The God of the Living // David Asscherick

hello storyline pastor david ashrick here for part three of our three-part series titled life and death i want to give a big welcome to those of you that are joining us from eugene oregon and also atlanta georgia but wherever you're tuning in from we are so glad that you are here and uh we really hope that the storyline sermons are a giant blessing to you we love preparing them and putting them together and we trust that they are a blessing to you and that you love listening to them all right we're going to start with a prayer and then we're going to get into part three of our series titled life and death father in heaven bless us now as we come to the third and final part of our series we will be turning our attention to you the god of the living and father what better place to have our attention turned and riveted than on you and your goodness your kindness father and especially in the incarnation jesus triumph over death his resurrection and ascension and coronation and so father now i pray for those people especially those that have been recently hurt or caught off guard by an unexpected death or a sickness or an illness of a loved one or perhaps even sickness for themselves and they're contemplating their own mortality father it's great for us to remind ourselves of these wonderful biblical truths even when things are going really well but father i want to pray a special prayer for those that are hurting those that need a word from you and father i pray that this could be that word not my words david ashrae but the words of scripture and this is our prayer in jesus name let everyone say amen and amen all right so glad you're all tuning in let's just do a quick recap and reminder of where we have come from and where we are going in our first session we talked about i am ready to be poured out and we just reflected on the nature of death the mystery of death the the blackness and despondency that death creates the loneliness of death and we of course started from that amazing passage in 2nd timothy chapter 4 where paul writes to his young pastoral understudy and he says to timothy i am ready to be poured out my time has come i have run the race i have fought the good fight and i am ready to be poured out like a like a drink offering then in our second session the last time we were together we looked at the second part of that passage and we got our sermon title there for there is laid up for me a crown and we talked about the crown of righteousness which the lord the righteous judge will give to me and to all those that love his appearing and that's going to be absolutely amazing so now in our third part we talk about the god of the living the god of the living and i want to start by making a fairly provocative statement here and that is that according to scripture the line between the living and the dead is blurrier than it may at first appear right so we we are able in this age technologically with all of our sort of instruments that we have that can monitor vital signs and we can obviously feel for a pulse or listen for a breath but we can just tell someone's dead that person is dead that person is no longer alive and right coroners do this and doctors do this and nurses do this they pronounce people dead and i'm suggesting here that from a biblical perspective from a biblical narrative the line between the alive and the dead the living and those that have passed on is actually a lot blurrier than it might seem right a doctor or some other medical professional might be able to come into an examination room and pronounce someone dead or i suppose alive right but i'm going to suggest here that this is actually a little fuzzier a little blurrier and frankly a little more awesome than we might have first imagined and let me continue with this there are those who are alive and by alive here i mean biologically alive you would look at them you would monitor all of their vital signs and say yep he's alive she's alive there are those who are alive and yet are dead and there are those who are dead biologically dead and who are yet alive now if you're confused yet then you know if you're already confused hang on we're going to clarify this because i think it's going to be really powerful and i think you're going to love this teaching of scripture this is one of the teachings of scripture and we're going to start again with paul as we often do ephesians chapter 2 verse 1. paul writing to the church in ephesus says you were dead okay what does that mean you were dead in transgressions and sins oh interesting he says almost the same thing just a few verses later we we now were dead in transgressions dead in sin dead in transgression he writes to the church in colossae colossians chapter 2 verse 13 from the niv here you were dead in your sins okay what does this mean what does it mean that someone can be dead in their sins or dead in their transgressions well it could mean a number of things but let me put this forward just to get us started here when a person is living a life and i use living here in quotes when a person is living a life apart from god and at odds with the holiness and the happiness that he has called them to they are already dead says paul okay so this is amazing one of the things we're going to note here at the outset is as i said there that people can be biologically alive and yet paul says yeah you were dead in your trespasses in your sins but people as we're going to see in a moment can actually be biologically dead but jesus says no they're alive they're already alive you might remember and i'll just just bring this in briefly you might remember from our last session when the news had reached jesus that his friend from bethany lazarus was sick what did jesus say our friend lazarus is asleep well in order to be asleep you have to be alive and so jesus is effectively saying here oh lazarus is alive but he's sleeping but i'm going to go wake him up and it was only when the disciples did not understand what jesus was saying did he then reluctantly say what lazarus