in power, the Lord Jesus
himself will attend his own words with each heart and mind reaching
out to receive with eagerness that which you would say to us
tonight. We do pray that as we address
many portions of your word, that word will come not in word only,
but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. We look to you
to work in us that which is well-pleasing in your sight, through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen. Now that sermon that I've prepared
and by God's help hope to preach in your hearing tonight is couched
in the words of a question. Here is the question. What must
I know, believe, and do in order to be prepared to die? That's the message I want to
preach tonight. I originally had, what must you
do? But I said, no, too many will
slip off from the hook. I want us to start with that
personal perspective. And so I've worded it this way,
what must I, I, each one of us sitting here, the preacher standing
here, what must I know and believe and do in order to be ready to
die? And in bringing many scriptures
to bear upon that question, I want to collate them under two simple
headings. Heading number one, why I must
consider this question. Why I must consider this question. And secondly, what is the Bible's
unchangeable answer to this question so two simple headings why and
what first of all then why should I why should you soberly seriously
consider this question what must I know believe and do and be
ready to die I give you three parts to the answer to that question
number one Fact number one is the inescapable certainty of
your death. The inescapable certainty of
your death. Hebrews 9.27 says, as it is appointed
for man once to die, a divine appointment has been made in
God's calendar. And he has not sought your counsel
nor mine to come to an agreement like we do with a dentist or
a doctor, agreeing that a certain time on a certain day with his
schedule and your schedule we can agree. Two-thirty I'll be
there to have my tooth filled. We make an appointment that is
a bilateral arrangement between ourselves and the physician. But when the scripture says,
it is appointed for man to die, that appointment is made unilaterally
by God Himself and by God alone. And in God's calendar, in God's
record book, of when men shall die, when women shall die, when
children shall die, whether they die on the highway, die in battle,
die in a hospital room, die at home in hospice care. It matters
not where, when, or how. God has made an appointment with
your name on it. And when we contemplate this
reality, that from the moment of your conception in your mother's
womb, when God began to construct another human being, and a soul
and body were formed in your mother's womb, and the day came
when that soul and body in this baby was expelled from the womb,
and you stand and look at that precious little one, whether
in a maternity ward or in some kind of a birthing center or
at home, wherever it occurs, we stand back and ask the question,
what will happen to that newborn child? And if we stand in the
birthing place of a mother somewhere in the subcontinent of India,
or off in the foothills of the Himalayas in some part of the
Far East, or if we are here in Southern Florida and we ask the
question of every newborn child, what is absolutely certain to
happen to that child and to every single individual brought into
this world. There is only one thing that
is universally true without any exceptions whatsoever. Apart from those alive at the
return of Christ, there is only one event that will be true of
every single man, woman, boy or girl of whatever race, whatever
ethnic background, whatever social standing, whatever economic standing,
etc. And what is that certainty? It
is appointed unto that child eventually to die. and it is the absolute inevitable
certainty of our death that should press us with the sense of responsibility
to ask the question, what must I know and believe and do to
be ready for that one event in life that is absolutely certain? Before you go to bed tonight,
look in the mirror, as unpleasant as that request may be, and say
to the person in the mirror, one day you will die. Your heart will stop beating.
