Realities Indeed

The gospel minister must help his people live well. But more importantly, he must prepare his people to die well. Those of us who are young and healthy can scarcely imagine what comfort the gospel of Jesus Christ provides for dear saints in their dying days.
John Newton tells a story of visiting a young woman who died too soon from “a lingering consumption.” She was wise, but plain. She could read her Bible, but had read little else. Newton supposes she never traveled more than twelve miles from home. A few days before her death, Newton prayed with her and “thanked the Lord that he gave her now to see that she had not followed cunningly-devised fables.” At this last remark the woman repeated Newton’s words and said, “No, not cunningly-devised fables; these are realities indeed.” Then she fixed her eyes steadfastly upon her pastor and reminded him of his weighty vocation.

Sir, you are highly favoured in being called to preach the gospel. I have often heard you with pleasure; but give me leave to tell you, that I now see all you have said, or can say, is comparatively but little. Nor, till you come into my situation, and have death and eternity in full view, will it be possible for you to conceive the vast weight and importance of the truths you declare. Oh! Sir, it is a serious thing to die; no words can express what is needful to support the soul in the solemnity of a dying hour.

Fellow preachers, our people are asking for living bread tomorrow. Do not give them a self-help stone. Our people may not know the weight of which we speak until they come to their end. And at that moment they will be infinitely glad they received ballast instead of blather.
Kevin DeYoung

The Way

I conducted  a funeral service today and had an opportunity to proclaim the gospel to a number of people. Jesus told his disciples that he was going to his Father's house to prepare a place for them so they could be with him where he was. And that one day he would come back for them. Thomas struggled to believe and said: "We don't know where you are going and we don't know the way." Jesus answered him: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
Jesus is the way. The way is a path from one point to another. Jesus is the way from man's total ruin in sin to the Father. Many people live in confusion of what happens after you die, some don't believe there is an afterlife. But if you believe in Jesus and trust in him you will know the way to the Father's house. There is great peace when you know where you're going after you die. Heaven is a real place as real as any place you know, when someone dies who has trusted in Christ to save them from their sins you know exactly where they are because you know where they went. There are many roads presented as a way to God. The problem with all these roads is that they will never take you to the Father's house. There is only one way and that way is the person of Jesus Christ.

The Last Enemy

The good news in all of this is that "the last enemy is death." This means that Jesus accomplished everything in his mission on earth for our complete redemption and glorification. "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law." That is the bad news. "But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 15:56). Triumph at last outruns, outspends, outstrips tragedy. But it does so at a painful cost.
Death is not a portal to life. Death is not a benign friend, but a dreaded foe. It is not a natural part of life, but the most unnatural part of life you could imagine. But in his death and Resurrection, Jesus crushed the serpent's head, vanquishing the "last enemy" of every believer. This last enemy will one day be overcome for believers in the final resurrection of the dead, but that is because it has already objectively been vanquished in the Resurrection of our Living Head. Look at him and see what the whole harvest will be like in the end! In Christ, the end has already begun. The Head will not live without his body. The shape of the future is already present.
Lazarus was raised, but he died. His body thus raised for a time continued where it left off in its surrender to decay and death. One day, mourners would gather again at Lazarus' tomb, but this time with no expectation of resurrection until the last day. And yet, precisely because of that confidence, precisely because Lazarus' next funeral occurred this side of Easter, they would not mourn that day as those with no hope. After all, word would have reached them by then-perhaps some of them had even been witnesses-of the greater Resurrection of Jesus himself, which would take a stand against death on its own territory, so that those united to him by faith will not remain dead. Their bodies will be raised to worship in God's renewed sanctuary.
Death is still an enemy, not a friend, but it is "the last enemy," and it is already defeated so that now death is not God's judgment upon us for our sin but the temporal effects of our participation in Adam's guilt. And because the guilt and judgment are removed, we can both cry out with our Lord in troubled anger at death and yet also sing with the Apostle, "Where O death is your sting? Where O hell is your victory?" (1 Cor. 15:54-55). What we need again is a church that can sing the blue note in a way that faces the real world honestly and truthfully, recognizing the tragic aspect of life as even more tragic than any nihilist could imagine, while knowing that the one who raised Lazarus is now raised to the right hand of his Father, until all enemies-including death, lie in the rubble beneath his feet.
by Michael Horton

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