is dead so so this idea is that you can be alive yet dead and you can be dead and yet somehow alive that's what i mean when i say the line between the living and the dead is blurrier than it may first appear so how about this one in matthew chapter 23 this is right toward the end of the gospel of matthew and jesus is speaking and he says concerning the resurrection of the dead have you not read what was spoken to you by god saying i am the god of abraham the god of isaac and the god of jacob god is not the god of the dead but of the living now if you're reading that verse and you're just a little bit confused fair point i received that i was a little confused the first time i thought about this verse so jesus here has been questioned by a group of people called the sadducees who don't believe in the resurrection and so he's basically questioning questioning them about their own understanding of their own sacred text and he says well surely you would be familiar as religious leaders prestigious religious leaders that god has referred to yahweh is referred to in the old testament as the god of abraham the god of isaac and the god of jacob so far so good but what jesus says next is fascinating he says god is not the god of the dead but the god of the living but wait abraham isaac and jacob were all dead right i mean just to state the obvious when jesus says that he's the god of abraham isaac and jacob he's not the god of the dead but of the living they could have responded and said yeah but they're all dead abraham died and isaac died and jacob died so what is going on here well it seems as though abraham isaac and jacob are all dead but not from god's perspective and his perspective is the one that matters most when it comes to understanding death so hopefully we're creating a little bit of you know instability here a little bit of uncertainty where you're like uh who is alive and who's dead is this is this some sort of zombie interpretation of scripture the living dead and the dead living no it's not of that foolishness what it is is this simple idea that people that appear to be biologically dead that are biologically dead from god's eternal perspective because they have lived the life that god has called them to live lives of holiness and of happiness in him and in christ from god's eternal perspective they are merely sleeping they are not dead they are alive but the converse is also true people that are biologically alive they're alive they're breathing they're living they have a pulse and a heart rate those people if they are living a life disconnected from god and not just from god but from god's intention for their life from god's desire to bring them to a place of holiness and healthy healthfulness and happiness they are effectively dead that's why paul says as we just saw several moments ago or just a few moments ago in several passages in scripture you are dead in your trespasses you were dead in your sins ephesians 2 and also in colossians okay so let's continue to try to understand this we've quoted this verse already several times hebrews chapter 2 verse 9 but we see jesus who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor that he by the grace of god might taste death for every person now we've already explored this idea in fact going back to our very first session we talked about this canadian singer-songwriter gordon lightfoot gordon lightfoot who wrote the song the wreck of the edmond fitzgerald released in 1976 one year after the edmund fitzgerald sunk on lake superior and 29 sailors died and i i told the story about how this song was haunting to me and and yet i was strangely attracted to it there was almost a little hope in the song right well where is the hope well it's right in this verse does anyone know where the love of god goes right the hope is that there is a god and he is a god of love but still the question remains and this is a haunting verse does anyone know where the love of god goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours the searchers all say they'd have made whitefish bay if they'd put 15 more miles behind her in other words they were so close they were so close and yet they perished if they just would have been half an hour ahead of schedule or 20 minutes ahead of schedule they might have all lived and so lightfoot asks this question artistically poetically and poignantly here where does god's love go when the waves turn the minutes to hours that that would have been probably similar to the question that mary and martha were asking when they thought jesus was going to arrive at any moment right to come in to walk in the door and as he had in so many other circumstances to raise up the sick to bring health and to bring happiness but when he didn't come after day one day two day three and then finally lazarus dies they could have easily asked the question does anyone know where the love of god goes when we're waiting here for hours for our brother to be healed but he doesn't show up now the answer to the question and this is the heartbeat of the gospel is that the love of god goes to the very place where it needs to go the most i.e into the grave and into death itself god is not aloof from or immune to or indifferent to death and pain and suffering in answer to lightfoot's question does anyone know where the love of god goes yeah i know where the love of god goes i know where it's gone where it is going jesus said i am him who was alive and and i am him who was dead and i'm alive i'm the alpha and the omega i am him that was was in the grave and now i have the keys to to the grave to hades and to death right now we've asked this question but what exactly is the gospel we've answered it in a few different ways we answered it we answered it from the the baton way right i delivered to you that which i also received that christ died for our sins according to the scriptures that he was buried that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures so that the gospel is basically the holy history of jesus christ his life death burial resurrection ascension