Death Is Coming

TITLE: Death Is Coming
DATE: November 1, 2018
TEXT: 1 Corinthians 15:57 (ESV) 57  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The father was a member of my church. To the best of my knowledge the mother had no faith in anyone or anything. At the time I was a young minister and the father had called me to the hospital where he had been told his son’s life could end “any minute.”
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Standing with the family, I chose my words carefully. I said, “Even though the Doctors say they are helpless, there is still hope. After your son goes home with his Savior, the sickness and sufferings of his last two years will be at an end. He’ll be well, and he’ll be happy, forever, in heaven. When I finished, I could see the father agreed. The mother was a different matter. Twice she said, “If I could only believe that.”

Then, she added, “But I don't believe that. When my son dies, I will cover him with dirt and spend the rest of my life trying to forget I ever had him.” Please know, this was a loving mother… but she was a mother without faith and that meant she was without hope.

Although I have forgotten many things over the decades, that conversation remains forever fresh.

• It stays fresh because that mother gave voice to the deepest doubts and darkest fears of the hopeless; the hundreds of millions of sad and suffering souls who desperately need to hear, who long to believe there is something more, something better beyond the grave’s darkness.
• It stays fresh because, as I look back on that day, like other pastors before me and many who will come after, I’ve agonized on what might have been said that would have made a change in that mother who was mourning as one who had no expectations.

It is a question which, quite understandably, comes to the fore on All Saints Day, the day when the church stops to remember the cloud of witnesses, the multitudes of our brothers and sisters who have died with faith in the forgiveness and salvation which has been given to them by their crucified and living Lord.

Now if you can be counted among the few who have never had to make funeral arrangements or ever had to walk away from a new grave, count yourself blessed. Make the most of the time you have with your loved ones. Mend the broken fences, calm the hurting hearts, To be among all your loved ones is a wonderful gift from the Lord. It is a gift which will not last forever.

You see, death is coming and its arrival will transform your life. Death will come and it will bring, in varying proportions, a mixture of sadness and sorrow, loneliness and relief, emptiness, anger, joy and loss. It will not arrive at a time of your private choosing or personnel convenience. It will not select its victims according to logic, or love, or fairness. All that can be said with certainty is this: death is coming.

The great question is: will you be a mourner with hope or will you be a mourner without hope?

The answer to that question is a simple one: if you are waiting alone when death comes, it will be a dark day of despair. On the other hand, if the crucified and risen Redeemer is with you, death will be transformed into the means by which you enter the biggest, the best, the only unending family reunion this universe will ever produce.
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THE PRAYER: Dear Lord, because of sin, death is coming come for me, my family, for everyone. Accept my thanks that Jesus has already come to save me, my family, everyone. Grant that others who are presently lost, may see the Savior’s suffering, His sacrifice, and, by the Holy Spirit’s power, embrace the victory the Christ has won. This I pray in the Savior’s Name. Amen.