Jesus=Life / Saved from...?
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I’ve recently been reading through a book that talks about a dark subject.
On one of the first pages, it mentions some topics that you usually won’t hear in sermons…and after reading the short list, I would have to agree. So I thought about how this subject matter could fit into this idea about life…and I really didn’t have to think that hard.
Let’s start with a lame dad joke:
Why do cemeteries have fences?
Because people are dying to get in.
Now, when you just heard that…some of you probably, in your head, said…wow, that’s dark…or morbid…or…should he have said that from the pulpit?
Death…Now there are lots of subjects to talk about…this one though will quiet a room like no other right?
What’s the one thing that doesn’t seem to fit when we think about “full life”?
Death.
Funerals - I often open up funerals by saying that we’re here to remember the life of…
…but I also say that we don’t plan on this…we don’t expect to have funerals.
It’s because we love life. Because our creator loves life.
Death doesn’t seem to fit into this thing we have called life.
Human death is difficult…most all of us in some way or another have come to the reality of death. We’ve face death in different ways.
We’ve dealt with the reality of death. When I say reality I mean …we think about it but then when death happens, we feel grief…and its more than just an emotion. Your body your heart your brain might feel heavy…we physically feel it…just like we feel gravity.
Death is in our reality. Some of you, through illness, your own or someone close to you, have contemplated death. What it means…are we ready…? We ask questions like that.
Last week we talked about being born again…everyone of us, anyone who wants to be saved, to be forever with God in His Kingdom…as Jesus said in John 3, must be born again. Today…another hard subject.
This is a subject that we’ll just touch on today.
It is not an easy subject to delve into…mainly because this subject has really, in our culture, been pushed to the side.
And really, it is a major subject for humanity…maybe even the most major subject we should be aware of.
Pascal - Philosopher, mathematician....he loved numbers, probabilities, rational, logical, thought. Now for sure, sometimes he misses the Heart of the matter when he talks about theology…he was a believer …wrote in apologetics quite a bit.
He would think about life like numbers…rational and logical thought. He is known for something called Pascal’s wager. Which isn’t necessarily a great way to come to Jesus…but its a thought…and I want to tell you this because of something else he dwelled on.
His wager was this....so we have this choice, to either believe in God as real or to believe that he is not real.
If we believe he is real, and he is, then we gain everything...
If we believe he is real, and he isn’t, then we can say we’ve lived a moral life…really not losing anything.
However, if we live as though he is not, and he is, then we lose absolutely everthing.
He was amazed at how people, in general seemed indifferent to “the loss of their being” (death), but intensely concerned about everything else: “They fear the most trifling things, foresee and feel them; and the same person who spends so many days and nights in fury and despair at losing some office or …their honor is the very one who knows that he is going to lose everything through death but feels neither anxiety or emotion. It is a monstrous thing to see one and the same heart at once so sensitive to minor things and so strangely insensitive to the greatest.”
Pascal was one who contemplated death a lot…and he was probably wise to do so. Why do I say that? our Bible does the same. We sometimes overlook or feel awkward to dwell on the subject. But its there. And it’s there for a reason.
Pascal wrote about death a lot…and here in one spot, he wrote of the human condition…and yes it is dark…but it is worth hearing.
“Imagine a number of men in chains, all under the sentence of death, some of whom are each day killed in the sight of other; those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows, and looking at each other with grief and despair await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.”
We’re all in a line…and one by one, death comes to the next, and then the next…and we’re all very aware of this…just waiting our turn.
We don’t like to talk about death do we?
In generations past, death was a part of life that was out in the open.
A century or more ago, if a minister or priest went walking down the road in a certain manner, people might assume he was going to be beside one who had just passed on. People would slowly stop what they were doing, and begin to make a procession, behind the priest…to the side of the family member, friend, coworker, neighbor…all ages, children included would be present.
In the years of early America, it was common to grow up and see siblings pass away before the age of 10…or even a mother die giving birth…or a father pass before the age of 40. Death commonly discussed.
It was in nursery rhymes and grammar books…used for little rhymes to help you memorize your alphabet…The letter T in one book had a picture of a skeleton holding an hourglass and a reapers scythe…the verse?
Time cuts down all, both great and small.
Next to X, Xerxes the great did die, and so must you and I.
Death…is it something we should be aware of…maybe more than we are?
26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
Here’s how this began
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden,
17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”
…and then...
4 “No! You will certainly not die,” the serpent said to the woman.
Paul summarizes this thought...
