Those of you who were present
at our prayer meeting on Wednesday will know that yesterday morning
found me discharging a very solemn responsibility. That responsibility
was leading the funeral service and the subsequent interment
of a former friend and once regular attender here at our assembly. The man moved to Tennessee several
years ago, got up this past Tuesday morning to go out and work in
his yard, though an 82-year-old man knows signs that death was
anywhere near at his doorstep, and yet by Tuesday night he lay
dead in a funeral parlor. And as I was privileged to take
that funeral yesterday and stood to minister the word of God to
those who gathered in that funeral home, with an open coffin and
the earthly remains of this man some ten feet from me as I stood
to speak, and as I stood by his coffin at the graveside just
a few minutes after the conclusion of that service, and realized
that within minutes after leaving that gravesite, that coffin with
those earthly remains would be let down into the cold earth.
I believe I had a sense of the answer to my prayers as to what
I should preach upon tonight. As we look back over the past
months and much of the ministry, when not in the regular course
of preaching through First Peter, has been focused upon trying
to minister to distressed and at times confused and distraught
sheep. I realized in anticipating this
Lord's Day evening and the privilege and responsibility that would
be mine to preach that it had been some time since there had
been a ministry of the Word of God which focused exclusively
upon the great central issues of what it is to be right with
God. those central, fundamental issues
of death and of judgment and of the necessity of repentance
and of faith. And the funeral has a very rude
way of rattling one's cage and reminding us that at the end
of the day, this is the end of all the living. And barring the
coming of the Lord Jesus, someday I will lie lifeless in a coffin
while someone preaches at my funeral. And someone will stand
at the head of my coffin and say, we commit the earthly remains
of our brother to the ground in the hope of the resurrection.
And dear children and young people, barring the coming of the Lord
Jesus, somebody will stand by your coffin and preach. And someone will stand by your
coffin when you are also laid in the cold, damp earth. And realizing that I may never
preach again, though I have no premonitions, but neither do
I have any assurance from heaven I'm constrained this night to
preach to you with the shadow of yesterday's events very much
cast over my own spirit. And I want to do so under this
topical sermon head of three facts and one important question. Three facts and one important
question. And I plead with each one of
you that if you've ever made an effort to listen with both
ears, not only externally, but the internal ears of the soul,
and if you have any reason to believe that I am something other
than a professional cleric. I don't do what I'm doing because
it's the only thing I can do to make a living. If you have
any sense, dear children, young people and adults, that I'm not
playing games when I'm in this pulpit or doing my professional
clerical thing, then I plead with you to give me an earnest
and a fair hearing as I seek to speak into the depths of your
own soul. as we consider these three facts
and the one important question that grows out of them. Fact
number one, life is brief and uncertain. Life is brief and
uncertain. Think first of all of those scriptures
that underscore the reality of the brevity of life. In Psalm
90, the great theme of which is Moses, the man of God, contrasting
God's eternity with man's transitory and temporal existence upon the
earth. Moses writes in Psalm 90 and
verse 9, For all our days are passed away in your wrath, and
we bring our years to an end as a sigh. The days of our years
are seventy, or even by reason of strength, eighty years. Yet
is there pride but labor and sorrow. Now here's the phrase. It is soon gone. And we fly away. Here Moses says
that if we even live out our 70 or our bonus years that make
us 80, yet this life is soon gone. 80 years, soon gone. And we fly away. Or take the testimony of the
patriarch Job. And it's particularly significant
because these words come in a setting in which Job is greatly distressed
with physical discomfort, emotional trauma. And he says in chapter
7 of the book of Job, I am full of tossings, to and fro, till
the dawning of the day, verse 4. My flesh is clothed with worms
and clods of dust. My skin closes up and breaks
out afresh. Here is a man in the midst of
tremendous physical trauma. A time when he wonders, when
will a night pass? He's full of tossing and turning,
yet in the midst of a situation in which time seems to pass so
slowly, and some of us have known that kind of intense physical
trauma. When we have lain upon a bed
of pain and looked at a clock in the middle of the night and
sought thought for sure, we must have misread the clock when it
showed that only five or ten minutes had passed, and we thought
surely an hour and five or ten minutes had passed. Yet in that
setting, listen to what Job says in verse six, My days are swifter
than a weaver's shuttle. Swifter than that block of wood
that goes through the various strands on the weaver's loom,
that shuttle that is thrown back and forth in the process of weaving. He says, my days, in spite of
the trauma of pain and the tossing to and fro throughout the nights,
my days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle. Look at verse 7. Oh,
remember that my life is a breath. Think of it. How many breaths
have you breathed sitting here tonight? You inhale. You exhale. Job says, that's my life. It's
one inhalation followed by an exhalation. My life, he says,
is a breath. The brevity of life Moses, the
man of God, highlighted it. Job underscores it. Listen to
the old man Jacob in Genesis 47 and verse 9. He is 130 years old, and yet
looking back upon that lengthy life, notice how he views it
from the perspective of the terminal point of that life. Genesis chapter
47 and verse 9. And Jacob said unto Pharaoh,
the days of the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years.
