There is an old axiom that says that there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. But when you think about it….this familiar cliche’ is not totally accurate. With the right deductions and a good accountant, many people have managed to avoid paying any taxes at all. But everyone will face the ultimate certainty that we all die. Death is an unavoidable reality for all people…as it says in Ecclesiastes 7:2 “death is the destiny of every man.” During World War II C. S. Lewis pointed out that even war does not increase death: death is total in every generation. As George Bernard Shaw once put it, “The statistics on death are quite impressive. One out of one people die.”
But you know, in spite of the certainty of death, our culture refuses to accept it’s reality. Billy Graham once said that we live in a “death-denying” society. We avoid dealing with the certainty of death any way we can. Americans spend billions of dollars every year on creams and lotions that promise to slow the aging process and make the user look younger. People work out regularly in an effort to keep healthy and prolong life. Joggers line our roads, often before dawn….and memberships at health clubs are at an all time high! Fiber is an increasingly prevalent part of people’s diets since physicians tell us of its ability to reduce the risk of cancer. Health food stores stock their shelves with every known vitamin and mineral supplement-all promising to play an important part in keeping us young.
But you know the irreversible fact is that no matter what your diet; no matter how much you exercise; no matter how many vitamins or health foods you eat; no matter how low your cholesterol; you and I will still die — someday, some way. Biologists teach that in all living organisms there exists two principles: anabolism – the building of protoplasm, and catabolism – the breakdown of protoplasm. When the former exceeds the latter, there is growth. When the two are held in balance, there is stabilization. But when catabolism begins to occur at the faster rate — and it always does eventually — there is gradual disintegration and death.
So death is not a theological “Frankenstein” created by revival preachers to scare people into walking the aisle. Death is a fact. It is a fact more unpleasant than life, but a fact which is just as certain as life. You may add a year or even a decade or two to your life by eating right and exercising enough but in the end death will conquer you as it has every person who has ever lived. Death IS a part of life.
And since it is, I have felt led to spend some serious sermon time not avoiding this subject but dealing with it directly.
So for the next three Sundays we will be doing just that…..talking about death. I hope that won’t “kill” our attendance! Next week we’ll focus on answering the question, “What happens when I die?” And the following week — which is the Sunday we set aside to focus on the Sanctity of Human Life — I want us to study together what God’s word has to say about euthanasia….a time when death is NOT gain. But today I want to start things off by looking at two instances when death IS gain….when death is actually an accomplishment. When you come right down to it, it could be very difficult for us to think of DEATH as being accomplishing anything. Anyone who has seen death at CLOSE HAND…anyone who has ever stood and WEPT HIS HEART OUT over an open grave will wonder how you could ever-by any stretch of imagination — view death as an accomplishment. et there are two times in scripture that death IS pictured in this way. Take your Bibles and turn to Luke 9:28-31 and lets read of the first one. To give you the context….Jesus has heard Peter’s bold affirmation that Jesus is the Messiah and in His response to Peter has taught the disciples what it means to follow Him.
28 – About eight days after Jesus said this, He took Peter, John, and James with Him and went up onto a mountain to pray.
29 – As He was praying, the appearance of His face changed, and His clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.
30 – Two men, Moses and Elijah;
31 – appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about His departure, which He was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.
I want us to note how the New American Standard and other versions translate verse 31. They say that Moses and Elijah and Jesus were, ” ….speaking of His death which He was about to ACCOMPLISH at Jerusalem.”
1. So the first time that scripture defines death as an accomplishment is when Jesus DIED on calvary’s cross.
Now, think about it….why was Jesus’ death an accomplishment when the deaths of other individuals is not? What is different about His death? Well, the manner of His death was certainly not unique. Jesus was not the first man to die on a cross….nor was He the last. Read the history books and you will discover how very common crucifixions were. Thousands and thousands of such executions came before Jesus’ and thousands and thousands came after. It is almost certain that the particular cross used to kill Jesus had been stained with the blood of a score of men before Jesus shed His own precious blood there. And doubtless it was used for other executions afterwards. It would have been unthinkable to use a perfectly good cross only once and then throw it away. Why then is Jesus’ death a unique accomplishment? Well, Webster’s dictionary tells us that the word “accomplish” means “to bring something to a successful finish” or “to effect that which one has set out to do.”
