Death, the Final Enemy

1 Cor 15

Death. We have a funny relationship with death. It’s a natural part of life. Everybody dies. Nature is based on death. Yet we fear and hate death.

Why?

It will happen to all of us, without fail. Statistically speaking: living is the most dangerous thing you can do: 100% of people who are alive, die! It is the circle of life.

It is natural, it is inevitable, but it feels unnatural, it feels like a curse, and we hate it.

But why do we die? Why do we fear death?

1. We die because we are sinners

God says through His Word, the Bible, that we die because we are sinners. Romans 6:23 : For the wages of sin is death.

Death is our just reward for being sinners. If you are a sinner, you die. Alright then, I’ll just stop being a sinner, I’ll clean up my act, wash my face, brush my teeth, put on my Sunday best, and be nice.

That’s what many of us think, isn’t it, when we come face to face with the reality of death. And the problem of sin. But we have got it totally wrong. “Being a good person” – that’s not Christianity. That’s humanism or Hinduism or even Islam. Humanism: Act well, and then you will live a good life and live on in people’s hearts; Hinduism: act well and then you will be reincarnated higher up the spiritual chain; Islam: act well and follow the Five Pillars and then God will have mercy on you. You see, none of those work because the problem is not sins – what we do; but sin – what we are. We need to be fundamentally changed from the inside out. And that’s what Christianity is about. You see, if you get the problem wrong, you’ll get the solution wrong. So let’s stop here and ask “What is sin?” Because all of us will have very different ideas of what sin is. But what does God say sin is?

Sin is not naughtiness, or like the adverts like to use it “oh, that’s sinful”. Sin is not primarily what we do or say or think, either. Those are sins: wrong behaviour, wrong thought, wrong words – but they themselves are not the root cause. The root cause is sin: the fundamental distance between us and God. It is a broken relationship. It is a rebellion against our creator. We have taken God’s moral laws and broken them into pieces. We have covered ourselves in shame by our thoughts, words and actions.

To illustrate: here we are, here is God, and here is the gulf of sin, cutting us off from him. There is life, eternal life. Here is death, eternal death.

Now you might not think you’re a sinner. You might be a very good person. I know some of you, and I know that you are very good people. Most Norwegians are.

But that’s not sin. Sin is that state of our heart, your inner being, towards God. Jesus Christ summed up all of God’s law like this “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind”. Oh dear. Sin is not naughtiness. It is our relationship to God. It is our attitude to God.

There were three men who got married. The first man beat his wife, wasted their money, and never gave her anything. The second man tried to give his wife a good home and generally provided what she needed – but he totally ignored her. He never even spoke to her. The third man loved to make grand romantic gestures for his wife. He would do all the right things – but he never once asked her what she wanted or needed – all the romantic gestures were for his sake, not hers. None of the men actually loved their wives. None of the men were good husbands.

And that’s kind of like how we are towards God. None of us want to listen to God. We all want to do things our way. Some of us are the first husband: we rant and rave and trash our lives. We’re the “bad” ones, the ones we see on the news.
Many of us are like the second husband: we kind of muddle along doing the best we can, trying to do what is right and making excuses for ourselves when we get it wrong (I was tired, I had a headache, that person was so annoying) – but we totally ignore God. And some of us are like the third husband: the religious people who try to win God over by their actions, by performing good works.

But none of us are listening to God. We’re all doing things our way. Even the religious people are insulting God because they’re not listening to him. He says you cannot please me with good works, you must humble yourself and come through my Son – and they ignore him and try to impress him with good works.

Outright evil, doing our best, pious religion. All useless.

How do we know that none of these ways of living work? Because we all die. Death shows us that we are sinners. It reveals that none of our little schemes to beat God or please God actually work. And that is why we fear and hate death. We don’t even want to talk about death because it pulls the wool off our eyes and makes us face reality. Nothing I do is good enough. I cannot be right with God. I will die. And I will die forever.

Death is our enemy, and we cannot defeat it. We have tried. And we have failed.

One day I will die. One day you will die. And the verdict stamped on our life is “sinner”. On this side of the canyon.

But that is why it is so important to face up to the reality of death. No one achieved anything by hiding their head in the sand and pretending there is no problem. If you’re standing in the street and the garbage truck comes around the corner, closing your eyes and saying there is no truck, lalala, I won’t think about the truck, lalaaa, let me distract myself with thoughts of pleasure: ah a nice hike in the mountain- urk!

So well done for being brave enough to come this morning. It takes great courage to face up to your fears. And for many of you it took great courage to come to a church in case we were a bunch of wierdos... J

So, the problem we’ve got is death. And death is caused by sin. So if we can deal with sin, we deal with death. Beat sin and we beat death. But we already know that sin is a state of being. We are sinners – we can’t suddenly turn that off. It’s like a cat wanting to become a dog. We are sinners. It is our nature. And so we will die.

So how can we beat death? Well, like every good adventure story we need someone to swoop in at the right time and rescue us. Indiana Jones with his whip. Tarzan swinging in. Your “one true love” appearing in a coffee shop at just the right time. We need a rescuer, and that rescuer is Jesus Christ.

We die because we are sinners - but

2. Christ died for our sins and so defeated death

Ok. V3 says I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said.

Hooray. All done. Right, give your life to Christ, and then let’s have tea and cake.

Woah, woah, woah, you might say – not so fast. I’m not just going to leap in and change my whole life to follow this Jesus fellow! What if it’s a pile of nonsense? I mean, even the guy who wrote this thing here says in v17 “And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins. 18 In that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost! 19 And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world.”