But now notice how he describes them. Few and evil have been
the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained unto
the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days
of their pilgrimage. He lived to be 130, yet compared
with the earlier Patriarchs, he said, I've not attained to
their length of days, but my 130 have been few. He came to the painful awareness
of the brevity of life and how clearly this is underscored by
James in James chapter 4 and in verse 14b. writing to people
who are careless and presumptuous about the future. James says
in chapter 4 in verse 14, Whereas you know not what shall be on
the morrow, for what is your life? Now notice the imagery. What is your life? You are a
vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. You are a vapor You know what
a vapor is, don't you kids? On that cold wintry morning,
dad starts up the car and out the exhaust pipe comes that that
you might call steam. It's that visible vapor and it
looks so thick on a real cold morning you think you could go
out and grab a hunk of it. By the time you got out of the
house to go out and grab it, it's gone. It appears for a little
time and then It is God. Or think of the contrail of a
jet passing high above us in stable upper air. And sometimes
those contrails are as straight and seem to be as dense as something
solid. And you look up and you see that
vapor and you get involved in what you're doing. You look back
in a few minutes and that solid line has been broken up. Look
up in a few more minutes and it's utterly gone. God says,
that's your life. That's my life. It is a vapor. that appears for a little time
and seems to be so substantial and permanent and yet it is for
the vapor that appears for a little time and then is gone. Life is brief but also uncertain. Life is not only brief but it
is uncertain. Proverbs 27 in verse 1, Do not
boast yourself of tomorrow For you do not know what a day may
bring forth. Now would you argue with that?
We can say, I think I know what tomorrow will bring and we listen
to the weather prognosticators and they give us their five day
forecast and we have a reasonable expectation given all of the
modern technology that can track the direction and the speed of
the jet stream and cloud formations and satellites pouring in information
and we have some reasonable idea of what the weather will be We
have reasonable expectations of the structure of our lives,
and that's right and proper, but the text says you do not
know what a day may bring forth, and you don't know. There is
not a one of you so foolish as to mark yourself a public fool
who would dare to stand tonight and say, I can guarantee you
what the next 24 hours will hold for me. You know better than
to do that. You've got enough sense not to
mark yourself as a public fool. You and I do not know what a
day may bring forth. This is not a Bible scare tactic. This is a statement of a simple,
plain, observable fact of life. Do not boast of tomorrow, for
you and I do not know what a day may bring forth. You see, emergency
rooms don't keep specific hours. They are open 24 hours a day,
7 days a week. Why? Well, if you went to Chilton
Hospital or you went to any other local hospital and did a little
interview of all the people in the emergency room and said,
how many of you expected to be in here? They'd look at you like
you were crazy. They said, don't you see the sign? This is the
emergency room. This is not pre-scheduled same-day
surgery. This is not admissions to three
or four day surgical procedures. This is the emergency room. Do
you think I knew this morning that some drunk was going to
hit me in the car and I'd come in here with my neck out of whack?
Do you think my wife knew she's going to break her toe in the
middle of the night two weeks ago simply stepping out of bed? She would have been one of those
you could have interviewed at Children's Emergency Room two
weeks ago today at eight o'clock in the morning. No, it's an emergency
room. Why? We do not know what a day
may bring forth. And James underscores life's
uncertainty in that same context from which I quoted a moment
ago. In James 4.14 he says, verse 13, Listen up, you people that
say they talk as though they do know what tomorrow will hold.