and coronation yes yes yes yes we've also said it like this the gospel is that god tasted and tested death for everybody now i'm just going to read you a verse that i didn't actually put in my notes but it just came to my mind right here second corinthians chapter 5 verse 14. i don't know how it is i didn't think to include this verse but it's just come to my mind now second corinthians chapter 5 verse 14 this is probably my second favorite verse in this passage that begins in verse 12 all the way down to verse 21 and this is one of my very favorite pauline passages i mean this is like a top five pauline passage up there with romans eight and and first corinthians 13 and this is one of the top and and this is the passage you might be familiar with it second corinthians chapter five where paul says among other things if anyone is in christ he is a new creature old things are passed away behold all things have become new that's verse 17. now listen to verse 14. paul says for the love of christ compels us i actually just saw this on a church sign today presbyterian church sign i was driving here today and it had second corinthians chapter 5 verse 14. for the love of christ compels us now listen to this because we judge thus that if one died for all then all died okay okay i got to spend a moment with you on this paul says the love of christ the goodness of christ the goodness of god compels us to go forward because we've thought this through we've done some hard thinking about this and and what it means that jesus dies or died we came to this conclusion if one jesus died for all for collective corporate humanity then in some significant sense all died all died now this is a theological truth and idea that we're not going to get into in great depth here but it's called incorporation i've actually been preaching on it quite a little bit lately that we are incorporated into the messiah such that what is true of the messiah is true of all of those that have put their trust and faith in him what is true of the messiah is true of his people and so listen to that to that idea of incorporation there i'm going to say it again for the love of christ compels us it urges us it moves us forward because we judge thus that if one died for all then all died all died in some sense well that's the very point that we've been making in this series that god is not immune to death he's not indifferent he's not well now just a note on that god as god is immune to death it is not possible that god can die right he's him but god became a human being he was made as we just read a moment ago in hebrews chapter 2 verse 9 a little lower than the angels so that he could suffer and so that he could die and not just die by himself but speaking in this incorporative language that we would all die right he tasted death let me just go back to it here because it's right here well it's way back i guess that he that he might taste death for every person that in some sense in some sense we are incorporated into jesus death this is why paul would say in galatians chapter 2 verse 20 i am crucified with christ nevertheless i live yet not i but christ lives in me i mean just think about that verse just think about that verse for a moment here let's just reflect on that so another one that i didn't include i am crucified with christ well what happens when you're crucified you die you die i am crucified with christ nevertheless i live okay wait wait you died but you're alive this is my point this line between the living and the dead is quite a bit blurrier than we might at first sort of observe we see somebody they're biologically alive we say she's alive he's alive we see somebody they're at a funeral they're in a morgue they're biologically dead we say they're dead well kind of but not really because you can be alive but actually dead in trespasses and sins and you can be dead like abraham isaac and jacob and yet alive and paul says that i am crucified with christ i'm dead and yet i'm alive right how is this possible okay let's continue to unpack this i've already gone through this does anyone know where the love of god goes what exactly is the gospel that that god in christ tasted and tested death for every single one of us just five verses later in hebrews chapter 2 verse 14 we've been quoting verse 9 through the whole series i love this in the new living translation because god's children are human true check made of flesh and blood yup check the sun also has become flesh and blood for only as a human being could he die and only by dying could he break the power of the devil that is or that is to say he that had the power of death itself oh this is too cool this is just too cool we have to just pause here because now we've introduced this idea not just that god had to and we don't understand at all how this condescension you know ontological condescension took place we have no idea how god becomes a man but what what the point that's being made here by the author of hebrews and paul makes the same point in philippians 2 is that in order to die god had to become subject to death right that's what we've already read several times in hebrews 2 9 and here in verse 14. but here's this point that in dying he actually broke the power of the devil the one who had the power of death now there's an old testament story that most people have heard of and it's the story of david and goliath right david and goliath my name's sake i'm named after king david but this is before he was the king and you'd probably be familiar with the story but in case you're not i'll just briefly rehearse it so there is this philistine champion and he's tall and he's big and he's muscular and he's coming out every day and he's challenging the israelite army saying rather than all of you going to war against all of us we'll just fight champion against champion so so he goes out there and he he blasphemes the israel the israelites god he blasphemes yahweh and he says you know send somebody out and i'm going to do all these mean and terrible and nasty things to them and if i beat your champion