So, you see, Jesus’ death on the cross was an accomplishment because it was not an accident. Before the foundation of the world God foresaw the fact that man would sin — and in His grace, He made provision for this. As we said a couple of weeks ago, the baby Jesus was born to die….die for the sins of all mankind.
So Jesus’ life was not so much “taken” as it was “given.” In the 10th chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus said, “I lay down My life for the sheep.
No man takes it from Me but I lay it down of my own accord.”
So Jesus’ death was an accomplishment because dying was what He “had set out to do.” You know, the Bible has always spoken of sin as the cause of death. The Genesis account teaches that man was created to have eternal life but lost this privilege due to disobedience.
So, since Adam, SIN has continued to produce death. Romans 5:12 says, “…sin entered the world through one man and death through sin and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned…” But JESUS’ death on the cross changed all this. Jesus’ voluntary giving of Himself…was the death to end all death. His death was vicarious in nature. Through God’s great heart of love, Jesus died for all men.
History records that during the Civil War, many acts of violence were committed by both the armies of the north and the south. Once such act occurred in October of 1862 in the town of Palmyra, Missouri. According to W. E. Sutterfield, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Palmyra, the town was under military law at the time….occupied by one of the armies involved in this conflict. The commander of the army ordered ten men shot in reprisal for the work of an informer in the town who leaked information to the enemy. Several men were being detained in Palmyra jail as prisoners of war at that time, and ten were selected from among them. One of the number was William T. Humphrey, the father of several children. His wife pleaded for his release because of the children and her poor physical condition. Because of this, the commanding officer struck Humphrey’s name from the list and chose the name of Hiram Smith, a young man without a family. Hiram agreed to take the place of Humphrey, stating that perhaps it was better for a single man to die than a man with a family. The ten men were shot on October 17, 1862 in what has come to be known as the “Palmyra massacre.” At the Mount Pleasant Church cemetery, there is a stone erected at the grave of Hiram Smith by G. W. Humphrey, the son of the reprieved man. It reads: “This monument is dedicated to the memory of HIRAM SMITH, the hero who sleeps beneath the sod here, who was shot at Palmyra, October 17, 1862 as a substitute for William T. Humphrey, my father.” Hiram died in the place of one man and this WAS a noble thing for him to do….but Jesus died in the place of ALL men. He did not die to save one…or a few…but ALL who will believe. In his epistle John reminds us that Jesus Christ, “is the propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for the sins of the whole world!” The benefits of the death of Christ reach back into the dawn of creation and make possible salvation for all who lived before Christ came to earth…and it reaches onward to the end of time. There will never be another Calvary, for there will never be a need for another. Since that day on which He died, no one has had to experience death if they did not want to. Death is no longer mandatory. The death of Jesus Christ was the last death that ever had to occur. I Corinthians 15:21 says, “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”
So, death is a thing of the past for any person wise enough to give himself or herself to Christ. In John 5:24 Jesus said, “Whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life…” Because of the cross, death is re-defined….it is no longer something to be feared. In Jesus Christ we know that death is the end of nothing except our temporary decaying bodies. In I Corinthians 15:54-55, Paul boldly proclaimed that because of Jesus’ death on the cross, “Death and the grave are swallowed up in victory. Death has lost it’s sting!” So, death is an impossible threat to the person who discovers and embraces the life which emanates from the cross. Jack Odell said, “Salvation is moving from living death to deathless life.”
So surely you will agree with me that Jesus’ death on the cross was an accomplishment.
It brought to a successful finish what God in Christ had set out to do. And periodically we gather around this communion table to celebrate that accomplishment. As we do I hope you will join us.
