The Demise Of Death's Power

The Old Testament reading this morning is in the book of Job, chapter 2, verses 1 through

10, in your pew Bibles.

That is page 415, if you'd like to read along.

Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also

came among them to present himself before the Lord.

And the Lord said to Satan, From where have you come?

Satan answered the Lord and said, From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.

And the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth,

a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil?

He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him, to

destroy him without reason.

Then Satan answered the Lord and said, Skin for skin, all that a man has he will give for his life,

but stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.

And the Lord said to Satan, Behold, he is in your hand, only spare his life.

So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores, from the sole of his

foot to the crown of his head.

And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself, while he sat in the ashes.

Then his wife said to him, Do you still hold fast to your integrity?

Curse God and die!

But he said to her, You speak as one of the foolish women should speak.

Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?

In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

The New Testament reading is Revelation 12, 7 through 12.

Now war rose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon.

And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.

And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver

of the world.

He was thrown down to the earth, his angels were thrown down with him.

And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, Now the salvation and the power of the kingdom of our God and the

authority of his Christ have come.

For the accuser of our brothers have been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.

And they have conquered him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony.

For they love not their lives even unto death.

Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them.

But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath because he

knows that his time is short.

Take your Bibles this morning and let's turn to Hebrews chapter 2.

Hebrews chapter 2.

Can you follow as I read?

Hebrews 2, 1 through 18.

Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.

For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable and every transgression or disobedience received

a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God

also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit

distributed according to his will.

Now, it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking.

It has been testified somewhere.

What is man that you are mindful of him or the son of men that you care for him?

You made him for a little while lower than the angels.

You have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection unto his feet.

Now, in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control.

At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him, but we see

him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory

and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone.

For it was fitting that he for whom and by whom all things exist in bringing many sons to glory

should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.

For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source.

That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, I will tell of your name to my

brothers in the midst of the congregation.

I will sing your praise.

And again, I will put my trust in him.

And again, behold, I and the children God has given me.

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same

things that through death, he might destroy the one who has the power of death that is the devil and

deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham.

Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a

merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the

sins of the people.

For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Father, once more, we come to you and we come to you in your scriptures to hear your voice

and Lord to obey it, to obey it, maybe not in our actions

at times as this text, but to obey it in our thinking, to submit to it in the way

that we approach life, to submit to it in the way we view death, in

every way, Lord, to bring our thinking, our attitudes, our actions in line

with your word.

And so we pray that we would have ears to hear your voice, that we might align ourselves

with your will.

We'll thank you in Jesus name.

Amen.

A week ago yesterday, I officiated a funeral.

We laid the body of Katie Cooper to rest in Fairview Cemetery.

And once more, just like countless times before, over all the centuries of our existence, people

sat in the presence of death.

And death, like the supreme sovereign on his throne said, face it,

you can never escape my rule.

And so people sat in his presence with broken hearts.

Some weeping, some in quiet despair, while others had

hearts filled with dread and fear.

What hope can we have in the presence of such a powerful sovereign

as death?

Well, our hope can be found in the great salvation Jesus purchased for us.

You remember that after speaking of Jesus in chapter one, and the great salvation which he brings, our Hebrew pastor

warns us not to neglect it, lest we drift away into destruction, that we

pay careful attention to this salvation.

Well, what makes it such a great salvation?

You remember what he told us?

Jesus regained the glory and honor that we lost when Adam and Eve sinned.

Jesus regained that glory of dominion over creation that we now struggle to assert.

We see him now crowned with glory and honor sitting in heaven on his throne.

We saw as well that this great salvation means that God is intent on bringing many sons to

glory.

And that is guaranteed through the death of Jesus, and that Jesus has blazed the trail for us that

we might someday achieve that glory.

But what else has he accomplished?

Here we have it in verses 14 and 15.

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same

things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil,

and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

Why did the son of God leave the glories of heaven to live among us, to live as one of

us?

Well, as we've noted, he did it to fulfill God's original intention for mankind, that is to have

dominion over the creation.

He has achieved that.

He did it to bring many sons to glory.

He's blazed the trail.

He will bring many sons to glory.

And lastly, he came to overcome death, defeating Satan and freeing us from

our fear.

Let's look at our verses this morning.

First of all, Jesus shared with us.

We noted the last time we were in this text that God has given children to his son.