Today or tomorrow we'll go to this city, spend a year there,
trade and get gain, whereas you know not what shall be on the
morrow. Not only is life brief like a
vapor, James says it is uncertain. Most people don't anticipate
the aneurysm that in a moment of time takes them from active,
intelligent, vigorous life down to death or to where they lie
in a hospital bed like a vegetable. They don't anticipate that fall
that may radically alter the whole pattern of their life for
years to come. The people that in recent days
have had all of their life's possessions taken away in a moment
of time with the fierceness of a tornado that's come as it were
out of nowhere and in minutes has left an area in devastation. The lightning bolt that's left
the family in Long Island homeless, as it struck in such a way that
it ignited the home yesterday afternoon. These are not preacher's
scare tactics, this is reality. Life is not only brief, it is
uncertain. That person that this afternoon
will lie choking in a restaurant on a piece of a $20 steak didn't
anticipate the piece of crystal getting caught in the throat. Life is brief. And life is uncertain. That's a fact. A simple, plain,
straightforward, unadorned, non-scare tactic fact. Would you want to
debate with that fact and still maintain any reputation of being
a rational, reasonable human being? That's fact number one,
true for all of us. Life is brief. Should we live
to be 130 like Jacob, we would say, few as well as evil have
been the days of the years of my life. You see, he's marking
out life in its daily increments. Few have been the days of the
years of my life. Your life is a vapor that appears
for a little time and vanishes away. You know not what shall
be on the morrow. Second fact, death is unavoidable
and sometimes sudden. Death is unavoidable and sometimes
sudden. Death is unavoidable, unavoidable,
unavoidable. Romans 5.12 states the fact,
wherefore as to one man's sin entered into the world, And death
passed upon all men, for that all sinned. Spiritual death,
the judgment of God upon a race that was piggybacked on Adam. The whole world comes under the
sentence of death in Adam. And the visible, undeniable,
indisputable result of that is that all men die physically. the great ones of the earth,
the rich and the famous, the power brokers, the little obscure
unknown ones of all ages and all societies and all races and
all socio-economic standards and structures. Death is the
universal reality of the human race as it now lies bruised and
battered as a result of the fall of our first father. Hebrews
9.27, as it is appointed unto men once to die. It is appointed
unto men once to die. Once to die. From the time you
and I breathe our first breath in the delivery room at that
hospital, only one thing can be said with absolute certainty
about that little one, with its piercing wail and its first lungfuls
of air. He or she, barring the coming
of Christ, will die. Once someone records your birthday,
only one thing is certain. Someone will record your death
day. You say, Pastor, here we made the effort to come out to
church on a Sunday. Have we got to be told such doleful,
weighty? My friends, smiling won't drive death away. Wishful thinking won't vaporize
death. Death is unavoidable, utterly
unavoidable for every single one of us. and how we've been
reminded of that. Some of us can remember when
the teenagers with their buckskin shoes and their bobby socks were
screeching and sighing and fainting when old blue eyes first hit
the scene during the Second World War. We are old enough to remember
when Frank Sinatra was a little skinny kid out of an obscure
town in New Jersey and all of his fame and all of his influence
and all of his power when God said it's time to go Frankie
he went and there's nothing he could do all the power brokers
in Hollywood couldn't give him one extra minute he died and
Princess died with all of her money and all of her influence
when God said your appointment is come woman she died Death
is unavoidable. Sitting where you're sitting,
one thing is true of you, one thing I can say and know that
my prophecy will come true. Borrowing the coming of Christ,
every one of you, from the youngest to the oldest, is going to breathe
your last. Somewhere, someplace, at some
time, in some set of circumstances, someone's going to say, He's
gone. She's gone. That's reality. Don't stick your
head in the sand and say, if I don't think about it, it'll
go away. Death will not go away. By ignoring its inevitability,
it is unavoidable. You and I need to look ourselves
in the mirror and say to ourselves, John, Sally, Mary, Pete, Henry,
Albert, what I see in that mirror is going to die. Not only is
death unavoidable, death is sometimes sudden and unexpected. Sometimes
sudden and unexpected. Many times death comes as the
spring of life gradually winds down. Many times death does come
that way. That's what Moses observed in
Psalm 90. The days of our years are 70.
