Eternity: A Christian's Death and the Death of Death (Gen 3:22-24; John 11:33-44; 2 Cor 4:16-18)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

Thank you for tuning in to Newsong Church's Sermon Podcast.

At Newsong Church, we want to see Jesus lifted high in Port Perry, Ontario, as we worship, grow, and serve.

You can learn more about us and find contact info at newsongportperry.ca.

This is the second lesson.

Second Corinthians chapter 4, verses 7 to 12, 16 to 18.

2 Corinthians 4:7–12

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

For we who live are always being given over to the death for Christ for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

So death is at work in us, but life in you.

So we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away.

Our inner self is being renewed day by day.

For this light momentarily, affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

As we look now to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

The word of the Lord.

So we do not lose heart.

Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

For this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

So let's pray.

And may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be always pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So, as you're aware, the last number of weeks we've been taking this journey through eternity, or at least having a look at these topics that pertain to eternity.

We started this journey with a few goals in mind.

One of the goals was to articulate what God's Word has to say about eternity.

A lot of ideas can develop over time, and sometimes barnacles attach themselves to what God's Word has to say.

Sometimes it's worth having a look at what God's Word itself has to say.

And so that's why we've taken the last couple of weeks and looked at heaven and looked at hell.

But even more than that, we've seen that the Christian life is more than just a kind of an aimless wandering or an endless to-do list.

The Christian life is a pilgrimage.

The Christian life is a journey, and it's a journey that has a destination.

And that destination we've seen is that perfect union with God that's represented at the marriage supper of the Lamb, this feast of victory over sin and death.

This feast that stitches together the present age we live in and the age to come, world without end.

This is where everything's going.

And so part of the goal of this journey is been able to wrestle with these things and articulate these things and understand them that much more deeply.

But on the first week, I also stated another goal.

My hope is that as we explore this topic, we find a considerable degree of assurance.

Because we can't explore eternity without acknowledging the reality of death.

Death is a universal, indiscriminate reality.

I think it's Chuck Polaniuk in his kind of nihilistic masterpiece, if you want to call it that, called Fight Club, he writes that on a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

That's pretty unapologetic, isn't it?

And that's something we kind of like to avoid.

Not something we like to engage with particularly.

Ernest Becker writes in his book, The Denial of Death the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else.

It is a mainspring of human activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying it in some way, that it is the final destiny of man.

I think sometimes the Christian faith gets framed as though this is just a really elaborate death denial scheme.

We don't really have to deal with the reality of death or the reality that we ourselves are going to have to face death, unless the Lord comes, of course, but I think there's more going on than that in God's Word.

I think we can safely say this is far more than an elaborate death denial scheme.

I think more than anything else, God's Word gives us permission to wrestle with the reality of death for exactly what it is.

Not dressing it up as anything pretty, not dressing it up to be something it's not supposed to be, but dealing with it exactly for what it is, unapologetically, in all its ugliness.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Here's the words that come from Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

These are the words that were spoken over us on Ash Wednesday.

We live in the light of eternity and in the valley of the shadow of death, don't we?

Is there any hope?

Friends, I want to say that God's word, the gospel, is the good news that the power of death has been put to death.

The power of death has been put to death through the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

So as Christians, we can live emboldened with hope that death is not the final word spoken over our lives.

But it does give us permission to wrestle with death for what it is.

And that's what I want to invite us to do quite courageously this morning.

I want us to have a look at our Bible readings from Genesis 3 and John 11 and 2 Corinthians 4.

And I want us to explore a few questions.

I want us to ask, how should we as Christians understand death?

I want us to ask, how does God deal with the problem of death?

And I want us to ask, how do we live in the valley of the shadow of death?

So, are we ready?

How should Christians understand death?

Pull out your Bibles, open up to Genesis chapter 3, or pull out your order of service, and we're going to have a look here.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

In fact, we're going to start just before Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

If we're going to ask the question, how do we understand death?

We should probably start with a question that kind of logically comes before that, and that's something like this: what does it mean to be alive?

If we're going to understand death, we should probably understand something of what it means to be alive.

And how is it that the Bible understands what it means to be alive, to be a human person, to be animate?

First thing that the Bible has to say about creation is that this is a good creation.

When God creates, he doesn't say this is so-so or something that I'll tolerate.

The word he speaks over his creation is this is good.

This is a wonderful thing.