He is not ashamed to call us his children.

God has given children to his son.

Because God has given Jesus many children, they have to have some sort of kinship, wouldn't you think?

I remember one of the first times I was in Romania, and our habit was we would get together for a

week and teach the guys.

And then on the weekends, all three of us would split up.

We'd go to different places to minister in churches that were represented in our class.

And I happened to go to Bercei with Florinel.

Florinel became a good friend.

So I went with Florinel to his village and to his church.

And I'll never forget, as we came to the house, as they would

say, Deborah came running out the door.

Deborah was four years old, and she was jabbering away in Romanian.

And again, this is how clueless I am.

I'm standing there in absolute awe, thinking, oh my goodness, this little four -year -old girl can speak in Romanian.

I know, it doesn't reflect well on me.

But please, please hear the illustration, all right?

Of course she does.

I should have expected that.

I should have expected that.

Like her father, she's Romanian.

And with her father, she shares the same blood, the same culture, the same language.

She shares all of her Romanian -ness with her dad.

Well, the same thing is true with Jesus.

We should expect him to have some sort of kinship with us, since we have been given to him as his

children.

There is a kinship between us and the Lord Jesus.

There is a sameness that exists between us and

this Jesus.

And that kinship is our very humanity.

Jesus shared our humanity with us.

Since we, his children, are flesh and blood, the writer says, we should expect Jesus to be

flesh and blood as well.

The second person of the Trinity, okay?

The second person of the Trinity, who is God, who for eternity had enjoyed

the praise and adoration of angels, had to partake of our

humanity.

He had to lay aside his glory as God and become man.

Now listen, although he laid aside the glory of deity, he did not lay aside the

essence of deity.

He did not, in becoming man, cease to being

God.

We know that because you remember chapter one, the writer, all

through the entire chapter of chapter one,

labors the point that Jesus is God.

And yet now we come to this verse.

And although his glory is veiled, he is still God, and yet he is

human.

He became a human being.

He shares with us our very humanity.

And this solidarity with human beings is not superficial.

It is profound.

It is genuine.

Think about this.

He lived a full life with all its weaknesses.

Jesus was a laborer, right?

Do you think he came in at the end of a day, exhausted from all the work he'd been doing?

You think he experienced that?

You think he experienced heartache?

You know that Jesus knows exactly what it is to be betrayed and abandoned.

He knows what that's all about.

He had needs.

Do you think Jesus ever came in so hungry, he could eat everything on the table like you?

What about temptations?

Do you think Jesus was ever tempted to be angry when the kids at synagogue school taunted him and made

fun of him?

You ever thought that thought?

You think in all of that, in all of that, he shared our humanity.

He was as human as you and me.

He himself likewise partook of the same things.

Now, chapter one, you have some of the strongest statements in the New Testament about the

deity of Jesus.

And yet we come to chapter two, and we find some of the most profound verses about his

humanity.

He partook of all the same things that we had did,

including, including death.

Jesus even shared death with us.

Having lived under the curse, he suffered the very embodiment of the curse, which is death.

Jesus shared in our humanity even to the point

of death.

He knows what it's like to die.

The climax of sharing our humanity was the fact that he died.

And yet this was a death that accomplished something according to our verses.

He shared in all of our humanity, all of its weaknesses, heartache, needs, temptations, everything that makes you

and me human, he experienced, including death.

But in this case, his death accomplished something.

Jesus shared death with us in order to destroy the devil.

That's what he says in the first part of verse 14.

Since, therefore, the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that

through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.

Jesus shared death with us in order to destroy the devil.

What does it mean when he says that the devil is the one who has the power of death?

What does he mean by that?

Well, the devil cannot inflict death on anyone willy -nilly or according to his will.

The devil cannot inflict death on anyone unless he has the Lord's permission.

Unless, right?

Unless the Lord allows him.

We see that in Job.

Satan claimed that Job served God because Job had a wonderful family and all kinds of

riches.

And God told Satan he could take Job's possessions and his children, but that he could not

touch Job.

And when all that was done, Job, you recall, Job was still praising

God at the end of chapter one of the book of Job.

He is still praising God.

He is saying, this is from God.

And the writer says, he did not sin when he said that.

And then the second scene opens up, and there is Satan talking to

God again, as we just read today in chapter two.