If by reason of strength they may be 80. Moses had seen a whole
generation in the wilderness with the spring of life wind
down and wind down in one and after another. And one time I
calculated how many deaths he saw per week through that wilderness
wandering. Frightening amount of them. The
tragedy is that so often, if life ebbs out as the springs
of life wind down, the faculties are so impaired or so occupied
with the exertion simply to exist that the ability to think of
important issues is almost a physical and mental and psychological
impossibility. So that even if you knew you
were going to live out your 80 years, how foolish it would be
to avoid the serious thoughts about death and its sequel. However, the word of God and
human observation both declare that death sometimes does come
suddenly and unexpectedly. Can you think of the classic
illustration of this in the scriptures? Remember what our Lord taught
in Luke chapter 12? He described this wealthy, fat
cat, all ready to retire and live the good life somewhere
down in the retirement, post-retirement sections of Florida, or out in
some place around Phoenix, Arizona, one of the other retirement havens.
And he had it all figured out. Soul, you have much goods laid
up for many years. Take your ease. Live the good
life. Verse 19 of Luke 12, I will say
to my soul, soul, you have much goods laid up for many years.
Take your ease. Eat, drink, be merry. You've
worked hard. You've paid your dues. Now enjoy
your golden years. But God said unto him, you fool,
this night Is your soul required a thing? He hadn't factored in
the possibility of a sudden unexpected death. Apparently he had no pacemaker. Apparently there was no indication
his cholesterol levels were high that he might be a sitting candidate
for a stroke. He went out and worked out three,
four times a week. Cardiovascular system was in
good shape. He watched his diet, kept his
animal fat intake low, supplemented necessary vitamins. He did everything
to make him think he was going to have a nice long period of
his golden years. And God burst his bubble in one
night. Thou fool, this night, death
came upon him suddenly. The Bible is full of examples
of this, and we see it with our own eyes, in our own society,
in our own generation. Think of those, it says, they
knew not until the flood came and took them all away. Children, young people, teenagers,
young adults, and old men and women, all but eight who were
saved in the ark, were suddenly swept away. Think of those men
who went out to apprehend the prophet. They went out one day
polishing their buckles and their brass and they're going to have
some fun with the prophet of God and fire comes out of heaven
in an instant. It consumes 50 of them. Think of what's happened in our
own day. Those kids that one minute are
in the classroom laughing with their peers, listening to their
teachers. And the fire bell rings and minutes
later there are nothing but slaughtered carcasses out on the school playground. Death came suddenly, unexpectedly. The illustrations abound. These
are not preacher scare tactics, folks. This is reality. This
is reality. This is a fact. Not only is it
a fact that life is brief and uncertain, but death is unavoidable
and sometimes sudden and unexpected. But then the third fact is this,
that judgment is certain and irreversible. Judgment is certain
and irreversible. Judgment is certain. again Hebrews
9.27 as it is appointed unto men once to die And after this
comes judgment. So Christ was once offered to
bear the sins of many and unto them that look for him shall
he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. The paradigm
of a fixed and an inseparable relationship between the death
of Christ and his coming in triumph for those on whose behalf he
died. The inseparable, unbreakable
bond between the death of Christ and the fruition of that death
is the paradigm of the inseparable relationship between death and
judgment. As it is appointed unto men once
to die, and after this comes judgment, so Christ was once
offered and shall appear. You see, so foundational is this
inseparable relationship that it becomes an indisputable paradigm,
a framework on which to establish this other reality. Judgment
is certain. Jesus stated it in unmistakable
terms. He who is truth incarnate, who
said, I speak only the words that my Father gives me. Listen
to his words in John chapter 5 and verse 28 marvel not at
this for the hour comes the hour comes in which all that are in
the tomb shall hear his voice and shall come forth. They that
have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done
evil unto the resurrection of judgment. Jesus said the hour
comes in which all that are in the tomb shall hear his voice
and shall come forth. and it's that truth that grips
one when one stands by the open grave and realizes that though
that coffin is let down into the earth and though with the
passing of time what is there in that coffin may be eaten by
the worms as surely as the grave diggers opened up the earth and
the funeral directors placed the coffin in that hole the Son
of God will speak All that are in the tombs shall come forth,
including you, including me. All that are in the tombs. Judgment