It's a delightful thing.

And when God creates, he crowns his creation with this wonderful little bipedal creature that he creates in his own image.

Genesis 1, chapter verses 26 and 28.

God said, Let us make man, or the Hebrew word here is Adam, in our own image, after our likeness.

So God created man in his own image, the image of God he created them, male and female he created them, and God blessed them.

And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over every living thing that moves on the earth.

That's a pretty wild passage with a lot packed in there.

This is giving us something of the blueprint of what it means to be human, male and female, created after the image of God.

That's a pretty mysterious phrase, and I don't mean mysterious in terms of like a John Grisham novel or something.

It's a wonderful, awe-inspiring mystery.

Somehow in all of creation, human beings are unique.

We have this unique capacity to enter into relationship with God, being created in his image.

There's a resonance, there's a correspondence between human beings and God that you won't find elsewhere in creation.

And because this is the case, God blesses them.

He wants them to flourish.

He wants these human creatures to share in his divine life and reflect his glory outward into creation.

It's a heavenly reality, isn't it?

A couple of weeks ago we talked about heaven, and we said that what makes heaven heaven is sharing in God's divine life and his glory forever.

And this is the heavenly purpose for which human beings are created.

And now, because this is the case, God can say in verse 31 that his creation is very good.

This was an upgrade.

Human beings are far from something that plagues creation.

Human beings are something that ennobles creation and lifts it up in God's eyes.

So then in chapter two, in a second creation narrative, we see something introduced into creation.

We see that the Lord God gives a commandment.

He gives a commandment to the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree in this garden, the garden that he's placed this man, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.

For in that day when you eat of it, you shall surely die.

So even within this good creation, God makes occasion for trust and obedience.

He's inviting his human creatures into this relationship of trust with him.

Will we take him at his word and submit ourselves for our own good, or will we grab this fruit for ourselves and determine for ourselves what makes for good and what makes for evil?

And suddenly this death is introduced as a consequence of disobedience.

Did you notice that?

On the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.

That suggests to us that death was never part of God's design for his human creatures.

It was never part of his intention to see our days come to an end.

But instead, we were always supposed to share in his unending divine life and share in his everlasting glory.

This was not something that was meant to come to a conclusion.

But disobedience means deterioration.

And deterioration results in death.

And that's what we see in chapter three.

This is where our reading picks it up.

What's called the fall, fall from grace.

And in this fall, maybe we can recognize a few things.

It's less that our first parents were duped, and more like we should recognize the sort of self-will and self-interest and self-glorification that so frequently leads us away from God ourselves.

Maybe something of the same sort of self-will, self-glorification that we saw in last week's parable of Lazarus and the rich man.

It's this self-interest, this self-glorification that takes us away from a trusting relationship with God that results in life.

And if we're not in a trusting relationship that results in life, then we're in a deteriorating state.

And that's what the curses that follow recognize.

Creation, which was tied together and meant to be very good, is coming apart at the seams.

And so God pronounces over the servant, a serpent.

By the way, talking snake, against that's that's aside the point.

I know sometimes we get hung up on that.

But God is inviting us to recognize something that is profoundly true of the human condition.

Something is broken, and we can't fix it.

Not ourselves.

So to the serpent, he does promise eventual defeat.

Let's come back to that.

To the woman, he says that bringing life into the world will now be a painful process, and that relationships are going to break down and deteriorate because of the sin that's been introduced into creation.

And to the man, he says, sustaining life into the world is now going to be toilsome.

And he says that the body itself will break down again because of the deterioration introduced by sin.

To Adam, God says, by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, the very ground you're going to till.

For out of it you are taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

See, we should recognize here that death has come as a consequence of disobedience, not because of God's design.

But death is not a cessation.

Death is not the cessation of existence, so much as the separation of what's of our material makeup, what makes us physical human beings and our immaterial makeup.

C.S.

Lewis describes human beings as this unique hybrid of what's physical and material and what's spiritual.

Death is not so much the cessation of the human person, so much as this unnatural separation of what's material from what's immaterial, where the material ceases to function and now the immaterial is separated from it.

This is not God's design.

It is not a release, a final release from this flesh suit that was never God's purpose.

God instead wants to glorify the body, ennoble the body, and see that body and soul be reunited eventually.

But friends, let's make no mistake here, death in Genesis eyes is not a natural part of life.

