Message

Reading: John Chapter 12

Someone has written that one of the duties of a minister of the Gospel is to prepare his people for a good death. Now, when we talk about death, our thoughts often turn to an ending.  It is fall, and fall here north in Iowa, especially when you go further north up to Wisconsin is very beautiful.  It is a time when trees are preparing for winter, so the leaves are turning and they are dropping.  Harvest is in full spring, our gardens are done producing or just about that way if they aren't done already.  The tomato plants that we planted in the spring, they produced well, they lived their lives very well, they gave to us in abundance and now they their day is done - they died a good death in other words.  And as with any death though, there comes change. Yesterday Virginia's field was full of corn - taller then any of us here in this room and I watched them pick it - and today it is full of stubble.  There is change that happens when death comes along.

We have all have experienced death of loved ones, many of us if not all, except for the youngest, know the change that occurs when we lose a family member or close friend to death.  Life goes on for sure because it must but it is never quite the same because that death does bring about change. Companions are no longer with us to share life. We walk home from our day and our house is empty.  We can no long turn to them when out shopping and say "hey, what do you think?" because they are gone forever. Our mother's smiles fade in the misty memories and other things like that that we can all relate to.  But - like I said, life does go on. We may or may not fully recover from the death of a loved one, but we go on living. Life changes but it does not cease.

Now obviously for the believer who dies, death is just a shadow.  The old Presbyterian preacher, Barnhouse, used this illustration:  A man and his daughter where headed to the cemetery and they were going to lay his wife, her mother, to rest. And his daughter looked at him and said "Daddy - I thought Jesus said if we believed in Him we would never die.  How come mom died?"  Well the man thought about it for a time and as he pulled up to an intersection and had to stop, next to him pulled a semi with a trailer.  And the trailer blocked the sun so that the trailer's shadow was cast over the car.  And thinking about that for a moment the man turned to his daughter and said "daughter, which would you rather be hit by - the truck or the shadow of the truck?"  And she said "well of course the shadow, daddy."  And he said "that is what death is to the believer - just the shadow." 

The sting of death is gone.  The grave has become not a final resting place but a passage of the glorious presence of God Himself.  Before Christ's death and resurrection Satan held death's power and its key.  But as we have been learning these past several weeks Christ is the victor and the keys to death and Hades belong to Him now and therefore as believers we must not fear death for it is not the end and the best is yet to come.

There is a story of a woman who at her funeral, you know how the custom goes, you have a viewing, and her casket was open.  And in her hand's (Terri bought these gold forks from D.A.V. because of this story) were clasped around a fork.  And someone said "Now why did they put that fork in her hand?"  A person that was familiar with her stated that at every potluck she would say "Save your forks now, for the best is yet to come".  The desert was coming.  Well she was buried with that fork in her hand because the best was yet to come.

Now death, physical death, always reminds us that we are never in control.  We are never in control of our lives no matter how hard we try to wrestle it.   I saw that Jack Lalaine turned 90 something and that guy still works out, looks fit as a fiddle.  He said he is going to live to be one hundred and fifty.  Well good luck to him.  But even if he does, he is going to die someday.  We never control that.  It stalks us all.  The sting may be gone but its reality is still present - the shadow is still there to cover us. None of us except for those poor souls who commit suicide know when.  Young healthy people are killed in accidents, wars or diseases, cut down early in their life.  The older I get now, that I am better then half way of the average life span in America, my mortality on this side becomes more evident.  I notice the obituaries more, I read them more.  I look at their ages more.  And even those that have become long in the tooth don't ultimately know when they will die. 

And since our time is unknown, the call then is to be prepared for when it does happen.  Now I have had the privilege through the years to do funerals and to do funerals for people that I do not know. And I could not tell the people who came to the eulogy that they were secured in heaven - that they were with their heavenly Father because I did not know if they expressed faith or not.  In fact to be honest with you, I doubt that those that had to find a preacher to do the funeral really knew God through Christ.  I pray that this is not true of you.  Those that I have known intimately over the past several years I will stand at the time and do your funeral, if I am so honored to do that task, and say "they are in the hands of the merciful God, but I do not know.