Your brain will stop sending out electrical signals. Your
pulse will cease. Your breathing will cease. What
James says will be true of you and of me as the body apart from
the spirit is dead. Death occurs when that unnatural
rending of soul and body that begins in our conception and
follows through our prenatal development and our birthing
and our lives, whether we live one day, one week, one year,
ten years, a hundred years, the only certain event for all of
us, we're going to die. It is appointed once to die. Surely it's madness to act as
though that event is somehow going to be bypassed by us. And so I'm trying to persuade
you that you need to ask that question. What do I need to know? What do I need to believe? What
do I need to do that I may be prepared to die? Reason number
one is the inescapable certainty of your death. But reason number
two is this. the inescapable certainty of
your judgment. I go back to Hebrews 9.27 again,
as it is appointed unto men to die once and after that comes
judgment. These words are found in a place
in Hebrews where the writer is seeking to show the inseparable
relationship between two aspects of the work of Christ, aspects
that cannot be separated. And he says, in using an illustration
of two events that cannot be separated, as it is appointed
unto men once to die, And then comes judgment, so Christ was
once offered. This is an absolute, inescapable
certainty that following death is the reality of judgment. For the vast majority of mankind,
that judgment will come in two stages. I describe it, the theologians
speak of the intermediate state. I like to call it that private
personal judgment that is made when our spirits leave our bodies
in the event of death. and then the ultimate public
judgment that will be made at the return of Christ when all
the debtor raised and stand before God for public trial and consignment
to heaven or to hell. Now let me spend just a few moments
opening up that aspect of biblical truth. It's appointed unto men
once to die and after this, judgment. A very helpful passage, and here
I will ask you to turn to it with me, in showing us this reality,
is found in Luke chapter 16, in the parable of the rich man
and Lazarus the poor man. Notice in verse 22, the poor
man died and was carried by the angels
to Abraham's side, or Abraham's bosom, as the older translations
have it. The poor man died. He stopped
breathing. There were no electrical currents
circulating through his brain, no more pulse. His spirit left
his body. The poor man died. But a judgment
was made concerning that man's spirit, that it was a spirit
fit to go into the presence of God with favor, with blessing,
into the company of the father of the faithful, Abraham himself,
This man, a judgment was made when that spirit left his body. It is fit to come into my presence
in favor, in peace, and with joy. But now read on. The rich man also died. And he was buried. His heart
stopped beating. His lungs stopped expanding and
retracting. No more brainwaves. He's dead. He's a goner. He's gone. But
the scripture says, he died and was buried. What was buried? the outward shell, the body that
he had carried about with him, that body that was the house
of that spirit, that body is buried, it's placed in the ground. What happened to his spirit?
Read, and we get the answer. And in Hades, or hell, Being
in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off
and Lazarus at his side. A judgment was made when that
man's spirit left his luxurious context, his probably fat, overfed,
over-adorned body. He lived luxuriously. God made
a judgment, this man's spirit is not fit for my presence with
favor, with peace, with joy, rather it is consigned to Hades,
the hell before the final hell. the place where God keeps the
spirits of unregenerate, unholy, uncleansed, unjustified sinners
until the more public, formal, final judgment at the return
of Christ. And so the Bible teaches very
clearly in a passage such as John chapter 5, that while there is this private,
immediate judgment upon the occasion of death, there is another public
judgment that awaits us. John chapter 5 and verse 28. Do not marvel at this, for an
hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice,
that is, the voice of the Son of Man, the Lord Jesus, and come
out, those who've done good, to the resurrection of life,
and those who've done evil, to the resurrection of judgment."
