Knowing How to Die Right
Notes
Transcript
1000 Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching Die Right
John Davis, known as “Uncle John” was 105 years old in 1981. He was South Carolina’s only “AAA-rated trusty.” He had been in prison since 1922. His crime? Burglary! He broke into a house and took a watch and five dollars. Burglary was a capital crime for black persons in Dillon County, SC in the 1920s. Davis was sentenced to life. After escaping twice, the second time for 10 years, he settled down, found Christ, and in 1940 became head cook at the Central Correctional Institution. He was free to leave, but he had nowhere to go, saying, “Getting out here would be like digging my own grave. I got no living kin left, and who is going to take care of me, and pay for my medicine and my food and my clothes?”
Among other remarks, he said on his one-hundred-fifth birthday: “Since then [his escapes] I’ve met enough people to know right from wrong, and I’ve learned the best thing to do is to live right and pray right and treat other people right so I can die right.” On Wednesday, November 24, 1982, Uncle John succumbed to cancer of the lower intestine. He was 106 years old.
Almighty God, You have called Your Church to witness that in Christ You have reconciled us to Yourself. Grant that by Your Holy Spirit we may proclaim the Good News of Your salvation so that all who hear it may receive the gift of salvation, through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
1000 Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching Facing It
Death is the shadow that hangs over human life. It is the judgment. It is God’s evaluation of your life and mine. Though impossible to do so, we are constantly attempting to escape the fact of death. The late William Randolph Hearst forbade anyone to use the word death in his presence.
Most people fight with every fiber of their being against death. The wealthy expend incredible resources to keep it at bay, the rest of us try to put it off for as long as we can by how we eat, exercise, and live our lives. In times of crisis, people have been known to attempt to negotiate a favorable outcome against death’s sting. Failing that, people try to at least secure a favorable spot in the afterlife. President Trump made his usual amount of controversy back in February of 2026 when he said, apparently in jest, “I really think I probably should make it [into heaven]. I mean, I’m not a perfect candidate, but I did a … lot of good for perfect people.”
Trying to earn a ticket to heaven, like trying to live forever in this body, is a vain effort. The Preacher wrote in Ecclesiastes 2:12–15 “So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly. For what can the man do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done. Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity.”
We are gathered here today because death claimed Ethelen Herbstreit. While Uncle John Davis, by his own testimony, said that He didn’t always live in a way that would bring admiration from others, Ethelen was an example to many of kindness and service as a teacher, musician, neighbor, wife and mother, and sister in Christ. Your presence today is a testimony to her wonderful influence in your lives. I say this because Ethelen was neither wealthy enough nor famous enough to get people to just show up today to be seen. Other than in her obituary, Ethelen is not likely to have made it into the local newspapers or newscasts on radio or TV. Ethelen was not justified before God by her good deeds. Thanks be to God, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is able to justify both Ethelen and all of you who have received His gift.
Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
The Gospel, when preached in its purity, makes this abundantly clear. St. Paul, in Titus 3:5 declares, “he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,” and in the 6th Chapter of today’s Epistle, Paul wrote
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
This is the message that people need to hear, and it’s the message that Ethelen, her beloved husband John, and her church family here at Good Shepherd, joyfully heard and shared with others whom the Lord brought into their lives. For as surely as her internment bore witness that it was appointed for Ethelen to die once, just as surely does the Word of God bear witness concerning her that, as it is written in
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
This same Jesus, whom the Jewish Leadership demanded Pontius Pilate, “Crucify him,” as St. Peter preached about 50 days later, recorded in Acts 2:36, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.””
This morning, we laid to rest the earthly remains of Mother Ethelen, and tomorrow you can go and see where we laid her. Three days from today, you will see the same thing that you saw today. Over 2000 years ago, three days after Jesus was crucified, the soldiers who guarded His tomb brought back to the Jewish leaders what to them had to be a terrifying report: He is risen! Jesus is not in the tomb! And while they were bribed into spreading a false report that the body had been stolen, the Church bore witness then, and bears witness today that “He is risen; He is risen indeed, Hallelujah!” So important is this claim, that Paul wrote concerning the Resurrection, in 1 Cor 15:13-19
But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
Did Ethelen live a life that left you to pity her? Do I sound like a man who deserves your pity? Have we been singing these songs today about something that we know is not true, or does not even have evidence to support our songs and words today? The resurrection of Christ is not a philosophical concept, it is not a parable, it is not a myth. The resurrection of Christ does not explain the coming of Spring, or the rising of the sun. It does explain the continued existence of the Christian Church in the face of persecution, tribulation, and even the attempts of unbelievers to accuse both Jesus and the Apostles of lying. The tomb is empty, the Church is faithful in her witness, and the Scriptures are clear in their records. In fact, there is no alternative to the Gospel that has the power to comfort people, now and at the hour of their deaths. There is no religion that promises eternal life, not to those who might be thought of as perfectly deserving, but to those who believe in the message that Christ is for you, and that He reversed the curse of death that Adam brought upon us. Romans 5:15-17
But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
To reject the Gospel is worse than refusing a beautifully wrapped Christ mas present. It is worse than rejecting an offer of freedom because you have grown comfortable with prison life, like Uncle John did. Jesus Christ tasted death for you so that you would not have to be held prisoner by it. Ethelen lived for that message, gave herself freely to the work of spreading that good news, and went to her rest confident that “He who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” When the Lord Jesus Christ returns, as it is written in 1 Thess 4:16-18
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
When you are tempted to feel sorrow concerning Mother Ethelen as do those who have no hope, let these words comfort and encourage you. Allow them to strengthen you in your most holy faith. Allow them to encourage you as you seek to serve your neighbor for Christ’s sake, and allow them to put out all of the fiery darts of the wicked one. For Christ is risen, He is risen indeed, Hallelujah!
And the peace of God that passes understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