Romans 6:23 (NIV)
23 For the wages of sin is death....
Because of our sin, death defines us as guilty, dispensable, and alienated in the world.
How do you respond to death? Do you like to think about it? I don’t think any of us likes to think about it…because, it seems to be the great equalizer doesn’t it. Sometimes we fear it.
Larry King was once being interviewed by Barbara Walters almost 20 years ago and she asked him was his greatest fear was. .....death.
I think we’re not unlike that in many ways.
John Maxwell, minister and author talked about his death.
He said that within a half hour after his funeral, people will be sitting around a table…at a funeral dinner. They will say a prayer…probably thanking God for the food and for the life of “John Maxwell.” And then, after they all say Amen, someone will raise their head and call out to the person down from them…”could you please pass the mashed potatoes.”
Death...
If we follow Adam and Eve in the sinful nature…that we’re all in...
Thinking about what Jesus calls…the Gospel…the good news.
Bad news right?
10 as it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one.
And because of our unrighteousness…we all…? Yes, die. The wages of sin is death. We’ve earned it.
----we don’t like to think like that do we?
We like to create our story don’t we? Adam and Eve fell from righteousness because of pride. Pride. Personal pride. They decided on the life they would live. Disobedience. I’ll decide for myself what full life will be. And we’re no different at our core.
Now think about this…and this again will be humbling…but I think we need to go here.
Your story…who’s at the center of your story? The good church answer is…God...? But who is really at the center of our story? Us...
And this is natural. I have a family, I have a job, I have gifts and weaknesses. I’m in need of Jesus, God came to rescue…me. Even if it isn’t outright narcissism, it is like it because we’re still the center of our story.
God is present, but he’s present on our behalf…he’s not yet the center of the human story…and we all know, deep down, that that needs to change.
He is the center of everything, without him we don’t even exist.
And in our story about us, we commonly view ourselves as indispensible to our story…and that makes sense, because without us, there’s not a story about us.
But…for us...
Death is not a character in our story.
We don’t want it to be…because then, in a way, death will be allowed to define us…and it will define us differently than we want to be defined…right?
Where as we often think of ourselves as immortal, death says we’re not. Where we think, for our story’s sake we’re indispensable, death says, we very dispensable. Where we might think that we do what we can do hold our story together, death says, that there’s a separation between us an everything else in creation. Death, in a way, pulls our story about.
Death is the unwanted character in our story.
Paul writes in Romans 7:24
24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?
Death. This is bad news right?
The author of Hebrews writes:
Hebrews 9:27 (NIV)
27 ...(we) are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment...
Ever think about this? Jesus died.
There were two plans for his death. Satan’s plan…to have death reign over him…rule over him, and God’s plan for his death…to free us from the power of death.
Remember God said…because of sin, you will die.
Bad news.
What is this good news? We hear Jesus talk about this…The Good News of the Kingdom. The Gospel…meaning in the Greek “Good News.” What is this power over death that Jesus offers?
There’s the account of Jesus talking with Mary near the grave of her brother Lazarus....she’s asking why he couldn’t have been here earlier so Lazarus wouldn’t die. I think Jesus wanted to show them something....
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live.
When we honestly look at the power death holds over us…the darkness it holds...
When we see that for what it really is… the glory of Jesus just shines that much brighter.
In order for us to truly experience the power of Jesus, coming back from the dead, we need to have a healthy understanding of the power of sin.
When we understand the power sin holds over us, then we will truly know the freedom Jesus gives us.
And then we will truly know Jesus’ offer of true and full life.
Think about death. I encourage you to think about it. Satan has made the subject of death something not to be discussed…morbid…something that “those” people dwell on…or talk about. And really…death is a character in each of our stories.
…so, as long as death remains someone else’s problem, Jesus will be someone else’s savior. ~ Matthew McCullough
Jesus wants to be your savior. He knows that death is here because of sin. But sin’s power won’t hold us forever.
Paul writes in Romans 8:10-11
10 But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness.
11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.
We, short of Jesus coming back to take us as we are today…we will experience death. However, it won’t hold us. It can’t. Jesus lives in us, those of us how have invited him into our life. Those of us who have been, as we talked about last week....reborn.
And now, through Jesus, we don’t need to fear death. We understand it’s purpose. It is the result of sin. But it doesn’t hold us.
As Paul wrote, as Jesus was resurrected, so will we be resurrected.
Death has no hold on us.
Next week we will talk about another death that is mentioned in the book of Revelation.
Don’t forget about death, remember it helps you see the light even more powerfully.