Are You Afraid Of Death?

Yeah, we don't have much time left here. It's Communion Sunday. So it's a big portion of scripture that we will have to rush through, unfortunately. But it's a very popular, famous, beloved passage of the Bible. And you probably read through this often in your life.

As I thought about the title for the sermon, I think the summary of the content of this passage could be like the hope and assurance of present and even greater future glory in the midst of suffering and death. It's kind of my. In my preparation, my summary of the main content and the main message. But I really wanted to pick something that grips our heart immediately. So I put up this question.

Are you afraid of death? Because that's what it's about in the end. What about death and what's coming next? After this decisive moment, death is waiting for us. It's going to be a decisive moment with ultimate significance.

And I found a kind of a creepy painting that expresses this idea that has been with us for a long time. In humanity. There's this person, death, coming, showing up at some point. There's this frail old guy waiting for death. And then death will come and take him out of this life on earth.

And this was very much present for centuries as people witnessed the death of people in the neighborhood. The family, maybe they were also laid down in the living room. People would stop by and remember that person. And he had a sense, okay, life has an expiration date. Each one of us has an expiration date.

Our human bodies, we try to ignore this fact as much as possible. In our culture, death is happening not openly, publicly anymore. It's happening mainly behind closed doors in hospitals and hospices.

What death is this ultimate, decisive moment? There will no turning back after that moment of death. But the question is, then, what comes next? What comes after this moment when our human bodies have expired and we finish this life on Earth? C.S.

lewis preached a famous sermon in. During the war in 1942. And you probably, some of you have read it. The Weight of Glory. It's also a publication, but he actually preached a sermon here in Oxford at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin.

I found this very interesting how he. Yes, kind of describing this situation. He's talking about the face of God here in this passage. In the end, he says that face of God, which is the delight or the terror of the universe, must be turned upon each of us, either with one expression or with the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised. And then Lewis continues.

I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God, by God himself. It is not how God thinks of us, is not only more important, but infinitely more important. That's the question for all of us here in this room. What does God think of me?

If you died today, how would his face turn upon you? Would you say that you are unsure, that you are still working on this, to have more hope, more assurance?

Here in our passage, so beautifully, the word of God describes the hope that the children of God have that they don't have to be afraid of death. It's actually like a door passing through into the anticipated glory that is waiting for God's children, those who have been adopted as his children based on their faith in Jesus and in the gospel. So our passage today, you could say, is a conclusion of everything that the apostle has said in Romans so far from the beginning. When he talked about the Gospel.

Remember, he talked about the wrath of God that is above humanity, the wrath of God. He. He described in great detail that there's no one with an excuse before a holy God. There's objective guilt that the judge of the universe has to deal with is out there. You and I, we have guilt, objective guilt, sin, a transgression of a holy divine law.

God as the judge, has to deal with this guilt. In chapter three, Paul talks about the justification of all those who believe in the sacrifice of Christ, the Messiah that God considers us to be spotless, righteous, washed clean and the blood of the Lamb.

He talks about the new creation. We're not under the old man Adam anymore. We are now in Christ. We died with him and we have been raised with him. There's the new man in Christ.

He then talks about this ongoing battle and sanctification, how. How we wrestle with the sinful old nature with our flesh, how we cry out, maybe a wretched man that I am. Yeah, still, I still feel the same impulses, same tendencies, same temptations. And that's a lifelong battle as we follow Jesus. But then this affirmation, there's now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

And this passage is kind of a conclusion of everything he has said. The. The kind of the doctrinal foundation he has laid comes now to a conclusion when he talks about this hope that we have and this absolute assurance that God will bring us through and we will only pass through this life and then reach ultimate glory with God. Let's pray. God, we thank you for this word that is inspired by your Holy Spirit.

Given to us, to comfort us, to give us really ultimate hope and assurance. Even in the midst of sufferings, of sometimes doubts, of temptations. We experience this battle, each one of us, Lord. But you want us to have absolute comfort and assurance. So speak to us today, each.

To each one of us, in a way, we need it to reach deeper levels of trust, hope and assurance in your promises, Lord. Amen.