So we must prepare ourselves for a good death.  How? Well first we realize that death is biological of course.  The body shuts down but it is more then biological it is spiritual  "The wages of sin is death" writes St. Paul.  This flows from the second chapter of Genesis - the command of God not to eat of the forbidden fruit or else death will ensue.  Now the point is not the fruit, we are not to think either oranges or apples. The point is that God gave the man a command.  He wanted man to make a choice.  To choose to serve and live under the dominion of God or to choose to go his own way.  Now in chapter three the command was disobeyed and 900 more or so years later Adam died a physical death.  But a more profound death happened.  By the disobedience of Adam in particular, a death of relationship occurred.  Man was created and he once was in perfect fellowship with his Creator, with God.  Now in Genesis 3 he hides from the presence of God.  Guilt and shame where there was none before all of a sudden encompass him to the point where we better cover ourselves and we better hide from God - they are experienced for the first time.

Also we read in Genesis 3, the relationship between man and woman is divided.  Hence this death is one of separation - not just physical.  That is how we experience death - someone dies and their physical presence isn't with us any longer.  But we all know that there is more to death then that.  We all know that there is an emotional connection that is gone forever, at least on this side from that person that we love.  Not just their physical presence, but the very presence of their soul.  That is what happened in sin - man represented in Adam has chosen, us included, to live life on our own terms.  Adam and Eve believed the lie that life is better lived apart from their Creator.  They bought into that.  They were deceived.  There is no better way of putting it.  They were told a lie and they believed a lie.  Life which is then found only in God was over for them. And believing in that lie brought about not life which was promised by that old snake, Satan himself, but it brought about death - separation from God which looked like a hiding from God and a casting out from the presence of God to the point where the gate to paradise was now guarded by the cherubim with the flaming sword.  They could not get back in, not on their own anyway.  And it also lead to a division among themselves. Adam blamed his wife - "The woman whom You gave me - its her fault." And a little later Cain goes on and kills his brother Able. 

It is here that we begin to understand things.  At the fall as we call it, humanity was enslaved. Humanity died to God thus was enslaved by the powers that be - sin, death and the devil.  All of a sudden he became a victim of his own choices.  Life was and is now defined without God. Again Paul writes in Romans  "They worshiped the creature",  the creation rather then the Creator.  And creation is meant  not be worshiped but to be enjoyed and taken care of by the way.  But the Creator is always to be worshiped.  But when we move away from God we begin to worship the creature, namely, ultimately I should say -  ourselves.  Self-will then rules, led about by the seemingly all-powerful forces of darkness. It promises us everything.  It will give us what we want, right?  If we follow these powers of darkness that we talked about these last four weeks, the way of the world, we will pretty much get to one point or another what we want, right?  The world promises us things but it says "You got to do things this way and you can have them.  You can get rich if you do them this way", right?  "You can have a comfortable life if you do it this way. You can have everything your heart desires, to one extent or another if you do it this way."

Now that is the same thing that the devil told Jesus in the wilderness.  "Do it my way Jesus and this will all be Yours."  And of course Jesus said "No, because your way is not the only way - I am going to do it the Father's way."  Because doing it the worlds way will cost you your soul.  And those bound by the rebellion and deceived and willingly lured into it are reeking of death - they are reeking of death.

 In the larger picture man wages war and he kills other people for his own way.  Man-made famines keep people oppressed. In Ethiopia and Somalia where they  had the great famines years ago and now especially in parts of Africa foremost, it is usually a to keep from the people so that they can keep them in submission and have their own perverted form of power. Political oppression goes on all over this world.