then you have to you surrender to us and if you're a champion by some you know inexplicable you know twist of fate beats goliath well then we'll be submitted to you well david arrives he's just like a little shepherd boy and his brothers are there on the front lines and when he arrives he overhears goliath saying these terrible things about israel about israel's god and he he has this like indignation well up within him and much to everybody's you know surprise and in some cases chagrin he goes out onto the battlefield right first of all he tells the king saul he says hey i'm gonna i'm gonna go be the champion he's this little kid you know not like a boy but like a like a young man like it is like maybe late teens or early twenties and there's this giant of a man and you probably have heard the story he goes out and he gets his little stones and he gets his sling okay this is the import this is all good stuff but i want to get to the important part here just a second so he goes out on the battlefield and goliath shoots his mouth off to david and david says you come to me with a sword and with you know your big shield and your spear and all that but i come to you in the name of of yahweh the living god and he and he he throws the stone echola hits him in the head goliath falls over and dies and all the philistines are freaking and all the israelites are freaking but this is the key part this is the part they always leave out of the children's stories but when violet and i were like raising our little two sons landon and jabel and we'd read this in the children's stories and it would sort of leave off this part i'd always include it because i wanted them to know the truth about what scripture says it says that david went over and took out goliath's sword this big you know heavy unwieldy sword do you know what he did he chopped off goliath's own head that's a little gruesome a little macabre i get it but i always wanted my boys to know this part and here's why because that's what's happening in this verse that's what's happening in this verse it is as it were that that jesus took the devil's own sword and killed him with it jesus took the devil's own sword and cut his head off because because death is the thing that brings such pain such hurt such sorrow such sadness such separation such loneliness to us and jesus dies and by death puts an end to the devil's power and thus an end to death itself he cuts goliath's head off with his own sword uses death to defeat death that's what's being said here look at it again for only as a human being could he die and only by dying could he break the power of the devil who had the power of death this is such an awesome way of thinking about what jesus did using death to destroy death using goliath's own sword to chop off the head of the terrible monster when a person has died who lived in and with and for god by his grace always by his grace they are not they are not dead they are already and always will be alive this is the very point that jesus was making when he said go back and read your own text haven't you read that he's the god of abraham he's the god of isaac and he's the god of jacob he's not the god of the dead but the god of the living so even though it might appear that they're dead they're actually alive and even though it might appear that these people over here are alive they're actually dead there are so many verses in the new testament one's just coming to my mind right now where jesus in john chapter 5 says the hour is coming and now is when those when the dead and those that are in the graves will hear let me just i want to quote it exactly it's john chapter 5 verses 28 and 29 i don't want to mess this up because it's just too good just came to me right now here it is john chapter 5 verse 28 do not marvel at this for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear his voice and come forth those that have done good to the resurrection of life and those that have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation i love this and in fact listen to verse 25 most assuredly i say to you the hour is coming and now is when the dead will hear the voice of the son of god and those who hear will live whoa so jesus is not just speaking here eschatologically or end time he's not just saying yeah there's going to come an hour at the end and the resurrection where i will speak and the dead will hear my voice and write he says and now is think that through he's saying i'm traveling around village to village place to place town to town and i'm teaching and i'm preaching and i'm announcing the good news of the kingdom and the hour is coming eschatologically or end times when i will speak and the dead will be raised and he says and now is when the dead are hearing the voice and this wasn't just a reference to the widow of nane's son and jairus daughter and lazarus this is a reference to people who were hearing the good news and they were coming alive they were dead in trespasses and sins and they were coming alive man i could go so deep on this just a quick illustration paul will later say that when someone is baptized when someone is baptized i've been baptized i was baptized june 6 1996. paul will say that when someone is baptized he develops this argument in romans chapter six they they hold their breath they go under the water and they come up out of the water okay that's baptism literally means to immerse or to submerge okay so what's happening there is that someone is literally entering into they're stopping their breathing the death they're going under the water they're buried they come up out of the water they're raised from the dead they are reenacting or dramatizing the life death resurrection of jesus that's what you're announcing at baptism you are saying the death of jesus died was the death that i lived or the life that jesus lived was a life i have not lived the death that jesus died was the death that should have been mine his burial should have been my burial his resurrection is my only hope of a future resurrection you're literally dramatizing that