Sermon Tone Analysis

Before you begin your Bible study, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, be sure you have named your sins privately to God the Father.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

(Known, Unknown and Forgotten sins) (1Jn 1:9)

 

You will then be in fellowship with God, Filled with the Holy Spirit and ready to learn Truth from the Word of God.

 

"God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and Truth."

(John 4:24)

 

THE CHALLENGE OF PHYSICAL DEATH.

INEVITABLY, ALL OF US WILL FACE PHYSICAL DEATH.

Some of us will die painfully, some peacefully, and some honorably.

Some will fall asleep and never awaken; others will go out in a blaze of glory fighting for freedom on the battlefield.

Think of the courageous men in the United States Navy with their carrier after the battle of Midway.

Trapped in airtight compartments, they endured the remaining moments of life in darkness knowing that between them and the waves and the sky above was absolutely nothing but tons of water.

Yet they had to sit there fully aware that sooner or later, the oxygen would run out and they would die.

What would you do if you were in one of those airtight compartments, still alive but hundreds and hundreds of feet from the surface?

Would you panic?

Would you fall apart?

Nothing produces greater fear in the human race than the thought of physical death.

Satan, as the ruler of this world, (John 16:11) uses death as a lever to frighten and worry man.

(Heb 2:14-15) However, God never designed dying to be horrible or frightening for the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The omniscience of God knows precisely how long you are going to remain on earth, and when He decides to take you home, it will be at the right time, at the right place, and in the right way.

Until then, nothing can remove you from this life — no person, no circumstance, not even the devil and all the forces of evil — “...because greater is He who is in you than he who is in this world.”

(1Jn 4:4)

     God’s plan for every believer is to have a wonderful death, a time to be anticipated as the dessert of life.

Whether facing danger or enduring a prolonged, painful illness, never does the believer need to fear or worry about death.

God has assigned a specific death to each believer and He graciously supplies every need to make dying the best, the sweetest part of living.

God’s plan can be fulfilled only through the believer’s inculcation and application of the Word of God.

Only the believer with maximum Truth resident in his soul has the capacity to appreciate and experience all of the fantastic blessings and happiness of dying grace.

His death may or may not include great physical pain.

However, there will be maximum tranquility of soul so that he departs from his physical body in a state of supreme happiness.

Death for the believer with Divine Thinking in his soul; will be a walk across the high golden bridge of dying grace; from phase two into phase three.

(Eternity) Dying grace is the ultimate departure from this life.

WHY PHYSICAL DEATH?

Before we can study dying grace, we must understand exactly what death is.

The word “death” in the Scripture does not always refer to departure from life on earth.

In fact, the Bible speaks of ten kinds of death.

(Spiritual, (Rom 5:12) physical, (Php 1:21) temporal, (1Co 3:1) [Men of flesh or carnal] sexual, (Rom 4:19) the sin unto death, (1Jn 5:16) productional, (Jas 2:17) uselessness of the body of flesh, (Rom 8:10) the second death, (Rev 20:14) retroactive positional death, (Col 3:3) and experiential death, (Mark 8:34-38) to the old sin nature) For the purpose of this study we will focus on only two categories of death: Spiritual death-the separation or alienation of man from God, (Rom 3:23) and physical death-the separation of the human soul, which is the real person, from the body, which is man’s earthly tent.

(2Co 5:1-4) To understand why man does not live forever on the earth, we must go back to the origin of Spiritual death.

In the Garden, God graciously warned Adam and the women that His judgment on disobedience, or sin, would be Spiritual death.

/ “But from the tree of the knowledge of good [God's Thinking] and evil [Satan's thinking] you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.”/(Gen

2:17) cf.

(Heb 5:14)

We know that the statement “You shall surely die” does not refer to physical death because Adam and the women did not immediately die physically when they violated God’s Command.

They did, however, immediately die Spiritually; (Gen 3:7) they lost their human spirit and acquired a sin nature.”

You shall surely die” refers to Spiritual death, separation from God in time.

Adam’s newly acquired status of Spiritual death also caused all the future generations to be plunged into Spiritual death.

(Rom 5:12-14) With the exception of Jesus Christ, every person is born Spiritually dead.