But closer to home we see it in a more real and tangible way - we see it in broken homes, divided families, divorce.  We see it in drug and alcohol abuse.  We see it in people being so greedy they will take and literally steal from other people so that they can have more and more and more.  We see people giving their lives away to that which does not profit.  And death always begets death - it never begets life. Two wrongs don't make a right.  And you are not going to walk away from God and find life. Adam and Eve already tried it and they failed miserably.  And we won't succeed at it either. 

Life with God, the Giver of Life is exchanged then for death - life apart from God.  And to die in this condition is to die a bad death, an unprepared death.  It leads to an eternal separation from God.  If you do not choose God in this life, you will not have him in the life to come.  You get what you want.  "God gave them over"  Paul writes in Romans.  

My work is to prepare you for a good death - to point you out of darkness and into light.  And this means that I must tell you to die - you have got to die.  To die to self, to die to the old way of thinking and living under the enslaving powers of this world - as they appeal to the old sinful self we must die to it.  And in dieing then we begin to learn to live by faith.  Faith and the faithfulness of God as revealed through His son Jesus Christ.  

In other words this is a call to repentance and the call to repentance means a turning away from our old allegiances that have persuaded us and have deceived us into interpreting life and therefore living life as if God does not have a claim upon us.  That is what Adam and Eve tried to do.  They believed a lie - that alternative voice.  And they walked away from God as if God had no stake in their existence - as if they could get along just fine without Him.  This is the lie of Satan and this is the life of the living death.  And repentance turns from that.  See - through the act of repentance we renounce our old allegiances with its ties to this deceitful and deceiving world - no matter what form they appear to be, no matter how nice they talk to us and seek to woo us, no matter what they offer us - we turn from them and we change our allegiance to the only rightful king and kingdom and that it the Lord Jesus Christ. 

And in doing so we are delivered from darkness, we are delivered from death and the futility of life.  What else is there to live for?  I work with a lot of unbelievers and I am guessing that a lot of you do too.  And I used to be an unbeliever, the first 20 some years of my life I didn't walk with God.  And I know from experience and practice and observance what is there to live for.  Friday night? Get the paycheck and blow it at Prairie Meadows?  Go drinking?  Drugging?  Is that worth living  for?  These people know its not but they are bound to it - they know no other way or they choose no other way. Well God delivers us from this and He delivers us from that darkness into light which means life and meaning to life.  Jesus said in John Chapter10  "I came that you might have life and have it abundantly". They are not two different things they are the same thing.  

God is the Giver of life and  when we enter into life of God through faith in Christ it become abundant.  In other words we have meaning to life.  And if there is no meaning to life then to hell with it.  Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. But we are given meaning in life, and we are given purpose.  We are given a new life, a new motivation and a new direction.  We are back into a relationship with God, our Creator, having been justified and reconciled through Jesus Christ.  And here in John Chapter 12 we see the challenge given to all would-be disciples.  He says in Verse 24 "Truly, truly I say to you unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it remains by itself alone - but if it dies it bares much fruit.  He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal.  If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me. And where I am there shall My servant  be also."  And here is the purpose in life  "If anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him." Now I have a reason to live - for the honor and the glory of God in heaven. 

Now this seed must die. We take a seed and we put it in the ground in the spring and that symbolizes of course the burial.  That seed has seemingly no life but once it is put in the ground it begins to germinate and life begins. And it bares fruit and it blesses many people.  Keep the seed in your pocket, keep it on a shelf in a bag it won't help anybody.  Once you put it in the ground it grows and it helps. And in Verse 25  it is implied elsewhere that this means a dieing to this world, a dieing and forsaking of a way of life that excludes God.  Turning back those tides that Adam and Eve brought into this world and saying no to them just as Jesus did during His temptations. And this marks the possibility of new beginnings because death always brings about new beginnings.  It always brings about new beginnings.  And this is a new beginning with God.  Our hope is now fixed upon God through Jesus Christ, no longer upon self and the powers of this world. We have changed, we have died in that, it no longer holds sway.  It still wants to tug at our coat, it still wants to tug at our pant leg, it still wants to trip us up as we try to get around the preacher. But it has no power any more, no sway for we have died to it.  And we must die to that old way - to let go of these things so we can cling to God.  For you can't cling to both or you will be ripped in two. You can't serve God and mammon.  You can't do it.  There has to be a letting go to die to our earthly godless loves and lust. 