is certain. Christ will call us from our
graves to stand before Him. Listen to His words in Matthew
25, 31. Here again, truth incarnate is speaking, Matthew chapter
25 and verse 31. But when the Son of Man shall
come in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then shall He
sit on the throne of His glory, And before him shall be gathered
all the nations. He shall separate them one from
the other as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. The
Son of Man shall come, and He shall sit upon His throne. Before
Him shall be gathered all the nations, and they shall all be
separated, sheep and goat. Judgment is certain. We have
that graphic description of it in Revelation 20 verses 15 and
following in which John says, I saw a great white throne and
him that sat upon it from whose face the earth and the heaven
fled away and there was found no place for them. And I saw
the dead, small and great, stand before God. And the books were
opened. And the dead were judged out
of the books. And the sea gave up the dead
that were in it. And death and Hades gave up the
dead that were in them. The picture of a certain coming
judgment. Judgment is certain. It is not
a fable. It is not the invention of sick
minds that want to oppress people with guilt trips. It is the reality
of our ultimate destiny to stand before the God who made us in
that final day of judgment. And not only is judgment certain,
but it is irreversible. It is irreversible. Whatever
occurs in the judgment is settled. for all eternity. Here in the
Matthew 25 passage, the Lord goes on to describe his activity,
speaking to those who are blessed, speaking to those who are cursed,
blessing upon the sheep, cursing upon the goats. And then we read
in verse 46 at the conclusion of that passage, and these shall
go away into eternal punishment. but the righteous into eternal
life. And the same word eternal is
used with respect to punishment as is used for life. And as sure
as that life is a quality of life, but also a duration, so
the punishment is not only a quality, but a duration, the judgment
is irreversible. similarly in the Revelation 20
passage and it says that those who are condemned out of the
books are cast into the lake of fire and what will happen
in that horrible reality set forth under the image is described
in the earlier verses the beast and the false prophet cast into
that lake of fire tormented forever and ever It's a simple, simple
reality. As death leaves you, the judgment
will find you. And as the judgment finds you,
eternity will hold you. Do you get that? Dear people,
do you get that? As death leaves you, The judgment
will find you. No change, no moral, no spiritual,
no ethical change between death and judgment. As death leaves
you, the judgment will find you. And as the judgment finds you,
eternity will hold you. That's a sobering reality. No
escape from it. I can remember as a little boy
lying upon my bed, and though those were not the words that
were in my head, that reality fastened itself upon my young
soul. And I lay upon my bed many a
night, afraid to go to sleep, knowing that if I died in my
sleep as death left me, the judgment would find me. And as the judgment
would find me, eternity would hold me. And I can remember thinking
in my tortured little boy brain, but oh God, forever and ever
and ever, what is eternity? Forever and ever, surely God.
After so many years, I thought as a child, and tried to define
and understand eternity in terms of the succession of blocks of
time. And I can remember many a night
falling to sleep distressed and terrified. You say, what a horrible
thing. No, my friend, I thank God for
it. Because God was bringing my little
boy mind into touch with reality. The fact that you've been able
to pillow your head night after night and year after year with
no such thoughts is no credit to your good sense. It's a monument
to the power of the devil to blind you to reality and to stupefy
you and to benumb you and to paralyze all efforts to seek
the Lord while he may be found and to call upon him while he
is near. There will be no systems of appeal
in God's day of judgment. There will be no overturning
of the verdict because of some discovered irregularity in the
legal process. There will be no one to declare
that the evidence that condemned you was somehow inadmissible. We read this morning of Him who
judges every man's work without respect of person. Dear children,
young people and adults, this is the third fact that I want
you to contemplate and think upon. For but a few moments,
judgment is certain and irreversible. Well, we've looked now at these
three facts. Life is brief and uncertain. Would you debate that? Would
you want to prove that to be non-fact? You say, no, I can't
deny that. That's a matter of common observation
and also it is affirmed in the scriptures. Death is unavoidable
and sometimes sudden. Would you want to say you're
going to be the first one since Adam to find a way to cheat death? Do you really believe when utterly
godless, purely mechanistic scientists and philosophers say eventually
they're going to find the secrets that will let us perpetuate this
life? You really don't believe that?