So here is that future public judgment of both body and spirit. When the rich man whose spirit
was in hell, the scripture speaks of Hades giving up the dead that
were in it, and those spirits will be released. and they will
be rejoined to that body that he fed with the finest of foods
and that he clothed with the finest of linens and velvet and
scarlet and all that goes with luxury. His soul and body in
which he lived his self-absorbed, luxuriant, godless life are now
rejoined in order to be formally, openly judged. and as well the
body of the poor man that rotted in the grave just like the rich
man's. His spirit will with the returning
Lord come back first Thessalonians 4. He will bring his own with
him and rejoining that spirit to that body shall stand before
Christ As we read in Matthew 25, 31, when the Son of Man shall
come in His glory, and the glory of His Father's angels, all nations
shall be gathered before Him, and He shall separate them as
a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. and the goats
shall be placed on the left hand and the sheep on the right and
what will be the issue of that final judgment read the language
of Matthew 25 and verse 46 language could not be more clear as to
what will be the result of that final open public judgment and
these These to whom he says, depart from me, I did not know
you. These shall go away into eternal
punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. And that brings us to the third
inescapable fact that should force us to think about this
question, not only the inescapable certainty of my death, the inescapable
certainty of my judgment, its private, personal judgment at
death, its public judgment of body and spirit in the general
resurrection and general judgment, but thirdly, the inescapable
certainty of your judgment irreversibly determining your eternal experience. God help me to believe what I'm
preaching. To me, there are few words more
sobering in all of Scripture. When the Lord on His throne in
the final judgment says, verse 41, He will say to those on His
left, Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared
for the devil and his angels. Will that sentence scare them
into repentance? Will there be an opportunity
to say, Oh, Lord Jesus, we see now how stupid and foolish it
was to simply live to feed our flesh, how foolish it was to
pursue our lust and sinful passions. Lord, have mercy. No, no. If these words are spoken to
you, If they would be spoken to me, depart from me. The one who speaks them is described
in the earlier part of this passage, then shall the king sit upon
the throne of His glory as the Messianic King with the right
to dispose of the souls and bodies of the six billion presently
living on this planet Earth. When He says, Depart from Me,
what will be the result? These shall go away. into eternal, everlasting, unending
punishment. But the righteous, the ones to
whom He will say, Welcome into the kingdom prepared
for you from the foundation of the world. Verse 34, Then they,
every one of them without exception, regardless of what their past
had been before they were made fit to die, these shall go away
into the full blessing of eternal life, which is nothing less than
eternal, unending existence in the immediate presence of the
triune God, with the glory of that God beaming peculiarly from
the face of Christ, and in the new heavens and the new earth,
we shall serve and worship and love one another and above all
supremely our Savior God forever and forever. Now do you see why
I said we should consider this question? What must I know and
believe and do that I'm prepared to die? and from death to go
to judgment, and from judgment to go to a fixed unending torment
in the place called hell. As death leaves you, the judgment
will take you. And as the judgment takes you,
it will consign you to eternal bliss and blessedness, body,
soul, and spirit in the presence of the Lamb and of the Triune
God and all the saints from east and west and north and south. And we shall have an eternity
to expound what these words mean, the righteous into eternal life. Is there anyone of any age old
enough to hear the vocables coming out of my mouth and the words
that I speak? Is there anyone sitting here
tonight so besottened by your sin, so blinded by the God of
this world, so dulled to plain common sense, that you're ready
to face these inescapable realities and not give them another thought?
I'm going to die. I'm going to judgment. And from
judgment to heaven or hell, that's inescapable reality. God help us! God help us to believe
that! And if we do, then we're prepared
to move to our second heading. What is it that we must know,
we must believe, and we must do to be ready to die? Well, let me suggest, first of
all, let's start with God. What is it that you must know,
believe, concerning God. You're always safe starting where
the Bible starts. Someone didn't know anything
about the Bible, someone put it in his hand, said this is
God's Word, the God of heaven, spoke through human beings in
different languages, in different thought forms, but it was God
himself guiding them. This is heaven's message to us. And they opened it for the first
time. What will they find? In the beginning, God. And their eyes pop open and say,
whatever this book is about, I'm going to confront someone
who must be glorious. He must be majestic. This being,
nothing about how he got here, nothing about who made him, nothing
about anything other than the fact that there was a being called
God before anything else existed from the farthest yet undiscovered
galaxy with its millions of stars down to the smallest measurement
of the microcosm when there was nothing but the being of the
triune God this God creates And then the unfolding story opens
up in the rest of the Bible. And so what you must know, what
you must believe, if you're to be ready to die, has first of
all to do with your relationship to this God. and specifically
three simple areas I touch on just with a text or two for each
one. I want you to say to yourself,
this God is my creator. I'm not a cosmic accident. I am not the product of evolutionary
forces. I am a human being created by
God in His image. As we read in Genesis 1, 26 and
27, God said, let us make man in our image. And after our likeness in the
image of God created he him, male and female created he them. And by the way, I want to just
put in this little side. This is what lies behind all
of this horrible, perverted thinking and actions regarding same-sex,
bi-sex, etc. Here's what lies behind it. There's
one area where you can't deny God's absolute sovereignty. When
you were conceived, the number of chromosomes determined, that's
going to be my baby boy, that's going to be my baby girl. And
you had nothing to do with it. Mom and Dad had nothing to do
with it. You had nothing to do with it. That was God's choice
to begin a created male or female. And the ultimate rebellion is
when a male stands back, rears on his hind legs, and says, I
will not have God determine my identity. I'll determine it.