I wonder if that's why death feels wrong when we go to a funeral.

We feel it deeply, don't we?

This is wrong.

It seems irrational if it's just a natural part of life to think along those lines.

But if death was never meant to be part of the design, then maybe that's why it feels so wrong.

Death is a problem.

Death is a problem that God promises to deal with.

So he addresses the serpent.

I'm going to put enmity between you and the woman, between her offspring and your offspring.

He will bruise your head, you shall bruise his heel.

A lethal blow is going to be dealt both ways.

You're going to deal a lethal blow to this promised offspring, but this promised offspring is going to deal a lethal blow to you and will crush you finally and completely, the agent of death that you are.

I think this helps us to make sense of the verses that follow.

It's a very puzzling thing, verses 22 and 23.

God doesn't want his human creatures to live forever, so he bars them from the garden.

What's that about?

Is God just being petty?

I don't think so.

I think this is a measure of God's severe mercy.

Creation is deteriorating in front of God's eyes.

And God does not desire his human creatures to stay in this deteriorating state forever.

So he bars the gate, as it were, so that one day God in his way can bridge it again, can invite human beings back into full fellowship and life again with himself, having dealt with sin conclusively, completely, and put death to death.

How does God deal with the problem of death?

This is what should point us forward to John chapter 11.

John 11 · chapter mention

Here we are, generation after generation, living in the valley of the shadow of death, wondering what God's going to do to solve this problem completely.

And here we meet Jesus, who loves Lazarus and his family.

But Lazarus is ill and he dies.

How does Jesus respond to Lazarus' death, by the way?

Verses 33 and 35 say something like this.

When Jesus saw Mary weeping, and the Jews also who were weeping, he was, it says, deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.

Or maybe you've got a footnote that says he was indignant.

That's the ESV.

I like the ESV, and that's a fair translation of that verse.

But the risk is that we don't catch some of the depth of Jesus' feeling here.

That can sound kind of sterile.

I feel troubled in spirit when I see a sort of sad movie, I guess.

That's not how Jesus is feeling.

I like the way how the message puts it.

When Jesus saw Mary sobbing and the Jews with her sobbing, a deep anger welled up within him.

Jesus is angry.

Jesus feels it in his gut.

Have you ever felt that kind of anger?

Something is not right in the world.

This is not how it's supposed to be.

What's Jesus angry about?

I think he's angry at the reality of death.

Bear in mind, Jesus, or John, the gospel author, introduces Jesus as the word who was with God and who was God and through whom all things came into being.

Jesus is the word by which creation was spoken into existence, this good creation, human beings created in God's likeness.

And here the word who's become flesh, who has befriended Lazarus, and now sees the reality of death in an experiential way, is overwhelmed by anger at the catastrophe that sin and death and deterioration has wreaked on this good creation.

Jesus is angry.

He's far from making peace with it.

He's far from accepting it as a fact of life.

This is not part of God's design.

So John chapter 11 wants us to make no mistake.

John 11 · chapter mention

Death is not something beautiful.

It's not the solution to the suffering of life.

Jesus doesn't celebrate the fact that his friend Lazarus, who was ill, is now at peace.

I mean, suffering is not an easy thing.

But Jesus is angry at the reality of death.

Suffering leads to death.

Death is not the solution to suffering.

And friends, I think we have to be very considerate about this as Christians who live in Canada in 2023, in light of what we see as this ever-expanding program of MAID, of medical assistance in dying.

We have to be very mindful, friends.

The Ottawa Hospital on their website, on a page last updated of March 23 last year, writes that medical assistance in dying is a procedure in which a patient is given medications to intentionally and safely end their life.

A person who's 18 years or older may receive MAID when they are suffering from a serious and incurable illness, disease, or disability, or an advanced state of decline that cannot be reversed, and therefore, quote, is experiencing physical or mental suffering that is unbearable and cannot be helped in a way that is acceptable.

One MAID activity book for children writes that MAID is a means that medicine is MAD means that medicine is used to help someone with their death.

Here's a Government of Canada report last modified in January of this year.

The total number of medically assisted deaths reported in Canada since the Parliament of Canada passed federal legislation that allows eligible Canadians, Canadian adults to request MAID in 2016 is 31,664.

The number of cases of MAID in 2021 represent a growth rate of 32.4% over 2020.

Those are the last results I could find.

And all provinces continue to experience a steady year-over-year growth.