you're announcing that okay so this is so incredible paul will then write for example to the church in colossae and say for you died what how do you write to people who are alive who are going to get a letter and who have eyes to see and ears to hear and brains to understand how can paul write to them and say for you died because they died in the sense that they put their total trust in the death burial and resurrection of jesus they died and were to quote jesus in his conversation with nicodemus born again you must be born again so here again there are people that are alive but are dead and there are people that are dead but are actually alive if we are living in sin and living in transgression and living quite apart from god and his purpose for holiness and happiness and healthfulness in our life we're dead if someone has passed away like my friends that i've told you about here david and martin both of whom loved god deeply from god's perspective as with abraham isaac and jacob as with lazarus they're already alive he that believes in me jesus said to martha will never die look at this when a person i've already read i want to read it again when a person has died right like my friends david and martin and lazarus who lived in and with and for god okay check check check in lazarus case martin's case david's case i knew them well i didn't know lazarus well but david and martin by his grace it's always by his grace they are not dead but they are already and always will be alive incredible what did jesus say in john chapter 10 verse 10 one of the best known verses people quoted a lot when they're talking about some of jesus best known most loved sayings i have come that they may have life and that they may have it abundantly that's the new king james version check it out in the comments common english bible i came so that they could have life indeed so that they could live life to the fullest ah that's hot how about this from the message translation and i've inserted a couple words here i came so they can have real so they can have real and eternal life more and i put the word here quantity and better and i've inserted the word here quality more and better life than they ever dreamed of you see the coolest thing about the eternal life that god promises us check this out the life that god offers us in christ is not merely a quantity of years but a quality of existence that's a game-changing thought right there when we think of eternal life i think most of us think about it numerically we think oh that's a really long time man eternity that's a super long time but but the actual life that jesus offers is not merely a quantity of years or a quantity of days or a quantity of moments it's a quality of existence living in and with and for god the creator by his grace that's what it means to truly be alive so you can be biologically alive i mean just think about this if jesus says i'm come that they might have life and have it more abundantly it means there's a way you can be alive but not fully alive there's a way that you can be alive but not all the way alive right so that they might live life to the fullest god wants to give us not just a quantity of years you know an infinite number of days or moments or months or even experiences he wants to give us a quality of existence i love the way that it says in first john chapter 5 john writing to the church there likely in ephesus in verses 12 and 13 he says he who has the son has life what does it mean to have the son it means to live your life in jesus trusting in jesus in love with jesus worshiping jesus understanding jesus praying to jesus walking with jesus if you have that you already have eternal life it's already started because you were born again when you were baptized your eternal life has already started so if you have a death you die biologically die jesus would say about you oh no no my friend david my friend michael my friend sid my friend mandy my friend samantha no she's sleeping she's just sleeping incredible she's just sleeping but i'll go wake her up he who has the son has life he who does not have the son of god does not have life john says i've written these things to you who believe in the name of the son of god that you may know not that you may hope not that you may imagine that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may continue to believe in the name of the son of god you see friends when it comes to thinking about death we are really trapped between two incomprehensible options and i love this and i want you to go with me on this last little journey here when i was a young boy listening to the songs of gordon lightfoot james taylor and kansas and perhaps others these songs that brought me face to face with my own mortality and and uh my awareness that something big and dark and scary and inevitable was out there okay yeah i've been wrestling with death for a long time that's why i read books like the last words of sinners and saints and being mortal and lots of other books about death i also love to read books about people who narrowly escaped death maybe that's why i love rock climbing so much right so you just you get in positions where you feel like you're in a lot of danger if you're climbing right you're not usually in much actual danger but it you know when you've got 200 or 300 or a thousand feet of air below you and you're just clinging on by your fingers and your toes it feels like wow this is a really exhilarating experience it's euphoric it's incredible it's amazing here's the point whether you're somebody who reflects a lot on your own mortality and thinks about death and you love to read the old you know works and poets and listen to music about these things wherever you're at personally with this i want to suggest this idea to you here that we are as human beings with our inbuilt incapacity to comprehend the world in which we live and the the magnitude of it the size of it the grandeur of it we're trapped sort of in our limited space with all of our limitations between two options these are our two options number one death