There was a transitional verse in our last passage at the end of chapter of chapter eight. And this passage, verse 17, he talked about this life as a Christian. We are being led by the Holy Spirit. We overcome the tendencies of the flesh. We live victoriously in the power of the Holy Spirit.

But then he suddenly ends with the idea of suffering. That's actually a transition into what he's saying now when he talks about suffering in creation, but also about the hope. Verse 17 in Romans 8 talks about that we are children and even heirs of God, fellow heirs with Christ. And he adds here, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. Yeah, this comes as a package.

That's what we find always in the New Testament, that as followers of Christ, we follow him in the glorious way, but also in the suffering. Jesus said, the servant is not greater than the master. If I met resistance and rejection and suffering and all this was finally killed, then don't expect you to be treated better than I was treated.

You can't have the glory without the suffering. And that's the divine biblical principle that we have to really internalize. Realize that's a fact. That's how it's going to be. It comes as a package.

We have to go through suffering in this life before we reach ultimate glory. The Apostle Paul, when they visited churches again, traveling back on their missionary journey, he just wanted to put this in people's minds, that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. Yeah. Don't be shocked. Don't be surprised.

Let this not be unsettling to you. This will happen. You must go through suffering. It's the battle with the flesh that we talked about in Romans 7. It's the.

Yeah, the exposure to a hostile world of sin and temptation, persecution, maybe even torture for some, just this entire corruption of this worldly system around us.

Paul talks about this present time. It's a suffering in the present time. Probably referring to the time from the preaching of the gospel onwards, since the message of the gospel went forth. We will always live in this situation of suffering until Jesus will just come back and then bring the. The final arrival of his kingdom.

So the creation waits with eager longing, it says, for the revealing of the sons of God. The Greek word he actually means like a stretching of the neck, just an earnest expectancy, a longing to see something approaching in the far distance. Or so that's how we should wait, with eager longing for the. For the revelation of the sons of God. We just adopted two dogs and we had a dog trainer at home for an hour or so.

He was just sitting there with us at the living room table, not saying anything to the dogs, not looking at the dogs. But. But then he took a treat. And then he was showing them this treat, and he was lifting up the treat. As he was moving the treat, their necks were going up like this.

And their whole body was going up following the treat. Until he then said, sit. And then in a few minutes, actually, he taught them how to sit down. It was really amazing experience, but that's the idea behind it. As Christian, we should.

Our necks should be lifted up. We should move toward the ultimate destiny, the glory that is coming in Christ when he will return. So it goes beyond the Christian. Here it says all creation. Actually the whole creation waits eagerly longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

But then Paul continues in verse 20 here. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. And we talked about the curse of that is on mankind in chapter five in Adam, the rebellion against God, the transgression of the law. And we are now in a fallen state, rebels in a state of being enemies of God with a sinful nature that leads to sin. That was Genesis 3:19.

You are dust, and to dust shall you return. Consequence of the fall. Consequence that sin entered this world. And there was a broken relationship between God and humanity from this point on. And that's why we die, why we have an expiration date.

I just recently came across an article. Maybe you can show the next picture here. Just about the human cell and why people actually die.

There are about more than 30 trillion cells in our human body. That's how they counted them, calculated them.

Immense complexity. It's a one with 12 zeros behind it. And this author said, even when you die, all the chemicals are still there. But what's lacking is this kind of faculty to coordinate all these things. So the body just.

You cannot bring someone back from this point of death. Everything is falling apart. It's something mysterious actually happening, how everything is coordinated in this body, these trillions of cells. Also recently heard that. Let's think about the human Brain, the weight of a brain, the size of a brain.

It's the most complex thing in the entire solar system. Your brain. Yeah. And at some point it's giving up. But what a capacity to control all this body, to coordinate all these functions every second of your lifetime.

But at some point it's going to fail. And that's the point of death. With what complexity and how thankful we should be that God is sustaining us at this very moment. And this. How delicate the situation, how fragile our life actually is.

The consequence of death is futility. Or maybe in another picture of the Old Testament, vanity. Yeah. This famous word in Ecclesiastes, vanity of vanity. Says the preacher, all is vanity.