In 2021, 43% of individuals who received MAID required disability support services.

I think MAID is most frequently portrayed as the compassionate response to the suffering of life.

Especially the sort of suffering that there's very little hope of recovery from.

And that's a compelling objection.

But, friends, I think we have to be very considerate as Christians indeed.

I think we have to wrestle with the reality of death in a way that Jesus does.

Jesus does not in this moment see death as the solution to the suffering of life.

Jesus is angry at the reality of death.

He does not desire it for Lazarus.

He does not desire it for you and I.

And that is why he's willing to go to the cross, so that by his resurrection we may have everlasting life.

Friends, we talk about following Jesus with our whole lives.

We have to be considerate and careful.

And friends, I say that acknowledging full well that we probably know firsthand someone who's undergone mate.

Or if we don't, statistically, we probably will in the coming days.

So I don't mean to pontificate or posture or whatever.

I mean to say we can only follow Jesus.

I mean to say we can only deal with death in the way that the Bible invites us to, and death is not a solution, friends.

It is the problem that God is at work putting to death.

Through the cross and resurrection of Jesus, death is not a friend, it's a defeated enemy.

And it's being put to death.

That's why Paul can write in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 that, for as by a man Adam came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.

1 Corinthians 15 · chapter mention

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

This is God's program of salvation, bringing us from death into life.

So here we are, friends.

This is the gospel, by the way.

The gospel is the gospel, the good news of the resurrection.

That is the proclamation of the New Testament.

It's not something that's optional or tangential to the good news.

This is the good news.

The Lord is at work bringing life out of death through Jesus.

That is our hope and our salvation.

So the question still remains: how do we live in the valley of the shadow of death?

Jesus might have put the power of death to death through his cross and resurrection, and yet we still live in the already not yet, don't we?

We still live in the reality of death.

The answer is not denial.

In fact, Paul makes that quite clear.

Death is still at work in us, is what Paul has to say in 1 Corinthians 4.

He's describing his own ministry, but he's describing the human condition.

Death is at work in us.

But Paul says this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

As we look not to the things that are seen, but to things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Death and suffering don't always feel like light and momentary afflictions, do they?

Especially if we've journeyed with someone through the final days.

We know that they don't seem light or momentary.

But Paul wants us to see us see with eyes that stretch into eternity.

See beyond this present age.

Not that this present age doesn't matter, by the way, not that material things don't matter.

Paul's not saying that those things don't matter compared to spiritual and eternal things.

Paul is inviting us to see with eyes that see beyond just this age and into the age to come.

The age that's inaugurated with the marriage supper of the Lamb, the age in which we will share forever in God's everlasting life and love.

Look to this age, look into eternity.

We can have a glimpse.

Though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death presently, though it's at work in us, we see on the horizon, as it were, a light, a smudge of light, even in the shape of an empty tomb.

And so we walk with hope through this mortal life.

And when we grieve for a brother for a sister who's passed away in the Lord, Paul would tell us we have every right to grieve, just like Jesus does for Lazarus.

But we do not grieve as those without hope.

We grieve as those who have assurance that death has ultimately been defeated, and that one day that reality will be fully realized when Christ comes again in glory.

And friends, we also grieve for those for whom, well, we're not sure where they're at with the Lord.

What do we do then?

I want to invite us to consider the words of Revelation 15.

This is the crowd of heaven giving praise to God.

They say, Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty, just and true are your ways, O King of the nations.

God is just and true.

That's a God worth trusting.

I don't have all the answers, certainly not, and I wrestle with this myself, but I trust that God is just and true.

And so when I grieve for my friend for whom I'm not sure where their soul is at, I can pray to a just and true God and commit them to his care.

And when it comes for our time to face death, we do not lose heart.

One of my favorite quotes is Martin Luther.

He writes this about the hour of a Christian's death.

Should any thought of sin or death frighten us, let us, in opposition to this, lift up our hearts and say, Dear Death, dear sin, how is it that you are alive and terrifying me?

Do you not know that you are overcome?

Do you, Death, not know that you are quite dead?

Do you not know the one who says of you, I have overcome the world?

Yes, we walk in the valley of the shadow of death, but we do not walk without hope.

This valley has been overcome, and we know the one who has overcome it.

So we don't lose heart, because we know the resurrection of Jesus.