is eternal that's option number one right the problem is if the is sort of be believed and the atheists are to be believed and the others are to be believed there is no afterlife there is no god there is no resurrection all of that's just all poppycock it's all claptrap there's nothing to it okay so then that would mean that death is eternal so when somebody dies first of all it's fundamentally irrelevant because the person possessed no transcendence no you know lasting objective uh meaning to the universe it's all just in the words of shakespeare sound and fury signifying nothing okay if death is eternal well that's a really impossible thing for us to comprehend because we cannot comprehend our own non-existence just think about that for a moment you can comprehend my non-existence and i can comprehend your non-existence let's just say there's a hypothetical person here his name is tom okay here's tom i can imagine a world without tom it's actually really easy for me to imagine a world without thompson's tom is imaginary but just pretend that tom is real well i can imagine a world without tom so can you in fact if tom were to die even if he was a friend of mine my life would largely go on the same way that it is i'd get up in the morning i'd eat my cereal i'd go to my workout i'd write my sermons i travel around the world i'd love my kids i my life would not be materially affected if tom died if tom was like just an acquaintance or a friend or maybe a neighbor so i can imagine a world a universe without tom in the same way you can imagine a universe a world you can imagine a reality without me that might make you sad and maybe you know me or maybe you wish you knew me or maybe i wish i knew you okay fine but you get over it over time you'd eventually get over it but the one thing you cannot comprehend is your own non-existence why not well because you're comprehending it right you're the one that's thinking about it and so you're there you're a part of the equation here's another way to think about it imagine your own funeral okay there you are in the casket but you're actually not in the casket because you're imagining it so you're like a bird up in a tree looking down and who's there and what did they wear and what did they say and you see how this works you can't imagine your own non-existence because you're imagining it you're present to the thought experiment okay so that's option one it's incomprehensible to us our own non-existence incomprehensible but you know what else is incomprehensible that life is eternal what life is eternal how can we comprehend a life that never ends well you can't you can't like our only our measuring stick is only so long like if somebody lives into their 80s or 90s or even 100 we say oh they've lived a long life but compared to eternity or or or unending life that's a it's a drop in the proverbial bucket we can't comprehend eternal life but neither can we comprehend eternal death so we're like paralyzed not knowing what is after the great beyond right what what happens when the pulse stops and the breath stops and the the blood no longer courses through our veins and the heart stops be what then well whatever is out there this is one thing for sure none of us can comprehend it none of us we can't comprehend our own non-existence because we've been alive our whole lives and we can't comprehend eternal life because we just have no measuring stick that's that long we don't know what that's like we can imagine a number like a thousand we can imagine even a number like a hundred thousand a million yeah a thousand thousands but as soon as you get to numbers like a billion and a trillion you're already really outside i mean like what do you have that's in your life that's a trillion of something or even a billion of something like if you go walking on the you know the the beach and there's sand you say yeah there are billions of sand particles here or trillions yeah there is some sense but you don't really have a sort of a tactile awareness i know if i have 100 i have a i have a reference for that even if i have a thousand dollars yeah yeah i have a sense for the size of that what i could purchase with that ten thousand sure a hundred thousand yeah yeah yeah yeah five hundred thousand yep a house but as soon as you start getting up to billions and trillions to say nothing of quadrillions and beyond we're just so outside of our depth we don't know what we're talking about right and that's only just the drop in the drop in the drop of the bucket of eternity it's incomprehensible to us but with this in mind think about this trapped paralyzed as we are between two incomprehensible realities that death is eternal and that life is eternal the author of ecclesiastes says this god he has made everything beautiful in its time he has also set eternity in the human heart a longing for eternity yet no one can fathom what god has done from the beginning to the end what an incredible idea god has put eternity a longing for the unending in the human heart now tell me if you like this okay obviously you can't tell me but just think this through i want to know if you like this though we cannot grasp eternity as i just mentioned a moment ago we have no frame of reference for something that's unending though we cannot grasp eternity i am persuaded that we will always be able to grasp tomorrow because your whole life has been made up of tomorrows here's a cool cool cool thought so i mentioned in either the first of the second session that i had uh dear friends that one of whom just passed away a couple days ago betty my friend's uh grandmother and really the matriarch of the last church that i pastored her husband milton passed away several years ago so milton passed away in his 90s and then just a few years later just a couple days ago now uh betty also passed away and these were two of the saintliest most beautiful people in that whole church and and betty was a saint among saints okay well i remember when i went and visited milton in the hospital when uh probably just about a month before he died and