I'll let my urges and my passions and a host of other things determine
it. Anything other than saying, oh
God, you in wisdom created me a male. You in wisdom created
me a female. He is my Creator and Acts 17,
24-26 tells us that God goes on among the nations as the Creator
and we live and move and have our very being in Him. And even
though, as we shall see, that image has been marred, we are
still created marred image-bearers, but image-bearers nonetheless,
for James 3.9 says, people who are made in the likeness of God. God is my Creator. If you're going to be ready to
die, You've got to start with thinking rightly about God, believing
what is said about Him, and this is where you start. God is my
creator. Secondly, God is my rightful
lawgiver. The Creator has a right to do
what He will with what He creates, to tell His creation how it is
to function. And so when we open the first
two chapters of Genesis, we do not find God creating man and
then sitting down and saying, well now that I've made you Adam,
we need to have a little powwow and get some things figured out.
and i don't want to appear overbearing and i don't want to appear oppressive
in any way so let's talk about uh... what would you like to
do for an occupation And, oh, by the way, don't you once in
a while get a little twitch of loneliness? I'd like to sow a
little seed in your mind. I've got something in my mind
about another creation that I may engage in if it pleases you. Nonsense! You open up Genesis
1 and 2. It says, The Lord God created
Adam, and He put him in a garden. He put him there. Why? He made
him. He had a right to pick him up.
I doubt he did it by the hair of his head. He did it in a sweet,
gentle way. Probably came in a theophany,
a pre-incarnate visit of Christ, and asked Adam to put his arm
in his and walk together and held communion. And he said,
Adam, here's the special spot that's going to be the special
sphere of your labor. And I want to begin now by having
you name the animals, observe them, collate the data about
their size, their structure, their appearance, their apparent
function, and give them a name. And in the Hebrew context, The
name had something to do with the character or function. And
so Adam is exercising his mind, and he sees the male and the
female of the zebras and the elephant, and I don't know what
he might have thought if he saw a couple of hippopotamuses, but
God brings the animals by him. and Adam names them and he begins
to notice that there is a consonance and a beautiful symbiotic relationship
between the male and female of the various species and God himself
sensing perhaps, perhaps, I'm just saying perhaps, I'm just
trying to expound with sanctified imagination the white spaces
Could it be that God sees that there is a beginning of a sense
in Adam? It says there was found no helper
answering to him. It doesn't say Adam was consciously
aware. It just says there was found
to be no creature that answered to him. And God said, now it's
time, put him to sleep. God anesthetizes him, opens up
his chest cavity, takes a rib, and from the rib he forms the
woman. And then those beautiful words,
he brought her to the man. And Adam looks across, and he
sees in a sense himself. He knows he's got two eyes. She's
got two eyes. Two ears, not four things hanging
on them, no fall yet, no deaf ears. And he feels that she's
got two ears. What about her teeth? Picks her
lip up and starts counting. One, two, three, four, five,
six. She's got 32 of them. And he says, this is my counterpart,
but her shoulders are not as broad as mine. Her torso is adorned
with, I don't know what you call them, but they're beautiful to
look at to me. And then with wonderment he stands
and says, this is now bone of my bone. He was made conscious
that God had taken a rib and constructed a wife. This is now
bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. And if you want something
thrilling, even if you have little taste for poetry, get Milton's
Paradise Lost and read the beautiful section that I'm trying to describe
with much less eloquence than Milton. what it must have been
like when Adam and Eve embraced in their marital embrace on that
wedding day. But I say all of that to underscore
what? Man is the creature and God's
the boss. You need to say to yourself,
I am God's creature. God is my lawgiver. He has a
right to tell me what I shall and shall not do, what is right,
what is wrong. And that consciousness is etched
on your psyche, as much as you may try to deny it. Romans chapter
2 verses 14 and 15 tell us that all men, even those who've never
seen the pages of a Bible, have a consciousness of certain things
being right and wrong. The conscience accuses or excuses,
and Paul says, this shows not the law written on the heart,
There's a lot of imprecise talk about that. No, the law is not
written on the heart. That's a work of the new covenant