Now death can be fearful, granted.  To lay aside our earthly securities can be very fearful because the world tells us to be secure you've got to have this and this and this, you've got to be in position for this and this and those things.  But these things don't really make us secure at all.  What profit a man to gain the whole world, what do you think your doing by building a bigger bank account for your retirement?  What do you think your doing?  Are you thinking that you are securing life?  God says you know there is no security in this life.  We are duped in this country in that sense.  Security in life does not come with things or what we gather and hoard.  Security in life comes in what we die to in this world. Because death to these things brings life.  It opens the gates of heaven.  That is what our baptism signifies - we have died to sin, that old life and all of its powers that be that enslave us, and now we are alive to God to live as new creatures in Christ.  And as long as we cling to this old doomed world and allow it to have sway over our life we will never experience the new life which is life indeed because we will be too busy looking down instead of up. 

We limit our possibilities of a life lived to the honor and glory of God when we listen to this fallen world.  We shut the door to what God wants us to do because we are too busy listening to what the world is telling us to do.  So we must die to this old world - never listen to it again and start living as God intended us to live - in fellowship with Him and with one another.

These are lives of love - of selfless sacrificial love - that which we read in 1st John this morning, "If any man has the world goods, got his brother in need, he gives." And if I read my bible right love means an abandonment of self, in the original, and a sacrificial giving of yourself to another.  In other words it is living generously stupidly if I may put it so bluntly.  I mean its just saying if there is a need I can make, if there is somebody that needs help I will help them. That is love.  That is what God did.  When Jesus left the glories of heaven guess what He had at His disposal?  Everything.  It would be like King Tutt. He had all the riches of Egypt at his his disposal.  Well he puts on the servants garb and goes down to the mud pits and starts working with these guys because, well they need help.  Well that is what God has done for us.  How can we not do it for one another to those in need. 

And its also a life of righteousness in 1st John 3:7 he says "We practice righteousness."  We become people who do what is right for God has called us to walk in the light and thus we know we have passed from death to life.  We turn from the world and its self-serving ways.  We no longer listen.  We are no longer persuaded by the lust of the eye or the lust of the flesh and the pride of life.  And now we say we love the Father which means we love one another. That is the only way you are going to know if you love the Father, if you love one another.  If there is no reconciliation on your part, if there is no exertion and sacrifice in your life how can you say you love the Father?  How can say that you follow Jesus - "Where I am, there you will be also."  And His is the way of sacrifice.  These are lives that we live to the glory and honor of the Father and He will honor them.  I don't know exactly how all that will work but He will honor them. Not only that but these are lives that proclaim to this dark and doomed and enslaved world that there is another way.  This is the Gospel.  There is another kingdom - there is another life. And we need not be looking like that if we are going to tell them that there is.  We need to be looking like Who we are called to be - the people of God, dependant upon the God in heaven as we are dependent upon one another.  And in this we will be bound in Christ.  And in this it will be a good death.  It will be a good death because it has been a good life - lived to the honor and the glory of our Father in heaven.

Prayer

Heavenly Father - we ask that You take these words and impress them on our souls.  Where there are areas that we love this world shame us into repentance because of Your love for us.  Remind us to be faithful to You in all things. Help us to die to this world that we might gain life eternal and live life fully and abundantly as You promised us.  Let those here this morning rid themselves of these things that encumber them.  Let them no longer get away with believing the lie and let them now walk in freedom as they die to this world.
In Christ's name.
Amen

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