You know better. You know better. No death is unavoidable and sometimes
sudden and judgment is certain and irreversible those are the
three undeniable facts and that leads to one simple reasonable
personal important question that I would I had the time and that
you would give me the privilege of sitting down with you personally
and sitting with you every one of you here from the youngest
to the oldest and saying in the light of these three facts Here's
the important question. Are you prepared to die? Very simple question. Are you? Right now, sitting here, are
you prepared to die? Would you want to die? All other
reasons being set aside for extending your life and just isolating
this issue. What will death do with me? Will
it release my spirit from this body to go immediately into the
presence of Christ? To be absent from the body is
to be at home with the Lord. I desire, Paul says, to depart
and to be with Christ, which is very far much more better.
That's a more literal rendering of the Greek. He piles up one
thing after another. It's much, much better. Would
you be able to say, yes, I am prepared to die? And death holds
no terror for me. Are you prepared to die? You say, how can I be prepared
to die? What is the heart of preparation
for death? Well, let me give you three texts
of scripture in answer to that question. First of all, preparation
for death is found in a person. in a person. It's not found in
what you are, what you do, what you hope to do, what you've not
done. But listen to this person who speaks in John 11 and verse
25. Jesus said unto her, that is,
unto Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. He that believes
on me, though he die, yet shall he live. And whosoever lives
and believes on me shall never die. Our Lord's using a play
on words. He says, I am the resurrection
and the life. He that believes on me, though
he dies physically, yet shall he live. In the day of resurrection,
he will not only be called out of his grave, he'll be called
out of his grave to everlasting life. And whosoever thus lives
and believes on me shall never die. That is, he will never know
death as the wages of sin. He will never know death as separation
from God. He will never know death in the
torments of hell. For all of that that is in death
out of Christ. Christ is swallowed up in his
own death and in his own resurrection. John Owen rightly entitled his
work on the significance of the death of Christ, the death of
death, in the death of Christ. Christ took to himself everything
that is penal, everything that is judgmental in death, and he
swallowed it up in his agonies upon the cross, in his literal
death when he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,
And by His own resurrection, according to 1 Corinthians 15,
He brought out of the tomb with Him, in principle and in covenantal
engagements of God the Father and God the Spirit, all of His
redeemed ones, and all who come to Christ and believe upon Christ. They need not fear death, for
he says, they shall never die. Yes, they may pass through the
valley of the shadow of death, and they may experience death
as separation of soul and body. Yes, but they do not die in the
sense of the terrors of the law coming upon them for the wages
of their sin. Christ is born this. He has born
the curse for us. He has taken all that God's justice
demands because of the sins of his people. The second text,
how can we be ready to die? The answers in a person and believing
in him. Hebrews chapter 2 gives us another
strand of the answer. Hebrews chapter 2. And verse 14, Since then the
children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in
like manner partook of the same, that through death he might bring
to nothing him that had the power of death, that is, the devil,
and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all
their lifetime subject to bondage. You see, when the writer to the
Hebrews penned these words, he assumes that people not given
over to judicial hardness experience a form of bondage when they think
of dying and standing before God in the nakedness of their
sinfulness. And so they live under the fear
of death. One of the tragedies of the paganizing
of our current American society is that multitudes have no fear
of death. I didn't think that's possible,
but I've interacted with enough people to believe that they really
don't fear death. They have so imbibed a totally
secular view of man and of life and of what it's all about, but
the writer to the Hebrews speaks of those who through fear of
death are crippled with this horrible bondage. And how are
we released from that if I speak to some tonight, to some dear
children for whom the thought of death is terrifying? to some
who are closer to the end of your three score and ten or your
four score years and you know that the next great crisis in
your life is going through the rough door of death and there
is an element of fear and with it bondage. What is the answer
of this text is to recognize that in the incarnate Lord of
Glory The second person of the Godhead who took to himself flesh
and blood. He took to himself a true humanity
in order that in that humanity he might destroy the one who
has the power of death. The devil to whom we sold ourselves
when in our first parents we sinned and we aligned ourselves
with the devil. God came and broke up that alignment
and said, I will put enmity between the serpent and the woman, between
the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. Had God not
injected that enmity, we would all have been the willing slaves
of the devil forever. But Christ has come, the incarnate
God has come, and through His own death, He has destroyed him
that had the power of death, so that believing in Him, we
are liberated from that crippling, carking bondage of the fear of
death. The answer is in a person. It's
in a person who is incarnate deity, who died to destroy the
power of the devil himself. And one third text is Revelation
14.13, the text I preached on at the funeral parlor yesterday,
when we asked the question, How can I be prepared to die? This
text is very helpful in answering the question. Revelation 14.13,
And I heard a voice from heaven saying, Write, Blessed are the
dead who die in the Lord from henceforth. Yes, says the Spirit,
that they may rest from their labors, for their works follow
with them. Blessed, perfectly happy, completely fulfilled with
covenant life and blessing from the hand of God are the dead
who die in the Lord. That is, those who, when they
come to the rough door of death, do not come alone. They come
in union with Christ. That's what in the Lord means.