he'd been in and out of the hospital he'd had complications and you know when you get to your mid 90s there's very often health complications and i'll just pause on that and come back to that in a second years before i had been having a conversation with milton about aging and uh we were talking and i said milton when was it that you started to kind of feel like an old man like when did that when did you feel like oh i'm an old man and i'll never forget his answer milton said hasn't happened yet don't know hasn't happened yet now fast forward i'm with milton in the hospital and i was like hey milton how you doing buddy man you've been out in and out of this hospital for he's having all kinds of medical problems and he was just a man he was a character such a cool guy and i'll never forget he had a great sense of humor this is what he said to me he said david there's only four things standing between me and happiness right now just four things and i was like oh really what are those things he said david i could be so happy if i could just sleep regularly eat regularly poop regularly and pee regularly he said if i could do those four things he met me i'd be so happy now here's the thing when people get toward the end of their lives and the systems just start shutting down things that work great when you're in your 20s 30s 40s 50s they start shutting down if you were to go to somebody like milton i could have in fact i may have even go to milton and say hey milton would you like to live 10 more years milton would say well not like this not in this condition not where i can't do these you know basic things like sleeping and eating and going to the bathroom regularly no i no no no i'm i'm tired i'm worn out i don't want 10 more years not like this but if you could go to milton and not just milton you go to literally any person that's ever lived and they're on their deathbed they're getting ready to die and you could go to them and say hey how would you like to live 10 more years but not in this condition that you're in right now this infirmed condition you can live 10 years in the prime of your life with all you choose you choose maybe that was your 20s maybe that was your 18's maybe that was your 30s the prime of your life you could just 10 more years every single person takes that every single person says what what 10 more years like the best years of my life sign me up because what they're signing up for is tomorrow another tomorrow another tomorrow when they're healthy and happy and strong and vibrant and the mind is energetic eternity is a bunch of tomorrows you see friends the reason that we can't comprehend eternal death well that's just there's no hope of comprehending your own non-existence but the reason we can't comprehend eternal life is that no one can comprehend eternity but you know what you can't comprehend tomorrow and then tomorrow do you know what you'll be able to comprehend tomorrow eternity will not be experienced wholesale it's not possible only god has the sort of bandwidth to co to embrace and comprehend eternity wholesale but what we will experience is a tomorrow and then a tomorrow and then a tomorrow and then tomorrow and then tomorrow and at no stage will we be like you know what i think i'm over it i think i think i think i've had enough i think i've done enough in the same way that you could go to somebody and say do you want 10 more years you want 10 more years of your best and brightest mo 100 out of 100 people say i'll take that in his book this is what i mentioned in the in the first session this book by atul gawande being mortal illness medicine and what matters in the end i love this he says the body's decline creeps like a vine slowly up the wall day to day the changes can be imperceptible you adapt you figure it out you get a little problem in your hip you know as you're aging no problem your body adapts pick a little bit more up in this knee this hip picks it up and you just make an adaptation then something happens that finally makes it clear that things are no longer the same decline remains our fate death will someday come says gawande but until that last backup system inside each of us fails medical care can influence whether the path is steep and precipitate or gradual allowing longer preservation of the abilities that matter most as felix silverstones put it to me old age is a continuous series of losses [Music] philip roth put it even more bitterly in his novel every man old age is not a battle old age is a massacre and it's right at this point that we encounter the death chapter when we're wrestling with our own decaying bodies our declining bodies our aging bodies and paul says this first corinthians chapter 15 behold i tell you a mystery we will not all sleep die our friend lazarus sleeps but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet hey that's exactly what martha said i know that my brother will rise again in the resurrection at the last day for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible and we will be changed for this corruptable this decaying dying declining body he says must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality so when this corruptible is put on incorruption and this mortal has put on immortality then and not a day sooner then see the mind can comprehend eternal life and we can engage and and believers can say yes i'm trusting in jesus i'm living in jesus i'm singing songs to jesus i'm worshiping jesus but the body's still declining but paul says they're going to come a day where the body will as it were catch up with the mind then on that day in that mystery and that twinkling of an eye in that moment when our decaying body puts on deathlessness that's a cool way to say it then will be brought to pass the sayings that are written quoting now from the old testament death is swallowed up in victory o death where is your sting o grave where is your victory and this is one of the verses that we began the whole series with first corinthians chapter 15 same chapter but a little earlier in the chapter the last enemy that will