blessing. It says, which show the work
of the law written on the heart. When God made Adam, God inscribed
his law upon his whole inner being. So he had an internal
disposition of desiring to do and delighting to do what God
required. and staying clear of what God
forbade, and sin has marred that, but the remnants of that are
still there, and all men, because they have a conscience, demonstrate
that God is indeed their lawgiver, and they know it. And then thirdly,
what you need to know and believe about God, if you are to be ready
to die, is that God is your judge. God is my judge. Act 1731, he
has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness
by that man whom he has ordained and has given witness unto all
in that he raised him from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus
is the seal upon His particular office and function as the judge
of the world. Romans 14, 12 says, So then each
one of us shall give account of himself to God. And you will never be ready to
die if in any way you try to avoid those three simple realities
concerning God. He is my Creator. He is my Lawgiver. He is my Judge. You must know
and believe those things concerning God, His relationship to you
and yours to Him. Well then, secondly, what must
you know and believe concerning yourself? What must you know
and believe concerning yourself? Well, the first thing you must
know and believe concerning your true spiritual state is, I am
a sinful creature who fell in my first father Adam. I don't
read long in my Bible before I see the tragedy of Genesis
3, when the man and the woman sin against God, and Adam, who
had been appointed as the representative of the whole human race, Romans
5, 12, wherefore, By one man sin entered into the world, and
death by sin. And so death passed upon all
men, for that all sinned. When did all sin? We all sinned
when Adam reached forth and took the fruit from the hand of Eve,
and in defiance of God he ate it. You and I were piggybacked
upon Adam. And had Adam stood, we would
have stood with him and in him. But in his fall, we fell with
him and in him. So that with David we must say,
Behold, I was shapen in iniquity. And in sin did my mother conceive
me, Psalm 51, 5, or Romans 3, 23. For all have sinned and fall
short of what? of the very purpose for which
we were made falls short of the glory of God. We were made to
image God in the totality of life, of thought, of action,
of desire, of relationship. Everything about us should have
been screaming to the universe around us, God is great. God is good. God is glorious. God is majestic. That's what
we were made to do. But by our sin, we fail in that
most fundamental part of what it is to be a human being. All
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We need to know and believe this
about ourselves. that I have two great problems
as a fallen image-bearer of God. I have a bad record in the court
of heaven that'll damn me, and I've got a bad heart that bars
heaven to me and will shut me out. I got a bad record, and
I got a bad heart. That's reality. The heart is
deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Jeremiah 17 in verse 9, Jesus
said in Mark 7, for from within, out of the heart of man proceed. And then he lists all forms of
sexual sin and moral deviation and declension from God. Sins
Godward, manward, all flow out of and bubble up from the heart
that we have by nature. And that gives us in the court
of heaven a massive case against us. The court scene is described
in Revelation 20 when the judge will sit and it says the books
will be opened and the dead will be judged out of the books according
to their deeds. God has a record of every lie. of every lustful glance, of every
lie we've ever told, of everything and anything that in any way
falls short of absolute mathematic parallelism to the standard of
God's law, desire, word, action, deed, His sin, Sin is anomia,
lawlessness. It is living, thinking, acting,
relating apart from the standards of God. And you will never be
fit to die until you know and believe what the Bible says about
you. You've got this bad record and
this bad heart, and there is nothing you can do. Which brings me to the second
area of what I must know about myself that I am spiritually
impotent and can do nothing to deliver myself from my bad record,
my bad heart. John 8.34, Jesus said, whosoever
commits sin is the bond slave of sin. Romans 5.6 says, when
we were without strength, Christ died for the ungodly. Romans
8.7 says, the carnal mind, the natural disposition of mind and
heart and will is enmity against God. It is not subject to the
law of God, neither indeed can it be. Your heart is one massive
clenched fist in the face of God by nature. When God says,
thou shalt, something in us says, I will. When God says, thou shalt
not, something says, I will. Thou shalt never, thou shalt
