The Way To Life Is Through Death

Tonight I want to talk about death

More specifically I want to talk about that the way to life is through death.

I spent some time trying to figure out if there was a creature or a plant that regenerate from death to life.

But in my research I learned that once something dies its dead and it cannot will itself back to life.

The closest thing that I could find to resemble this was the:

The Purple Heart plant

Dark purple, lance-shaped leaves.

It grows pink or pale purple flowers with bright yellow stamens

In colder areas it dies back into the ground in winter, but comes back from the roots in spring.

Death comes for all of us and it that is a result of sin.

I read once that death is like a friend, that has been your friend for as long as you can remember—as long as you have had any sense of yourself as a person— and that this friendship has largely defined your character and the sense you have of what it is like to be yourself. Without this friend’s friendship, it seems to you, you would be a different person, and you find that person hard to imagine. But that’s not all. In addition to anticipating this friend’s visits exactly as the visits of a friend, you also dread them. Your anticipation of them causes trembling and sleepless nights, and you know that when they happen, when your friend is with you, you will lament and wail and rend your garments even as you rejoice in the friend’s presence. Lament and delight are inextricably bound together when you are with this friend. This is an unusual friendship. But it is a friendship we all have. It is a friendship with death.

It is a part of the curse that Adam and Eve earned for their rebellion towards God.

But though death is the penalty of sin and rendered as our worst destiny

God flips the script on death and turns it into a vehicle wear we can all recieve eternal life

Lets look at a an example of that in the book of Numbers Ch 21 beginning in verse 5.

This story is the Last in a series of stories were the Israelites wander in the wilderness.

These are stories where the Israelites Rebel and Grumble and they resist God’s efforts to get them through the wilderness and bring them to the promised land

The Bronze Snake

Numbers 21:5–9 KJV 1900

5 And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread. 6 And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. 7 Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. 9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

After the Lord time after time has provided food, protected them and given them victory over their enemies.

The people grumble and complain and the Lord lifts His hand of protection and the fiery serpents bite and kill the people

So the people come and speak to Moses

God then tells him to create this bronze snake

The Snake is the source of death and Moses creates an Image of the symbol of death and tells the people to look upon this symbol in order to live

To be saved from death you need to gaze upon death

The way to life is through death.

The Symbol of Death

John 3:14–15 KJV 1900

14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: 15 That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Jesus is going to experience death and we need to gaze upon that

The snake represents both death and the gift of life simultaneously because God is the one who can take away and give life

In the same way humans unleashing their evil to take the life of the son of Adam will actually in God’s plan and purpose become the way He gives life.

Jesus, an innocent man who was publically executed by an imperial occupier because of a rigged trial.

And the cross represent both the fruit of the most distorted human structures of power and injustice and

They are simultaneously condemned by God and turned into the vehicle through which God gifts eternal life to His world

The thing you associate with death becomes in God’s power the way to Life

The vision of the bible is that the way to life is through death

Gospel

Jesus says pick up your cross

Matthew 16:24 KJV 1900

24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

Galatians 2:20 LSB

20 “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Philippians 2:1–16 LSB

Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, fulfill my joy, that you think the same way, by maintaining the same love, being united in spirit, thinking on one purpose, doing nothing from selfish ambition or vain glory, but with humility of mind regarding one another as more important than yourselves, not merely looking out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this way of thinking in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God also highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that EVERY TONGUE WILL CONFESS that Jesus Christ is LORD, to the glory of God the Father. So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. Do all things without grumbling or disputing, so that you will be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to boast because I did not run in vain nor labor in vain.

Embrace death of your person you used to be

Turn away from the way you used to live. Run from your temptations

Learn to say no to yourself

Seek the Lord and accountability

We need the Lord

We need each other