Blessed are the dead who die united to Christ, in Christ,
bound to Christ. But you say, how do I get into
Christ? How am I bound to Christ? From
God's perspective we are bound to Christ when by the Spirit
of Christ we are made new, we are born again, we are quickened
to life, we are made new creatures. From the human response perspective
we are bound to Christ when by faith we embrace Him as He is
offered in the Gospel. And so as we come around full
circle, Having faced these three sobering facts, life is brief
and uncertain, death is unavoidable and sometimes sudden, judgment
is certain and irreversible, and in the light of those facts
we contemplate this important question, am I ready to die?
How can I be ready to die? The answer is, in a person who
said, I am the resurrection and the life, in a person who is
incarnate deity, who by his death destroyed him that had the power
of death, that he might deliver those who through fear of death
were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Those who are in
Christ, in Christ by faith, they And all of them are prepared
to die, but they, and only they, can contemplate their death as
a blessing. Isn't it grievous when people
just churn out all of this nonsense, regardless of a person's relation
to Christ? If they've suffered a long lingering
death, people so lightly and in a cavalier way say, well,
they're better off now, they're at rest. not if they died out
of Christ. Their fiercest agonies in this
life are playthings to what they now and shall yet experience. Blessed are the dead who die
in the Lord. You see, dear children and young
people, you may be able, in God's common grace, having surrounded
you with loving parents, stable home, relatively good health,
you may be able to think life is fairly full without Christ. But I want to ask you a very
simple question. If you knew you were going to
die before this day were over, what comfort could you find in
all the things that now fill up your soul and make you indifferent
to Christ? Not much, could you? You were
lying on a deathbed, Would your friends standing around you,
weeping, holding your hand, prepare you to stand before Almighty
God? All of your ambitions and plans
for the future, if you could materialize them before your
own eyes and then touch them with your hands, you want to
cling to them? Would you go through the rough
door of death? Would you? there's only one consolation
in death and that's to know that you cling to the pierced hands
of the Son of God and that you are in Him by a real and lively
faith as the old writers would say you're united to Him who
has already gone into the jaws of death and died death in all
of its horrors and came forth in resurrection power and glory
and now says to all Come unto me, all you that labor and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. As I was preparing
the message, I thought of some of you dear children. You're
in my arms every day, every Lord's Day at the door, and your love
for me is in your eyes, and I hope you read my love for you in my
eyes and in my arms. And the last thing I want to
do is to unnecessarily terrify you I don't want to do that. Dear children, listen to me.
Let me tell you what I used to tell my children from time to
time. I would be called out of bed and one of the children would
say, Daddy, I've been thinking about God and my sins and dying. And what would happen if I died
tonight? And again and again, I would
tell them. Jesus died for sinners. Jesus promises all who believe
in him are forgiven. No one ever dropped into hell
trusting in Jesus. Are you ready here and now to
say, Lord Jesus, I want to trust you to forgive my sins and without
in any way, quote, decisioning them and making a monument to
what they did. I just pointed them to Christ
and said, pillow your head with peace if you're trusting in Jesus. And I can say that to any one
of you children. You are trusting only in the Lord Jesus to forgive
you. Death can do you nothing but
land you in the presence of Jesus. That's all it can do. It can
just chase you up to heaven. That's all it can do. Nothing
more. That's all it can do. But the
question is, are you trusting in Jesus? Are you saying, Lord
Jesus, I know I'm a sinner. I have nothing to present to
you. I do try to obey mommy and daddy,
and I do try to be a good girl, a good boy, and there's nothing
wrong with that, but oh Lord, I know that I'm not as good as
I ought to be. I'm a sinner, and I know my first
father Adam sinned, and somehow I was connected with him, and
what he did affects me, and God, I know that I can't earn heaven
by what I've done or what I am. But I thank you that you sent
your son to die for sinners. And Lord Jesus, I trust in you
and only in you. You need not be terrified, children.