And Satan claims, of course, Job did not curse God, because as long as he has his health,

he'll never curse God.

And God says, well, then do anything you want to him, except what?

You cannot take his life.

Satan does not have the power to inflict death at will.

Well, then what is our writer talking about?

I believe the writer speaks here of the effects of Satan's work.

The effects of Satan's work is death.

What happened when Satan succeeded in bringing Adam and Eve into sin?

What happened?

Death ensued.

The devil does not possess the power of death, but gained this power when he

seduced humankind to rebel against God.

Satan's work has the effect of producing death.

That is, his work is always destructive, and it always brings death.

His work does that.

But Jesus destroyed the power of Satan.

That means to nullify or neutralize or deprive it of its power.

Now, Jesus deprived Satan of that power by his death.

So let's think about this.

2 Corinthians chapter four, verses three through five.

Let's listen to it.

Turn there so you can read it.

2 Corinthians chapter four, verses three through five.

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are

perishing.

In their case, in the case of those who are perishing, the God of this world has blinded

the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of

Christ, who is the image of God.

For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ is Lord, with ourselves as your

servants for Jesus' sake.

For God who said, let light shine out of the darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of

the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Satan can inflict blindness that produces death.

People are perishing because of it.

But Jesus, by his death, breaks that power so that the proclamation of

Christ brings about light so that people see the glory of God in the

face of Jesus.

And so are delivered.

Ephesians chapter two, verses one through five.

Ephesians two, one through five.

Here we read, And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked,

following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air,

the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we

all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the

mind, and were by nature children of wrath.

Like the rest of mankind, but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us,

even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved.

What do we find here?

Satan is the power of the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, producing that

death that descends on the children of wrath.

What happens?

God gives new birth.

The proclamation of Jesus, God will give new birth and delivers people from

that death.

One last passage, John chapter 12.

John chapter 12, verses 27 through 33.

Listen to what Jesus says.

Now is my soul troubled.

He's looking forward to the cross.

Now is my soul troubled.

And what shall I say?

Father, save me from this hour.

But for this purpose, I have come to this hour.

Father, glorify your name.

Then a voice came from heaven.

I have glorified it and I will glorify it again.

The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered.

Others said an angel has spoken to him.

Jesus answered, the voice has come for your sake, not mine.

Now is the judgment of this world.

Now will the ruler of this world be cast out.

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.

He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.

We note here, Satan rules this world by keeping people in darkness.

Since Jesus, by his death, cast out this ruler and by his death, he can draw people to

himself.

His death destroys Satan's power of bringing about death

through his work of deception and enticement.

So the power of Satan to bring death by his work has been defeated by the work of Jesus'

death.

Death only dies through the death of Jesus.

So Jesus shared with us our humanity in order to destroy

Satan.

But Jesus shared death with us in order to be delivered, in order to deliver us

from our fear.

Verse 15, Jesus shared death with us in order to deliver us from

fear.

And to deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to

lifelong slavery.

So Satan brings about death by his work and people are terrified of

death because of it.

They're terrified by death.

Men and women, boys and girls all fear death because of what it does.

What does death do?

You sense that in death, you are alone.

You die alone.

Even men who die together on the field of battle die alone.

No one else dies your death.

You die alone.

People are terrified of it because death presents people with the unknown.

How many people do you know?

It's a total mystery.

Now, even for Christians, we know it's not a total mystery.

Absent from the body is present with the Lord, but there's still a lot of unknowns there.

Have you ever thought that thought?

Have you ever thought, what is it like to die?

Like, is it just darkness and then light is it?

What is that like?

Do I see angels come and get me?

Does Jesus show up?

What's that like?

Nobody knows.

Think about what it's like for an unbeliever.

Total mystery, total mystery.

What happens after death?

It's unknown.

It severs relationships.

The deepest, most loving relationships are broken at death.

They're broken.

The one you love is gone.

And you go on without that person.

The closest friendships end at death.

I'll never forget the day.

I don't know what day it was, but I remember this day.

I was going home and I took the back way.

You know, out that way, out LaRue -Kenton Road, right?

I went out that way and I came to the T, where you go left, you go west, or you go right onto

Riley Road.

Right at that T, I remember sitting there and the thought occurred to me, this wife that I love so

dearly, who I've spent my life with, one of us is going to die first.