Even if you are not a member of this church, if you are a Christian, we invite you to celebrate Jesus’ accomplishment with us in this way. If you are His, this is Yours. THE ORDINANCE OF COMMUNIONBut you know there is one other time when scripture describes death as an accomplishment. And it is this.
2. Death may be said to be an “accomplishment” when you and I as individuals come to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith, and in the experience of conversion DIE TO OURSELVES AND BECOME TRULY ALIVE UNTO GOD.
You see, our purpose as disciples is to let Christ do His will through us.
So, it is only by dying to self will that we accomplish what we were intended to accomplish as followers of Jesus Christ. This past Wednesday I had the privilege of talking with John Michael St. Angelo. He wanted to meet with me to tell me that he had become a Christian. And as we talked, I asked him what he thought it meant to be a Christian. And with a big smile on his little face, he very confidently told me, “It means that you let Jesus be the boss of your life.” And you know what? John Michael was right. Our purpose…our intended function as believers….is to let Christ live through us and accomplish His purposes through us…to the point that we can say with Paul, “for me to live is for Christ to live.” We are containers for Jesus to fill with His presence and power. In II Corinthians 4:7 ff it says, “We have this treasure in jars of clay that show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us…..we always carry around in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that His life may be revealed in our mortal body.
So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you also.”
You know the Apostle Paul was a great Christian….but it didn’t just happen. He became a great Christian because he committed to DIE to SELF and become ALIVE unto God. As he put it in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Paul learned that life, in its abundance and eternal power, had only come to him when he had put to death his own ego, ambition, and will. The old Paul was on the cross. The new Paul discovered how trivial were the desires for petty human recognition, the constant haggling for the chief seats in the halls of men, and all the other things that once seemed so primary and basic to him. You see, Paul discovered the secret of real life — meaningful life — is life that is a partnership between God and man. I think Paul would tell us that He only really began to live when he died to his self-will and adjusted his life to conform to the will of God.
In my study for the Christmas sermon series I came across a monologue written by Frederick Buechner. The monologue is given by one of those wise men who traveled from far off Persia to bring gifts to the baby Jesus. Listen to this excerpt. Reporting on his experience that first Christmas, the wise man says….
“I will tell you two terrible things. What we saw on the face of the newborn child was His death. A fool could have seen it as well. It sat on His head like a crown, this death that He would die. And we saw, as sure as the earth beneath our feet, that to bow in submission before Him would be to share that death. And now brothers and sisters, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without Him is the real death, that to die with Him is the only life?”
Think about that last phrase…”To live without Him is the real death. To die with Him is the only life.” This wise man discovered a paradox — the Christian life comes out of death. To live without Jesus is the real death. To die to self so that He can live through us is the only real life.
The rejection of Christ is the refusal to live life with His forgiveness and sovereign authority which results in living death.
So, from a spiritual perspective, all people are “the walking dead” apart from Jesus Christ. To die with Jesus is the only life. I am saying that just as the magi’s sacrificial journey of wisdom was taken at great cost, to follow Jesus will cost us everything.
The choice to surrender to His authority, and experience the forgiveness of our sins and the removal of our guilt requires the willingness to die to arrogance, hatred, fear, self-centeredness, apathy, indifference, and any kind of self-confidence.
So scripture gives us two instances when death is an accomplishment….when Christ died for us and when we die to self. As we begin a new year I believe that God’s will involves many challenges for this church family. Many decisions will be made about building and the future and we can only rise to this challenge if we commit to die to self and adjust our lives to match the will of God for this body. I hope that this morning will lead to a church-wide commitment to dying to self-will this year. But, what about you as an individual this morning? First let me ask you Christians, have you really begun to live? Is there some area of your life that you need to crucify so that God can take over? Is there a decision God is calling you to make? And if you are here and are not a Christian then I hope you will claim Christ as your Savior and Lord today…..for, in so doing, you will leave here this morning with your death sentence commuted.