be destroyed is death what a concept goliath gets his head chopped off with his own sword the last enemy to be destroyed is death killed by death itself jesus death put an end to death brought about death announced death made possible death the english poet and priest john dunn wrote a beautiful poem where he kind of personifies death and he's he's he's having a conversation with death and in the poem he's saying to death death don't be proud don't be proud watch this i love this i i actually preached this and read this at the funeral service that i did for my good friend david who unfortunately tragically terribly died in his sleep death be not proud though the whole world fears you mighty and dreadful you may seem but death be not proud for your pride has failed you you will not kill me though you may dwell in plague and poison you're a slave to fate and desperate men so death if you're asleep he understood it if your sleep be the gates to heaven why your confidence once you so confident about death one day you will be no more for even death will die death be not proud for even death will die and that brings us full circle to how we started this whole series with the apostle paul writing to his young pastoral understudy timothy saying now the time has come for me to die my life is like a drink offering it's being poured out on the altar so a crown will be given to me and on the day of judgment he will give a crown to me and not just to me but to everyone who wants him to appear again with power what did jesus say god is not the god of the dead but of the living god is the living god of the living and i want to close i want to close when i was preparing this sermon series and these talks and just thinking about death and sort of ruminating on it in the first session i i shared with you um part of the text conversation that i had with ty gibson where he sent that beautiful text about when we think about death as an amputation this is how the father and the son and the spirit experienced calvary and and uh incredible incredible and as that is that text conversation that we had a long back and forth and as we often do but this one was about death and mortality and and he knew david as well david was a uh my friend that i was just talking about uh that passed away in his sleep is a good friend of ties as well very good friend and we continue to be friends of his family uh his wife karen and their children but anyway i'm texting ty and i just what i love about tai he can go from like super serious and super theological and philosophical and then he'll just like drop something really funny in the text conversation and so the last slide for this series is a screenshot from how that text conversation and ended with tai and it goes like this tai says come on the gospel allows us to see things that otherwise we could never see and they are things that once you see them they bear witness to themselves as true by virtue of the sheer gravity and beauty and then this we know stuff bro i love that we know stuff bro and i respond yes yes we do friends in the gospel in the good news of the life death resurrect life death burial resurrection ascension coronation promised return of jesus we know stuff we know stuff and we know stuff that's not just theoretical it's not just abstract it's not just conceptual the stuff that we know can so transform reality that people that are dead are actually alive and people that are alive because they're living apart from the stuff that we know bro are actually dead already so the invitation that i have for you and the invitation that that jesus has for you as we've contemplated these ideas these twin ideas of life and death jesus invites you he says he says come to me all you that labor and are heavy laden and i will give you rest what did we just read a moment ago john chapter 10 verse 10 i am come that they might have life and they may have it more abundantly that they may have it to the full remember not just a quantity of years but a quality of existence that's what god holds out to you to your family to your sons to your daughters to your brothers to your sisters that's what god holds out to you eternal life a quality of existence and an uninterrupted succession of tomorrows tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow those tomorrows can begin today those tomorrows can begin right here today for some of you that have put your faith in jesus those tomorrows already begin you're already living eternal life and god invites you to put your total trust in him to put your total trust in jesus and yes yes death is terrible it's tragic we grieve right we grieve deeply but we can say with jesus our friend sleeps but one day he will wake up one day she will wake up i'm putting i'm casting my lot with jesus man i'm putting all my eggs in that basket and who better to trust with your death than him who has tasted death who's experienced it who's been there solve the mystery and come out with the keys that's what i want to do and i want to know if that's what you want to do of course you do so we're going to close with prayer and i hope you've enjoyed this series and it's been a privilege to be with you here at storyline let's pray father in heaven yes yes and yes we accept it we receive it we believe it that jesus died the death that we deserved that he lived the life we have not lived and his resurrection is our only hope of a future resurrection we receive it we believe it we embrace it we accept it and so father we want to start living that uninterrupted succession of tomorrows today right here right now by the grace of jesus and father may we say as paul said many centuries ago there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the lord will give to me and not to me only but he will give to all those that long for and look for and love his appearing which we do and we pray in the name of jesus amen

Channel: Storyline Church

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Id: QsHGc7sBHNk

Length: 52min 8sec (3128 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 24 2021