Unemployed Death

A millionaire Christian is sleeping in his bedroom when an angel comes to him and wakes him up.

"It’s time for you to go to heaven", says the angel.

"Oh, i’m not ready, what should I bring ?", says the millionaire.

"Nothing, just yourself", replies the angel.

But the millionaire pulls a large suitcase from under his bed and opens it up. It is full of gold bars. "Can I just bring this along ?", he pleads with the angel.

The angels thinks for a while, gets on his handphone to God and speaks some divine language. Then he turn to the man and says , "OK, but only the suitcase".

So the millionaire is taken up to the pearly gates where St.Peter is waiting to welcome him. Looking at the suitcase St.Peter says, "I’m sorry but we don’t allow any earthly possessions here, you’ll have to leave the suitcase behind."

The angel whispers the situation into St.Peter’s ears and St.Peter seems to understand. "But what could be so important that God would allow you to take it through ?", muses St.Peter, "Let me take a look".

St.Peter opens the suitcase to see all the gold bars inside and immediately falls to the floor rolling around with ecstatic laughter!

The millionaire is amazed at St.Peter’s antics. Why is he laughing ?

After a while St.Peter is able to stop laughing and manages to let out a solitary question, "Why do you want to bring PAVEMENT into heaven

Throughout the past year or so our church has experienced a lot of death. You may not realize how much because of the isolation of COVID, but since January of 2021 I have preached 19 funerals; most of those have been active members of our church. In fact, I have preached 3 in the past 3 weeks- death is a reality that many of us have faced personally in the past year and a half.

And let’s be honest, death is not a topic that we like to talk about. We will talk about the kids, or work, who won the game last night, or what is for dinner tonight- but let’s not talk about death. Most people put off making their will; or making other end of life decisions because they don’t like to think about- much less talk about- their death.

But there is good news today, the Bible talks about death- openly and honestly, and gives us a framework and foundation of how we should think about and approach death too. Death is not something that we should feel timid, embarrassed, or even fearful in talking about as Christians, as long as we frame our conversations with Biblical truth.

The challenge for this, of course, is taking the opportunity to talk about death Biblically. You see, many people never hear the Bible’s take on death until they attend a funeral, because that is normally where we talk about death and the Bible. But today we are going to talk about it openly and honestly, outside of the Funeral context.

Death is an enemy

The first step in building a Christian approach to death is to remembers that death was not God’s original plan. God made Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden to live in fellowship with him forever. Adam and Eve, before the fall, were eternal beings; but when they disobeyed God and ate of the apple everything changed.

Sin brought in our enemy, death. As Romans 6:23 tells us, the wages of sin is death.

The idea of death hurts us, and even scares us because death is not what God originally wanted for us. It makes us uncomfortable to talk and think about death because in thinking about death we are also thinking about sin.

So much so that we have pushed the words “dying” and “death” out of our vocabulary. We do not say “I am dying” we say things like “I am battling an illness” “They are entering hospice” or some other phrase that we know means they are dying, but we wont say it.

We also have a multi-billion-dollar industry called healthcare that is built on the avoidance of death. Sure, some medicine is built on health and healing, but how many billions of dollars are spent every year just to keep people alive- even if the quality of that life is horrible.

Or as Rob Moll reflected “Our culture simply doesn’t know what to think about death. Through medicine and science we know more about death and how to forestall it than ever before. Yet we know very little about caring for a dying person. We don’t know what to expect or how to prepare for our own death. And we’re often awkward at best when trying to comfort a friend in grief. We have come to expect medical breakthroughs, vaccines and wonder-working drugs. It’s clear that our paradoxical approach to death is largely due to the fact that we are strangers to death--despite it being ever present.”

But just because death is our enemy does not mean that we have to be afraid of it. No, David walking into battle against the giant Goliath taught us that we do not have to be afraid of our enemies, even if our enemies seem to be bigger and more powerful than we are. Faith is the great equalizer when it comes to facing our enemies, so what can faith show us in these moments?

Death is defeated

But the good news is that though Jesus did not prevent physical death, he defeated spiritual death. In the middle of today’s passage from 2 Tim 1 we find this central truth- Jesus Christ abolished death and brought life and immortality.