Trusting in Jesus, no one, young or old, ever died, went to judgment,
and would be cast into hell. But those of you who've come
beyond those infant years, you've begun to sort out the directions
of your life and the priorities of your life. You sat in this
place many a time and heard the Word of God preached. I want
to ask you sitting here tonight, what grounds do you have to do
anything other than go home tonight terrified? Unless you seek the
Lord while he may be found and call upon him while he is near.
You do not know what a day may bring forth. life is brief and
uncertain. As I was prayerfully considering
how can I try to get inside your head and reason with you, my
final perspective is this. Suppose, just suppose, this coming
week you were to be the next living proof that life is uncertain. And I were to receive the unexpected
phone call at my study that I received this past Wednesday. Mr. Boonshaw went out to work in
his garden on Tuesday. And he dropped dead. Suppose
the phone call came saying, Pastor Martin, put your name in there. Put your name in there. Right
now, in your mind, put your name in there. John Jones, put your
name in there. was killed in an accident at
work, on his or her way to this or that, was struck by a car
and suddenly dead. I want to ask you a simple question.
What words of comfort from the Bible could I give where I asked
to conduct your funeral? What words of comfort could I
give to your mom and dad, to your husband, to your wife? What
solid biblical grounds of comfort could I give to say, Mom, Dad,
I know it's painful and grievous. All the hopes and plans suddenly
shoved to one side by the intrusion of death. But Mom or Dad, listen. And then your name. It is evident
that your name was trusting in Christ, looking only to Christ,
manifesting a vital attachment to Christ. Our loss. is the Savior's gain. We said,
O Lord, I will that they be with us for a long time, but Christ
was praying, Father, I will that those whom you have given me
be with me where I am, and his I will overruled ours. Could
I give that consolation to your husband, to your wife, to your
mom, to your dad? See what I'm doing? I'm trying
to get you to think seriously about the issue. Are you prepared to die? If not,
I urge you, seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him
while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way
and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord
for he will have mercy upon him and to our God. for He will abundantly
pardon. He will multiply pardon. May
God grant that the shadows cast over my own spirit from that
modest service in the funeral home yesterday, the shadows that
will issue in life to some who sit here tonight and finally
the Spirit of God through the Word has arrested you and you
say, I must delay no longer. I cannot afford the luxury of
playing Russian roulette with my never-dying soul. Outer darkness,
weeping and wailing, gnashing of teeth. It's too serious to
trifle with my soul. an incarnate God, hanging on
a cross, crying out in dereliction, my God, my God, why have you
forsaken me? His cry of triumph, it is finished. These things will no longer be
treated as commonplace by me. They will become the stuff that
mean more to me in life than life itself. May God grant that
it shall be so. Let us pray. O our Father, we confess to you
with shame the dullness and the hardness of our hearts that we
can draw near to such sobering, weighty realities and feel so
little and do so little. Have mercy upon our dull, insensitive
minds and hearts. And O God, we beg of you for
your glory and for the good of the souls of men and women and
boys and girls bring these weighty realities home with power may
we sitting here tonight taste the powers of the age to come
and may some mark this night as the night when in earnest
they sought you and found you in the way of repentance and
faith help us who by your grace have been brought to union with
Christ, for whom death does not hold the terror and the bondage. We ask you, Lord, to give us
a renewed sense of what it is to be those who have the message
of life in a world marked for death. And may we be more bold,
and may we be more winsome, and may we be more earnest in our
prayers. O Lord, we ask that you would
help us. for we know that in a very real
sense it is only when we're prepared to die that we are fit to live
help us then so to live as those who having been prepared for
death by your grace we may be used to see others made right
with you thank you for this day in your courts and pray that
your spirit will watch over his own word to our prophet and to
your praise