And that’s absolutely right. There is no room for blind faith when we are dealing with matters of life and death. There is no room for blind faith in “science” just as there is no room to have blind faith in “God” or “Jesus”. To live for Jesus, to obey Jesus, to give your whole life over to him if he did not rise from the dead – well that’s foolishness indeed. Because if he did not rise from the dead then nothing he said was true and then we’re a bunch of idiots wasting our time here in church! That’s why I really cannot understand people who don’t believe in the resurrection but still want to call themselves Christians. Why would you do that? Your life is based on what you believe to be a lie. It’s utterly bizarre. Worse still are those who are ministers yet do not believe. Why would you give your whole career over to something you don’t believe in? As it says here in v19 if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world!

And pity them I do. Because they do not know Jesus, and therefore they are still dead in their sins, and all their religion counts for nothing. Because they’re depending on themselves, on their own performance – instead of what Christ has done. You see – back to this illustration: only Christ and his death on the cross can deal with sins and therefore bridge the gap. Only Christ. Nothing else. All other religions, all our good works, fall short. And what happens when the rope is too short to get to the other side? You fall.

I pity them because they are building a bridge that will fall, trusting themselves instead of the completed, secure, perfect work of Christ. I mean why try and rebuild the bridge when he’s already done it?

For if they looked into the evidence for the resurrection, their lives would be transformed from dead religion to a living relationship.

Evidence. Particularly 2 sources of evidence, and you can see them there in v3-8: the scriptures and eyewitnesses. 3 I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. 4 He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said. 5 He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve. 6 After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7 Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him

The Scriptures he’s talking about are the prophets who prophesied what the Christ would do (just by the way, Christ isn’t Jesus’ surname, but his title. It means rescuer, anointed one, or King and is the same word as Messiah).
There are many prophecies, between 100 and 300, depending on how you count them, and some are extremely specific. Psalm 22, for example, has by itself 11 specific prophecies that were fulfilled when Jesus was crucified. The Psalm was written by King David of Israel about 1000 years before Jesus was born. He wrote it because he was under such extreme pressure from his enemies that he felt like he was going to die – but the way he described what he was going through was so strange. People thought nothing of it until Jesus’ death on the cross - and they realised that this Psalm written 1000 years previously described exactly what happened to Jesus on the cross. 11 different events which happened exactly as written. And that’s just one of many prophecies. Too many to just be coincidence or someone trying to twist the facts to make them fit. But don’t just take my word for it, go read it yourself. Investigate. People have battered away at the resurrection since the day it happened – and after two thousand years of battering the evidence still holds up. So fulfilment of prophecies is one huge body of evidence.

The other big piece of evidence is the eyewitnesses – those people who saw Jesus die, then saw him raised to life again. Many of them literally did not believe their eyes. I mean, would you? Just like you and I, they were not gullible people, and they knew that when someone dies they stay dead. But there was Jesus standing in front of them. He was not a ghost – he was flesh and blood. He ate with them, talked with them, touched them. It was Jesus since he bore the wounds of his crucifixion: scars on his hands and feet where the nails were driven in, a gash in his side where the sword pierced him through to his heart. They could not find any other way to explain it away. It really was true. Jesus has defeated death. Our great enemy has been conquered. He really was dead. And now he really is alive again.

And we, too, have the same evidence. We can examine the prophecies and compare them to the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We can read the eye-witness accounts in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John of what Jesus did and said and how he rose from the dead. And we can see how his follower’s lives were changed, and see how they gave their lives to tell others about the good news: death is defeated. Christ has won!

But what if they were lying – making up this story? Well, that could be a possibility except there was no upside, no advantage for them. I mean, we lie only if it is for our own good. We never tell a lie to put ourselves in a worse position. And proclaiming the gospel got them nothing except hardship, suffering, persecution and a brutal death. There was no reason for them to tell this story – no power, no riches, no fame, no glory – except for the fact that it was true. Jesus defeated death. And so the way they lived their lives after the resurrection showed they believed it to be true. They were totally unafraid, even willing to die brutal deaths in order to get the truth out. Our sins are dealt with. Death is defeated. Christ has won.

We die because we are sinners – but Christ has dealt with our sins and so defeated death. And so

3. If we belong to Jesus, we do not fear death!

51 But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed! 52 It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed. 53 For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies. 54 Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled: “Death is swallowed up in victory. 55 O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. 57 But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.

When we die we sleep until we are raised to life again on the last day, judgement day. And our bodies will be made new, ready for the new creation, the perfect world – no sin, no pain, no mourning, no death – only life. So through Christ we can say “Where O death, is your victory”. Death is defeated. Death has lost. We have been given the victory over death because on the cross Jesus took our sins upon himself. There he swapped places with us – he took our sin, and gave us his perfection.

Let me illustrate: if this Bible was my sin, this is me, and the light is God – sin blocks my relationship with him. I cannot get to God. This is what Jesus does – he takes my sin upon himself – and now I am in the light while he goes through the darkness of death for me.

In Christ, death is defeated. And we do not fear death!
But be warned: that is only for those who belong to Jesus. If you are His, if you follow Him, if He is your Lord and Saviour and all of your life belongs to Him – then do not fear death. You have eternal life, won for you by Him on the cross, your sins have been wiped away, He has swapped places with you.

But if you do not belong to Jesus, if you have never come before him and said please save me, please let me follow you, please take all of me, all my sin, and give me eternal life, not because I deserve it but because of your great mercy. If you have not done that.... then fear death. Fear it! For death is a terrible thing, and you will face it alone.

There are only two ways to live. Fear death, or come to Christ.