And when our hour comes, at the time of death, we know that we'll be received by him into glory, and we'll be with him, sharing in his everlasting life and glory.

But just as we live for the Lord and we work at living for the Lord, we discipline ourselves towards such.

Perhaps we ought to think the same way about our hour of death.

I was really struck by something I read not too long ago.

This is Annex, preeminent theologian.

He passed away maybe a year or two ago, J.I.

Packer.

He writes about how the Puritans, this uh really faithful group of Christians in centuries past, uh, prepared and experienced their own passing from this world into the next.

It's a bit of an extended quote, but I wonder if it's worth us meditating on.

Packer writes, The Puritans believed that the way to crown a life of faithful walking with Jesus was to die well.

The Puritans essentially said, It is part of your calling to prepare to die, to be ready to leave this world whenever the Lord calls you home, and to be prepared to seek the Lord's upholding in the pain of dying, and the surface-level misery that the pain is going to bring.

It is not fun to die.

The Puritans knew that.

But in the Puritan home, people died with family members present, praying and singing hymns and psalms and asking the dying person how he or she was doing in the process.

They would wait and see what the dying person would say as the Lord Jesus took this person to himself into the glory beyond this world.

Jesus would be drawing this person to himself through the veil, as they used to say.

And in this process, a person might very well, so they thought, see spiritual realities more clearly than ever before, and tell the gathered family something of what he or she saw.

So dying words among the Puritans were cherished because it was thought that they came from a specially close relation to Christ.

Whatever we make of that quote, I think we can at least make a few conclusions.

One, something sacred is happening in the hour of death, because we're being gathered to our Lord.

Two, something sacred is happening for those who are present.

Because death is not something that is experienced alone or is determined for oneself.

It's something that's shared amongst those who love us, amongst those who are present in the hour.

And three, I think it tells us that we can find comfort in the gospel.

That life is overcoming death through the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

And this is why the church has long administered what Roman Catholics call last rites, but why do Roman Catholics have a monopoly on this thing?

I don't understand.

Last rites really just refer to those final moments before death where, on behalf of the church, the pastor comes to one, ask if there's anything that needs to be reconciled between them and the Lord or between them and other persons, to put them in a right state and maybe ask for forgiveness where that needs to be asked.

Two, to minister anointing with oil.

And there's nothing magic about anointing with oil.

It's about saying to the Lord, where we're setting this person apart for your healing work, Lord.

And we're not being delusional.

We know what's most likely to happen here.

What we are saying is, Lord, there will come a day where you will restore all things.

And on that day, this our brother, this our sister, will be healed completely.

And so we're setting them aside for that purpose.

And then we administer communion.

Because here we are going from this world into the glory that's to come, into deeper communion with Christ.

And what better way could we crown this life than by partaking in the body and blood given for us on the cross and beholding Jesus with our eyes when he comes to take us home?

The time of our death is a sacred thing indeed.

Boy, I was reminded of this recently when I uh had got a call on Friday from Oak Ridge's Hospice, and they said, we have someone who's near death.

Maybe it's ours, maybe it's days, but if you could come by for a visit, we'd appreciate that.

And, you know, and so I.

In the time it took me to grab my prayer book, grab my home communion kit, and pop on a collar and drive over to Oak Ridges, there I saw the body and the family gathered in the foyer because he had already passed and he was being moved.

We never know when the hour comes.

We never know the hour that the Lord has in mind.

And so what I thought was going to be something of a last rites or something, suddenly became meeting with the family who are in this moment of profound grief.

And uh, you know, what do you do?

You ask the Lord, what am I supposed to do here?

And the words of Psalm 23 were what came to my mind.

Surely goodness and surely mercy shall follow me all my days, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

And so when I sat down with the family, that's what I shared.

And the his daughter says to me, That's exactly the words that were going through my mind as he was being wheeled out.

God is good.

Friends, that's the promise for our brother who we hadn't met leaving Oak Ridges that day.

That's a promise for you and I in Christ.

We, through his cross and resurrection, will dwell in his house forever, because death is being put to death through our Lord Jesus.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

We worship a generous God who calls us to follow him in giving willfully, cheerfully, and sacrificially.

Newsong Church's mission and ministry is 100% funded by the generous gifts of those worshiping and journeying with us.

If you'd like to offer a gift towards Newsong's ministry, please visit newsongportperry.ca slash giving for more information on how to do that.

May God bless you and keep you today and every day.