We're just going through this book as a community group, and it's the sky. The only reference point for this guy, this wise man, is the life here on earth, or what he says, the life under the sun. He thinks of God as someone who does what he wants to do. You don't get the impression that he loves God or that he knows something about the love of God for him. So it's all vanity.

You invest yourself in something, you don't find ultimate meaning. You don't find contentment, satisfaction. It describes as futility the vanity of this life here on earth. Because of our broken relationship with God, we have lost the meaning of life. And we know everything is moving to the water, same end.

We will all die, expire. So we are in this bondage to corruption. That's why we need this redemption of the bodies that Paul talks about, that these bodies, they need to be redeemed at the end because they're going to die here on earth. That's why Paul said in Romans 7:27, 24, Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body, body of death.

But what Paul's saying here and right in verse 18 here, whatever circumstances you find yourself in, whatever suffering that might be currently, it does not at all compare to the eternal weight of glory. I was reminded of Paul's words in Second Corinthians 4:17 to 18. That's where C.S. lewis picked up his eternal weight of glory. For this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

All the suffering that you may go through right now, it's transient. It won't last compared to eternity is actually less than the blinking of an eye. It's less than the blinking of an eye compared to eternity. Imagine the weight of the most precious thing extended into eternity. How wonderful, how glorious, how worthwhile to, to live for that.

And this expectation of future glory, we see it throughout church history. It helped so many Christian martyrs to walk cheerfully to the place of their execution. You, you read the reports of Christians that they were walking by their children, their wife, to the place where they would be burned or drowned. Like Felix Muns, one of the first Anabaptists in Zurich. He and his wife, they were singing as they were walking to the river where they would be drowned for their conviction.

So you see, they. They saw, they made the right comparison. This is not worth holding on to, this life. Here we see the weight of glory, and that's why we sacrifice actually a life here on earth. But the whole creation is groaning and, and we Christians are groaning too, because we also live still in this body and we are still suffering.

But interestingly, Paul continues, then there are these two groanings, but actually there's a third groaning. Who's groaning then in the next passage, the Holy Spirit, God is groaning with us in the Holy Spirit says here in verse 26. Likewise, another who is groaning. The Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Isn't that an amazing thought? That the Holy Spirit, a part of the Trinity, the Godhead is groaning. He knows us deeply and he knows the Father, the Godhead, and he's groaning even in our prayers. We are weak.

We learn. It might sound very holy, our prayer, very biblical, but it's still insufficient. So we need this, the help of the Holy Spirit to intercede for us. The Spirit sees our whole miserable condition and our vulnerability and steps in. The Spirit of God sympathizes with us in groaning about our condition.

I was just wondering how this would be within my life, how the Spirit is communicating about my life. Like, oh, this Martin, this red shirt guy, he is so vulnerable. He's so ignorant even of the temptation of the problems he has. So prone to wonder, maybe like that, but also expressing sympathy, like compassion and a desire for change, that God would use suffering and confusion and problems to move me forward. It's according to the will of God.

He intercedes on our behalf according to the will of God to move us forward in this process of sanctification, that we would finally see the redemption of these mortal bodies, that our glory may finally be manifest.

Yeah. Then he continues here. And that's one of these amazing paragraphs in the New Testament where we see that our salvation is entirely God's work. From the very beginning, before even the creation of the world, the foundation of the world has been laid. God had already chosen us to be adopted as his children.

Like think of Ephesians 1, verse 4. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. For those who are called according to his purpose, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also then justified.

And those whom he justified, he also glorified.

So God's love for us didn't start when we said yes to Him. He always loved us. If we are his children, we have been called according to God's purpose. And this purpose was clear, as I said, even before the foundation of the world had been laid.

It is because of God's love for us that we will conquer. John Stott in his commentary says, our confidence is not in our love for him for God, which is frail, fickle and faltering, but in his love for us, which is steadfast, faithful and persevering. But in the end, we will be conformed to the image of His Son. So there is a divine purpose even in your suffering. God wants you to con.

Wants to conform you to the image of His Son as a manifestation of his love for you, actually. And then he ends with a serial of series of rhetorical questions. Is there anyone able to condemn us now? What then shall we say to these things? Verse 31.