If you thought that thought yet, maybe you don't think that till you get to be in your 60s, I don't know.

One of us is going to die first.

One of us is going to be alone, right?

Death ends that.

Death ends those kinds of relationships.

It cuts off the memory of your life.

You ever thought about that?

In another generation, the name Tim Pasma is going to mean nothing.

It's going to mean nothing.

I've walked in that cemetery so many times and I've looked at names, don't know a thing about those

names and all the people in our town don't know anything about those names either,

right?

Nobody knows who you are.

Your memory is cut off at death.

It ends a good life, a life of fun and food and love and work and learning and

singing and all that makes life good, it's done.

A life, no matter how good or bad, how easy or hard, how peaceful or tumultuous,

always looks good when compared to dying.

Death casts a shadow over your entire life, hovering like a phantom, an unwelcome

daily companion.

Instead of exercising dominion like God intended us to do, we are ruled over by a foreign power.

One writer said, in every moment of happiness, death is our dark shadow reminding us that our joy is short -lived.

People fear death because nothing but a curse appears in it.

Some of you may say, yeah, but as Christians, we shouldn't

fear death.

Exactly, that's what this passage is about, but we sure don't have to like it.

I don't know of any Christian who likes death.

Oh, I've heard Christians say, well, you know, I'm looking forward to dying and I say, why?

Why?

You know, in the Bible, listen to me, in the Bible, not even the Apostle Paul, in that famous passage,

do I want to be in heaven or do I want to be here ministering?

Well, I'd rather be with the Lord.

Nowhere in the Bible does anyone ever look forward to death.

They look forward to the resurrection, never to death.

Death is still a curse.

Now, it's a curse that we don't have to be afraid of.

It's still a curse.

How many of you,.

I want to know, I'd like to talk to widows and say, aren't you glad your husband's gone now?

Aren't you so happy now?

No.

Well, he's with the Lord.

Aren't you glad about that?

Well, yeah, I am, but this hurts so deeply.

Of course it does.

Death is a curse.

Death is a curse.

People are afraid of death because of these things.

Men and women, boys and girls, all fear death, but they fail to break the chains of that fear.

They cannot break the chains of that fear.

They're subject to lifelong slavery, to fear.

They do their best to keep that fear at bay.

They ignore it.

That's the biggie.

They ignore it.

You must never talk about death.

You never mention death in polite conversation, right?

Let's never talk about death.

In fact, we don't even use the phrase.

We don't even say things like, my mother died last year.

We don't even want to say that.

What do we say?

My mother passed away.

Well, that's okay, but why do we do that?

Because you don't ever want to utter the words, my mother died, or I've heard this

one lately a lot, passed on, passed on.

They died, but we don't want to say that.

We want to ignore it.

And so people keep their children away from funerals.

I'm amazed that people are so afraid of death in our culture today that you

very rarely see children at funerals now.

They forget that someday those children are going to look at them in that box.

Or they don't go to funerals.

People just avoid going to funerals, forgetting that no matter what, thoughts of death still intrude.

I had a conversation with Kyle Stoffcheck,

and it was an occasion of a funeral, I suppose.

And he and I were talking, and he was talking about the fact that funerals are starting to

get rarer.

First it was cremation was becoming more common, and now funerals, now

funerals are less common because people just have the body picked up, cremated,

and the ashes brought back.

No funeral.

Boy, I've seen that a lot lately.

No funeral.

And Kyle said to me, in some ways we're becoming nothing more than a

body disposal service.

Why do you think that's happening?

I think it's because of the fear of death.

Okay, let's cremate the body.

Let's not have all the expensive stuff about embalming and all.

Let's just cremate the body.

Let's just do that.

But let's not even have a funeral.

Let's just not even go there, right?

People say things like, the memory of dad will live on forever as they try to escape this fear

without realizing memories inevitably fade.

They fade.

They tell themselves the lie that God is a God of love who overlook our mistakes, forgetting that death itself is a

judgment from God for sin.

They try to stay,.

They try to break the chains of fear by saying, I hate this one.

Death is just a natural part of life.

Okay, so death is just a natural part of life like eating, sleeping, right?

Just that kind of a thing.

I mean, how many of you have wept because you missed lunch,

right?

Wept deeply down because you've missed lunch.

It's not a natural part of life and everybody knows it.