(Eph 2:1)

     At the end of, (Gen 3:17) we learn from the phrase “all the days of your life” that physical death is a consequence of Spiritual death.

At some point in time each member of the human race will die physically, separation of the soul from the body so that the person no longer lives on planet earth.

The soul, however, never dies, but lives forever in Heaven, the Abyss or the Lake of Fire.

Physical death was therefore introduced as a vital issue in the angelic conflict.

Since man was created to resolve this age-old conflict by choosing for or against God’s plan, his time on earth becomes significant.

God allots each individual a specific number of days which he may choose for or against His plan.

When this time runs out physical death occurs.

/And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once [Physically] and after this comes judgment./

(Heb 9:27)

GOD PROVIDES THE SOLUTIONS

     GOD IS HOLY.

(1Sa 2:2) God’s integrity — holiness, is composed of His perfect righteousness and justice.

God’s righteousness is the Standard Principal of his integrity; His justice is the function of His integrity.

What God’s righteousness accepts, His justice blesses.

What God’s righteousness rejects, His justice judges?

Since God’s righteousness can have nothing to do with Spiritually dead mankind, His justice can only condemn him.

Yet knowing that man [Adam] would sin and fail, the love and integrity of God provided a way for man to have a relationship with Him.

Man could come to God through his grace policy.

Grace is the expression of God’s unfailing love and integrity, the policy of His unmerited favor bestowed on sinful humanity.

(Isa 30:18) Simply stated, grace is freely given and undeserved.

God does everything for man based on the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

(Eph 1:6) Grace began in eternity past with God and is the Divine initiative that offers a relationship and blessings to mankind, totally apart from human merit, human works, or any other human resources.

Mankind can do nothing to earn or deserve grace.

God’s grace plan of Salvation not only demonstrates His perfect character, but ensures Satan’s defeat in the angelic conflict.

(Gen 3:15)

     /“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”/

(John 3:16)

     On the one hand, the righteousness and justice of God necessitate both Spiritual and physical death.

On the other hand, His righteousness and justice are propitiated by the work of Christ on the cross; on our behalf.

/ He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

/(2Co 5:21) 

     God is now free to provide solutions to the greatest problem of man.

The problem of man’s Spiritual death is solved by means of his non-meritorious faith in Jesus Christ as Savior.

At the moment of Salvation, the new believer instantly receives a human spirit into which the Holy Spirit imputes eternal life making him Spiritually alive, or “born again.”

(John 3:6-7) The problem of the believer’s physical death — fear — is solved through his inculcation of Truth and advance toward Spiritual maturity where he will inevitably receive wonderful Divine blessings in dying grace.

THE DEATH OF THE UNBELIEVER

     For the unbeliever who does not possess eternal life, physical death presents a grim picture.

In, (Job 24:17) Job says, speaking of the unbeliever facing death, “For the morning is the same as the death shadow.”

(Corrected translation) The brightness of the morning means nothing to the dying unbeliever./

/He is so frightened by the thought of death that the time of day or his environment mean nothing to him; he is in a state of terror.

Elihu agreed with Job about the unbeliever facing death in, (Job 34:22) when he said, “There is no darkness nor death shadow where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves.”

(Corrected translation) There is no place where the unbeliever can hide from the REALITY of death.

When he dies, his soul goes to Hades to await the Last Judgment.

To the unbeliever death is a reminder that his time on earth is short.

(James 4:14) Even if he lives a hundred years, that is still a short time compared to eternity.

Death is also a reminder of this world’s fading glory.

Human celebrity ship or vast wealth or any supposed key to happiness which has been frantically sought after in life is destroyed by death.

Gaius Julius Caesar was a man of true greatness, a man of genius in every realm of life, but where is he today?

He “appears” to be in Hades waiting to be transferred to the lake of fire at the last judgment.

He as an unbeliever would be in Torments now and will be in torment forever.

(Matt 25:41; Luk 16:23; Rev 20:14-15) What profit to him now are his greatness and well deserved fame and glory?

None at all.

For once a person begins to die, all these things fade away — /sic transit Gloria mundi,/ “so the glory of the world passes away.”