You see, there is the physical death that all mankind will have and then there is the spiritual death that comes if someone dies without putting their trust in Jesus as their Savior and is separated from God for eternity.

Jesus may not allow us to avoid physical death; but he has defeated spiritual death and gives us the opportunity to avoid that. As Revelation 21:8 tells us, not all people avoid this death:

Revelation 21:8 (ESV)

But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

But Jesus himself says earlier in Revelation 1:17,18:

Revelation 1:17–18 (ESV)

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.’

The Nationals winning the World Series in 2019 was pretty monumental for that franchise, wasn’t it? It was the first Championship for the Nats in their history- dating back to when they were the Montreal Expos since 1969. I know we have some Nationals fans in this church- and we all said it felt good to be rooting for a champion. Now, this week has been a hard week for Nats fans to see some of the cornerstones of that team traded away, but it cannot take away what has already been done. I remember talking with some fellow Nationals Fans when they won their World Series and we all talked about how much fun it was to be on the winning side- and as a guy that rests my hat on being a Redskins fan, I don’t get to be on the winning side that often.

Jesus’ defeat of death gives us the win too. We get to be on the winning side. We can walk the path of this life with joy, because there is nothing that will come our way that can vacate that win. We are champions over death through Jesus. And unlike the Nationals this week who turned off the keys to the championship drive, and traded away some of the cornerstones of the team to try again next year- because this year is a wash, Jesus‘ victory is everlasting and eternal and he will never lose to death!

Death is unemployed

The victory of Jesus over death holds this truth high- death is unemployed- that is the literal translation of the word abolished- or katargero- in 1 Tim 2:10. Paul literally says death has become unemployed- or lazy. I tell you, I LOVE this image. In fact, I asked Aiden to draw it up for us this week:

When a person puts their faith and hope in Jesus, death gets a little more useless. And the will of God is that Death would be put out of business. Don’t believe me? Listen to 2 Peter 3:9: The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

So, if death is our enemy, how do we put death to rest? By trusting in Jesus.

Death As Reward

The story of the Bible is one of redemption- taking things that are broken and making them something beautiful. This is exactly what Jesus does with the story of death. Death is recast as something beautiful for the Christ-follower. As one old saying states: Death is not turning off the lights because it is over, but extinguishing a candle because daybreak has come.

You see, death is, by the blood of Christ, redeemed into something beautiful, something desirable, a blessing!

In fact, the Bible even speaks of death being our doorway to our greatest inheritance. One of the most obvious passages that does this is Ephesians 1:11-14:

Ephesians 1:11–14 (ESV)

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

Normally we think about inheritance being left by the person that dies, but in this case the Gospel tells us that the inheritance of the believer is what THEY get when they die.

We as Christians can make the same mistake if we are not careful. We can naively walk around with an unclaimed inheritance waiting for us. Because in Jesus death is not a punishment, death is our great reward.

In his book Radical David Platt writes "Your life is free to be radical when you see death as your reward."

Death as a reward- Paul talks about this in 1 Thess 4:13-18- he talks about the response Christians should have to death, and his last sentence is- we shall be with the Lord FOREVER, therefore encourage one another with these words.

For the Christ follower death is wrapped in encouragement because death is our doorway into the presence of Jesus.

The hope of the Christian is in a paradise far from this place, in the presence of God. Heaven is going to be so amazing, and the way we get there is death.

So, imagine heading towards the greatest reward you could ever hope for, wouldn’t that change your outlook?

What if your bank guaranteed you $100million dollars was going to hit your bank account this weekend. Wouldn’t you have some boogie in your step?

What if your boss just gave you an extra month of paid vacation- starting this weekend! Wouldn‘t you have some joy in your spirit?

What if you went home and there was a brand new truck and bass boat sitting in the drive way- compliments of the man down the street? Would you not be bursting with joy.

And here’s the thing- all of those things are temporary- they are not forever! But listen to the words of 1 John 2:17 “the world and all of its desires will pass away; but whoever does the will of God will live forever!”