not always, carnal mind, enmity, clenched fists in the face of
God. And the situation is so desperate
that the Bible says we can't even get to the only remedy on
our own. Our situation is so desperate
that the only remedy that exists, we can't get to it on our own. John 6, 44, No man can come to
me except the Father which has sent me. Draw him. It's not a pretty picture, is
it? That won't fill megachurches with admiring followers when
people are told their heart is a bottomless sinkhole of filth
and uncleanness. It's like a snake pit. That's
what my heart is by nature, and that's what yours is. And we
have enough in the record of having to damn a thousand people. What do we need to know? What
do we need to believe? Well, we need, in the third place,
not only to know and believe these things about God, He's
my Creator, my Lawgiver and Judge, these two things about ourselves. I must believe that I am the
creature that God says I am. spiritually bankrupt, nothing
to commend myself, but I must, in the third place, know and
believe what God has revealed about His rescue operation for
sinners. We must know and believe what
God has revealed about His rescue operation for sinners. And in the light of the time
getting away from me, let me just quickly give you the heads.
God's rescue operation focuses in a unique person. Whenever
you think of God's rescue operation, one name, one person ought to
snap into focus. That person is introduced way
back in Genesis chapter 3, when after the fall of Adam, God speaks
to the serpent and says, listen, My creature Adam and Eve, creatures,
have aligned themselves with you. They've believed your lie. They've cast in their lot with
you as a liar and the father of lies. But I'm not going to
allow that alignment to maintain. Genesis 3.15 says, God speaks
to the serpent and says, I will put enmity between you and the
woman, between your seed and her seed, and eventually you'll
bruise the seed of the woman's heel, but He will crush your
head. He will have the last word. God
introduces his rescue mission by saying, I take full responsibility
to bring it off. I'm going to break up this alignment. I'm going to secure the crushing
of the serpent's head. And as we read on in Scripture,
it becomes unmistakably clear who that unique person is. He
himself, when conceived in the womb of the Virgin, is identified
in Matthew 121, you shall call his name Jesus, for he it is
who shall save his people, from their sins. He spoke of himself
in John 14 6, I am the way, the truth, the life, no man comes
to the Father but by me. Acts 4.12, Peter speaks saying,
there is salvation in none other, no other name under heaven given
among men whereby we must be saved. God's rescue operation
focuses on a unique person, and if you're ever going to be ready
to die, The evidence that God is working in you to get you
ready is that this person begins to be the most important concern
of your heart and life. How can I know him? How can I
enter into the benefits he procured for needy, helpless sinners like
me? He takes the preeminence. That's why Paul could say, this
is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptance. Christ Jesus
came into the world, sinners to save. And God's rescue operation
is not only focused on a unique person, but it's comprised of
a unique work accomplished by that person. Let me give you
that again. It's not only accomplished by
a unique person, but it is accomplished by a unique work accomplished
by that unique person. He lived the life we should have
lived. He placed Himself under the law
as the representative of all who will come to Him and cast
themselves upon Him. He has a perfect record to put
to our account. And in performance of the Father's
will, His obedience carried Him through even to the death of
the cross, where there He bore the penal substitutionary, wrath-absorbing,
outpoured fury of Almighty God upon our sins. The law has precepts
that must be kept. It has penal sanctions that must
be met. And in Jesus, this unique person,
who is God and man. And here I say amen to Pastor
Smith's words about the catechism. For it beautifully tells us about
the uniqueness of this person. Who is the Redeemer of God's
elect? Answer. The only Redeemer of
God's elect is our Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal
Son of God, became man, and so was and continues to be, both
God and man, in two distinct natures, in one person, forever. Hallelujah. That's the unique
one who can come into our place as true man, go through every
stage of prenatal development in Mary's womb, send her running
to her mama the first day she felt life, and say, Mama, Mama,
I've heard you describe it. I think maybe, maybe I felt that
flutter today. Mama, is this what you told me
about? And then he nursed at her breast, and he had to have
his diapers. His nappies, for my English friend,
changed. He had to learn to tie his shoes.