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies who is to condemn Christ. Jesus is the one who died more than that who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

And that's what Paul had emphatically stated already in Romans 8, verse 1, that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. God is for you. You are not under condemnation anymore. No one can actually condemn you. He had laid the doctrinal foundation throughout this letter to the Romans.

Is there anyone greater than God? Rhetorical question. No. If God is for us, then who can be against us? And then he presents an argument from the greater to the lesser.

What is more likely? That God would sacrifice his only begotten Son for His enemies? Or that he, after saving us and would protect us as his children and sustain us as long as we live on this earth and bring us through until we reach eternal glory? How will he not also? And if he has done the more difficult, the more unlikely, how much more will he then do now in our lives to show that he is faithful to finish the work that he has started?

But now in the next verses, we learn it's not only the Holy Spirit that is who is interceding for us, it's also the Son.

And this reminds us of Hebrews. What also talks about Jesus. Whom? The high priest who makes intercession for Christians. Jesus as the high priest, seated at the right hand of God, exalted above the heavens, he is interceding for you.

The next rhetorical question. Is there anyone able to cut us off from God's love? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? And now he's listing all kinds of symptoms of suffering or aspects of suffering. Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, like natural disasters, Nakedness, danger, sword.

As it is written, for your sake, we are being killed all day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us, who For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Yeah, if you watch Russian TV shows, they constantly threat us now with being wiped off the face of the earth by a nuclear strike. Maybe that caused some anxiety. We sense maybe the global economy could just break down. Could be mass employment, unemployment. Soon we read in scripture there will be a time when Christians will be hated by all nations.

Without a place of refuge. Doesn't sound so attractive. But this is all possible and probably coming. Jesus said, they will deliver you up to tribulation, put you to death. You will be hated by all nations for my name's sake.

Revelation 13. If anyone is to be taken captive to captivity, he goes, if anyone is to be slain with a sword, with a sword must he be slain. Here's a call for the endurance and faith of the saints. But in all of this, the love of God is there. The love of God will sustain us.

The love of God will empower us to live through these trials. In all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us, only through him, not in our own strength. Granfield, in his commentary, said it beautifully. It is not through any courage, endurance or determination of our own, but through Christ, and not even by our hold on him, but by his hold on us that we are victorious. And we learn again what Jesus said, that we are eternally safe in his hands.

And in the Father's hand, as he says, talks about the also in the context of him as the Great Shepherd. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me is greater than all. And no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. Absolutely nothing, nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Yeah. So this was a passage of great encouragement, great comfort. Whatever may come in the future, we can have confidence, can have hope that the love of God will sustain us and bring us through so that we will be see the redemption of our bodies and be in his glory. We look forward to this moment of redemption of our bodies. My father had a brain tumor.

It happened very sudden. That was right before Christmas. And there was just a brief time when we could still talk in the hospital. And then he was going into the kind of shadowlands, just lying on his bed. And my father's favorite book was Romans, and I think his.

His favorite chapter was Romans 8. Talking about this hope that we all have. And I believe that my father is in the place where there's absolute joy, peace, contentment, and that death is swallowed up in victory. I want to ask the worship team to come forward and then we. Let's close in prayer.

Father, we thank you for this message of hope. And we thank you that it's all your work, saving us, convicting us of our sin, our need for you, our separation, the need for reconciliation. Thank you, Lord, that your love is. Is there today. Lord, we lift up all those who are who don't know this love yet.

And we ask that they would sense the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts right now, that you are drawing them to yourself, that you are opening their eyes to their sinful state and their need for a savior. Lord, we ask for all those who are going through suffering that they would hold on to you. To Jesus, the hope that we have in him, the assurance of hope. Amen.

Little request. If you could drop your empty plastic cup from communion into this trash container there at the exit, that would be really helpful. Thank you. I want to dismiss us with this blessing. The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be grateful gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. The Hazegnadeshan Pahutadesh. The Halas is an angaziktubadi loishan on Zaidiakinetic the habasan angazist of dish on Gabadia. Freedom.

Amen.