It's an aberration.

They ignore the fact that this natural part has an emotional impact that nothing else does.

Consider this pandemic for a moment.

Now, again, I'm not making a statement.

Don't get me wrong.

I'm not making a statement about whether I agree or disagree with lockdowns and masks and all that sort of thing.

But what drives most of that, do you think?

What drives the lockdowns and what seems like mandates that are changing and are never going to end.

What do you think is driving that?

I'll tell you what's driving it is most people are terrified of death and they're trying to keep

anybody from getting sick.

We don't want anybody getting sick because someone might die.

I might die, right?

Many of what we see, I think, is driven by fear of death.

I think that's what's happening.

That's why this pandemic is different than the one, for example, in 1918.

Most people back in 1918 thought, well, people die.

Well, there was a much more Christian influence.

Now there's much less.

And people are terrified of dying and they'll do anything.

They'll do anything.

They'll submit to anything in order to stay alive.

But you know what?

All those attempts end in failure.

No one is freed from the fear of death in all the things they do.

They just are still subject to lifelong slavery.

But by his death, Jesus, Jesus frees us from that

relentless fear of dying.

We certainly do not like death, but we don't fear it.

Because Jesus took upon himself our humanity, he could die for our sins.

For Christ, says the apostle Peter, also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous,

that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.

We are brought to God.

We're brought into the presence of God, where we no longer have to fear God

because of the death of the Lord Jesus.

In Jesus, we no longer need to fear death, for death does not have the final word.

Whenever I do a funeral, whenever I have a funeral, I look at people,

some who know the Lord Jesus, most of the funerals I have, most of them don't.

Most of them don't.

And you can see the despair.

I can see in my mind, I can see in my mind, someone sitting at the gravesite,

weeping and crying and wailing these words, I will never

see him again.

Just, just the horrific fear, because it looks to them like death

has the final word.

As I said, as I started, they sit in the presence of this king, who seems to be

sovereign over everybody's life.

No one will escape him.

Right?

But in Jesus, we no longer have to fear that king.

Listen to what Jesus says in John chapter five.

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.

He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

Now, Jesus didn't mean that no one's going to die, but he does mean the death that says,.

Curse!

No longer says that to us.

We don't, we're not coming into judgment.

John chapter six.

I love this.

John chapter six.

All that the father gives me will come to me and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out.

For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has

given me, but raise it up on the last day.

For this is the will of my father, that everyone who looks on the son and believes in him

should have eternal life.

And I will raise him up on the last day.

Jesus says, I will not lose one.

I will not lose one whom the father has given me.

Not one.

Why?

We don't have to fear death.

You're not going to lose anybody.

If you belong to Jesus, you're guaranteed eternal life.

Lastly, John 11, 25 and 26.

Jesus speaking to Martha says, I am the resurrection and the life.

Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.

And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.

Do you believe this?

Do you believe that?

You see, Jesus has delivered us from a lifelong slavery to fear because death no

longer has to terrorize us.

We have eternal life.

So let me ask you this morning, are you afraid of dying?

Are you afraid of dying?

Why?

If you are, ask that question.

Why am I afraid to die?

With these great promises, why are you afraid to die?

Jesus came for the very purpose of releasing you from that fear.

What has this pandemic revealed about your fears?

Where do your thoughts go when you go to a funeral?

You see, the Sunday school answer is the

right one.

What is the answer?

Jesus, there's the answer.

He has conquered death and thus we do not have to fear

it.

He has destroyed the power of Satan by his works to affect our deaths

because he has saved us from our sins and from the penalty that is ours.

Jesus shared every bit of our humanity, including death,

so that we would be delivered from Satan and from fear.

God, help us to remember your promises.

Help us to look to Jesus, the one who came and shared with

us every single human experience

so that by his death, Satan's power would be

nullified and our fear would be destroyed.

Father, for those here who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ, I pray that their very

fear of death would drive them to look to the one who can destroy that slavery.

Help them to see that Jesus' death is a death that accomplishes all that could

possibly be in delivering us.

Lord, cause them to throw themselves on Christ and to call out for his mercy.

Father, for your children here who might still fear, remind

them of these great promises that united to Jesus, who

is life, death is not the powerful sovereign he

claims to be.

God, help us to be people of hope.

We pray it in Jesus' name, amen.