He had to learn the Hebrew alphabet. He had to learn to say, please,
thank you, excuse me. True man. essential man, but
joined in the hypostatic union, the big words the theologians
use trying to explain things that cause your head to break
when you think about them. Two distinct natures. One person
who can do the things that a man alone can do as the perfect man. but who can do in his rescue
operation what only a God can do. And he is El Gabor, the mighty
God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. And he delights
to bring people to the place where seeing the glory and perfection
of his work in his life, death, resurrection, ascension, his
present heavenly intercession, which secures our salvation. He delights to bring sinners
to the place where he brought Thomas. After the resurrection,
Thomas wasn't there the first gathering. He's there a week
later. And after the Lord displays the
scars in his hands or wrist and his side, Thomas falls down before
him and cries out, ὁ Κύριος μου, καὶ ὁ Θεός μου. I seldom quote a Greek word in
preaching, but that's my Lord, or the Lord of me, the God of
me. That's what it means to come
under the benefits of the rescue operation of the God man, Christ
Jesus, to cast yourself upon him. And maybe sometime in the
future, if the Lord spares us, we can come back and open up.
What must you do? But in a nutshell, two things. The rescue Maker himself preached
it. Mark 1, 14 and 15. He went about
Galilee preaching the gospel, telling men to repent and to
believe in the gospel. His emissary to the Gentiles
expressed it this way, I taught both in Jerusalem, Judea, and
then to the Gentiles that men should repent and turn to God,
bringing forth fruits, meat for repentance. I preach privately,
house to house, publicly and privately, repentance toward
God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. You must stack
arms. You must say, I'm ready to get
out of the God business. I wasn't made to be a little
self-determining God, to choose my own ends and my own means
to attain the ends. I'm a creature of God. I belong
to God by right of creation. It is not right for me to be
living my life centered in myself. I turn my back upon that life
of self-determining, self-absorbed passion to please my lusts. And I am prepared for God to
be God in me and over me, and God in the person of His Son
to be my master, and I will be His servant. I am ready to embrace
Him as my prophet to teach me, my priest to forgive me and intercede
for me, and my King to govern over me. And trusting, relying,
resting upon, all these words are used to describe faith. In
that posture of repudiating any confidence in what you are, what
you can do or have done to bring the favor of God, saying, if
I ever have God's smile and favor, it must be based on the work
of the Rescuer, what He was in life and death and resurrection
power, I cast myself upon Him and in that disposition live
and in that disposition die and your death will be nothing more
or less than a rough chariot to carry you away from everything
that troubles you into everything that will make your heart glad
forever. It's the rough door by which
God releases the spirits of his own to depart and to be with
Christ. Well, thank you for being patient,
attentive listeners. I've sought to deliver my soul
and be honest with your soul. And I leave you with that question.
What must I know and believe and do to be ready to die? God help you to face the question. and do embrace God's answer. Let's pray. Father, how we thank you for
all of the amazing mysteries bound up in the gospel. We thank you most of all for
him who thought it not robbery to remain equal with you, but
emptied himself, taking the form of a servant and being found
in fashion as a man, humbled himself, becoming obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross. We thank you that he is
now highly exalted given a name above every name, and we look
forward to that hour when every single knee shall bow, and every
single tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to your glory. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen.