Fear of Death

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme of Galatians 2 verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth. I don't know, every single time I start the show, I have to grab the microphone and get it all right.

I don't know why that is. Well, it's just a habit. I think we're up to, I don't know, 2 ,800 shows or something like that.

I'm not exactly sure. I think we're coming up on our 10th year. This is my last

Sunday, or this is the last Sunday I'll have completed 22 years here at Bethlehem Bible Church, and we're embarking on to our 23rd year.

Wait, no, I've done 23. On to our 24th. Can you imagine? I had hair when

I came here, and I had a lot of law. You can write me,

Mike, at nocompromiseradio .com. You can follow us at Twitter. For you Facebook people, I don't post a lot on Facebook.

I don't know. I think I'm made for Twitter more, kind of snarky, satire, irony, kind of just going after people with short little blasts, staccato -like barbs.

I don't know. When I post the same thing on Facebook and Twitter, Facebook people usually get mad at me and Twitter people give me a like.

The last few shows here in the studio, I've been talking about Jesus' response to tragedy in Luke 13.

Essentially, when they came to Jesus and said, what do we do with these two deaths, two situations of many people dying, both in the religious experience of probably sacrificing in the temple at Passover and Pilate's henchmen come in and kill those people, and then the unexpected tragedy of the

Tower of Siloam falling on people and killing them, how do we work through that? Jesus essentially says, well, he does say, repent.

What he means by that is, one day you're going to die too. Instead of reading the tea leaves of Providence, why did this happen?

Were they worse sinners? I mean, if I was going to use today's illustration, the people that have gotten

Coronavirus -19 and have died, are they worse sinners than those who have gotten it and didn't die or haven't gotten it at all?

Is there a ranking of that? And Jesus wants to make sure that we don't miss the opportunity of a trial, a tragedy, other people dying, that we don't say to know ourselves, well, what about me?

Then I'm going to die too. And then what? So we've been talking about that the last few shows, and it reminded me back in Hebrews chapter two about what

Jesus is described as doing. It says in Hebrews 2 .14, since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things.

So Jesus adds humanity, the eternal son of God. There was a time he didn't have a body, and now he adds humanity, and you can think about not just the virgin birth, but the virgin conception,

Holy Spirit hovering, making sure there's no sin in Jesus' DNA, et cetera, that through death,

Jesus' 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.

And I want you, dear listener, to understand that if you're a Christian, you don't have to have that slavish fear of death, and you don't have to be afraid of the enemy, the evil one,

Satan. What Jesus did at Calvary, which was the pinnacle of his,

I don't know why I want to say pinnacle, he perfectly obeyed the law, then he dies on the cross, and he then at the cross, as he assuages the wrath of God for all those that the

Father would give to him, the elect, the bride of Christ, the chosen ones, death, that is eternal death, separation from God kind of death.

Satan no longer has that weapon. You can just imagine Satan, like in the book of Job, going to God, look what's going on, give me this person, making accusations, and now what can

Satan say? He can no longer require any kind of death debt to be paid if Jesus has died in our place.

One writer said, probably the chief sense in which this power is in demanding death. It was through Satan that sin first entered the world.

God's holiness decreed the death of all who sinned. So in his role as adversary, the devil can demand the penalty be paid.

And of course, now there's no grounds for that, because what we have earned, the

Lord Jesus has paid for, and now 1 John says, chapter 3, whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

And so since the wages of sin is death, and Satan can say, see God, in your holy, just, righteous universe, this person sinned, they now have to die.

And it was Luther who said, dear devil, I have the record, but I have committed far more sins which do not even stand in your record.

Put them down too. I just said to somebody yesterday, they were calling me and I was doing some pastoral counseling on the phone, right?

That's how we have to do it now, it seems. And somebody was saying some bad things about them.

And I said, you know what? I've been called all kinds of names from Stalin to Hitler to the Unabomber.

Unabomber was always my favorite. But you know what? It's okay if you have integrity before the

Lord. It doesn't matter if you have integrity before anyone else. And as Spurgeon would say, if people really know how bad we were, our reputations would be a lot more assaulted.

In other words, be glad that they didn't know the real you, because the real you is even worse.

And what I want you to do, dear Christian, in the middle of all this time when I think personally,

I'm not a political kind of pundit, but I just think the media and what we see and watch and observe, it will contribute to your fear.

They need you to keep coming back. They've got papers to sell. Who was the old guy who almost came up with newspapers and he said, you know what?

What do we do? News is going to help us sell advertising. How do you sell advertising? You do it with news.

And how do you motivate people to keep coming back? Well, you could use greed and you could also use fear.

I want you to know that because of the Lord Jesus, when they put your body in the grave or I don't know, it's burned up, it's blown up in an explosion, it's whatever.

But when you're done, when you don't breathe anymore, probably buried or cremated or whatever is going to happen, that's not going to stop the

Lord Jesus from resurrecting your body. That's not going to stop your soul from going directly into the presence of God.

The Bible is clear. 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? Will Satan? It is God who justifies.

Who was to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who is interceding for us.

The sovereignty of death, the dominion of death, the power of death that Satan could have and wield against us is gone.

And now you don't have to worry about Satan, dear Christian, and how he could send you into hell because your sins are forgiven and you have a record before God legally, forensically as perfect.

Aren't you glad God sees you as perfect? Think about how many times you failed in the last week. Is there enough sin in your life in the last week to send you to hell?

Well, the answer is for me, loving the Lord God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving my neighbors and myself,

I have failed in that. But the thing is, those sins have already been paid for because my sins past, present, and future,

Colossians chapter 2, verses 13 and 14, along with the doctrine of justification, all my sins have been credited to Jesus' account, he's paid for them.

And so now I sin, but I'm not treated as someone in the execution box,

I'm treated as a son. And when a son sins, he gets discipline from the father, but he doesn't get kicked out of the family.

And therefore, when we're afraid of death, could it be that we're afraid of Satan? And I think there's a tie -in there in Hebrews chapter 2.

Dear Christian, you're forgiven. The wrath of God has already been poured out once. There's not going to be double jeopardy, pour it out on Jesus and then also pour it out on you.

You're right with God. God's not mad at you. God's not angry with you. You said, well, I've sinned this week and I haven't loved my wife as I should have.

I know, but God's not mad at you because you're in Christ Jesus. Now he might discipline you, and I still want to make sure

I stress that because we don't want to just sin indiscriminately because we've been forgiven. Shall we sin that grace might abound?

Of course not. That's Romans chapter 6. But you're not going to lose your sonship. Jesus has paid it all, right?

He has done the work. It was finished. And even though Satan is a murderer from the beginning, as Jesus called him in Romans chapter 8, and even though he's got the domain of darkness, listen to this good news in Colossians 1.

He, Jesus, has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved

Son, in whom we have, present tense, redemption, comma, equal sign, if you want the apposition, forgiveness of sins.

It was Jesus not taking on the nature of angels and then dying as a representative for angels as a substitute.

No, he took on human flesh to die for people like me and you, that is human people.

Is that the same? Human people, is that the same thing? Human people, humans, people.

Oh, that was also an apposition. I never knew what an apposition was until I started studying

Greek and I would read Ephesians chapter 1, verse 7, in him we have redemption, equal sign, the forgiveness of our trespasses.

That's what an apposition is. I don't know about the position in there, in the word, if I think of the etymology, but that's beside the point.

Jesus didn't take on the nature of angels to rescue fallen angels and therefore he's taken on our nature to rescue us as a representative and as a substitute.

John Owen wrote the book, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. Jesus's death kills the power of death and that is

Satan's only weapon. And therefore we are delivered from the fear of death and that lifelong slavery to that fear.

You might not want to die. I don't want to die. I'd like to have the Lord to come back instead. That would be quite fantastic, wouldn't it?

Can you imagine just living your life and then one day it's just like, although when you die, I guess if it was an accident, that would happen too.

I had surgery not long ago and I thought to myself, you know what, lots of bad things can happen when they put you out with general anesthesia, anesthesia.

And I thought, you know, I'm going to wake up to bright lights either in the recovery room or in heaven and then

I'm not going to know what hit me, right? If I die in the middle of the procedure. So I'm waking up to bright lights, sooner or later, the bright lights are going to happen.

Did you know, this is a big deal these days and people have something called death anxiety.

You can be anxious about all kinds of things and we call that a phobia, remember? No, we don't call it a phobia, but they are called phobias.

Boy, there sure are a lot of motorcycles driving by today. I'd like to be on the bicycle, except I still can't ride outside yet with this knee, but hopefully next month, by that time, they'll quarantine everybody and you can't ride outside.

Death anxiety is called thanatophobia, thanatophobia, thanatos is death in the

Greek and it's a fear of death. And of course, people like Freud would have all kinds of, you know, why are you afraid to die?

There's a deeper concern, there are issues underneath, there are daddy wounds, there's childhood conflicts, you can't express your emotions and all that stuff.

But in one sense, if you're an unbeliever, you ought to be afraid to die. That should be a real thing.

It should give that diagnosis to everybody. Did you know there's a school of psychology, true, a psychological research school, and it's based on the concept of terror management.

How do we manage terrors? By the way, we've got live people coming and going. I think this is one of these

Borg concepts that if you ever come into this room to begin to watch No Compromise Radio, you can't leave.

You have to watch the entire thing. Just imagine if you're an unbeliever and maybe you're there, and if you're a believer, this ought not to happen to you.

You should think differently. It's called repentance. I know I'm going to die, then what's going to happen?

Because remember, Romans chapter one says that unbelievers know that there's a God. Their conscience bears witness to that.

There are also their conscience bears witness to the fact that they don't perfectly keep God's law, and as a creature, they should, because that's what the creator demands, and that creator is a demanding creator who wants holiness and righteousness and justice.

And all of a sudden, you realize, oh, this is debilitating. I don't keep the law,

I'm in the terror management business. And what might that business be?

If you're just listening on the radio, people pop up here on Facebook, and the Hawley family have said,

I'm in the terror management business. I wonder what that is. You have to tell me more. Ernest Becker said, anxiety of death is so intense, it can generate fears and phobias, like I don't want to be in a confined space.

I don't want to be alone. I'm going to be kind of like a Christian scientist and just think death is an illusion.

I just don't want to think about it. People have something called a mortality salience.

That is, I just am not going to think about it. I'll suppress the thoughts of death because I'm too afraid.

Did you know there's something called the DASC, Death Anxiety Scale for Children?

And Schell and Seefeld put this together. There's also an

FSSCR, Fear Survey Schedule for Children.

How anxious they are, how fearful they are. What about death?

Are they afraid of death? Pictorial forms for children with the

FSSCR as young as four years old. And so here's what they do. This is like totally

Shrinkville. They call it the Koala Fear Questionnaire, FCQ.

I could go for some KFC, but some KFQ, sorry, the KFQ, Koala Fear Questionnaire.

Let's just talk to our four -year -olds about death. Now, one of the things

I did do, and it's probably just as dumb as the koala thing, but I actually think it was good.

We would take walks here in New England. Of course, in New England, you've got grave sites and burial grounds, common burial grounds, they would call them too, near churches.

So in the old days, to go to church, you would walk either through the graveyards or by the graveyards and walk into church and you think, this is serious business.

This is not a business at all. This is serious because there are eternal things at stake.

But we would walk through the graveyards. And I like to see if there was a Bible verse there or a

Red Sox picture of Manny, which some have. And the older ones had death angels, you know, because they would be taking them to heaven or judgment and Bible verses.

And then sometimes I would see, you know, 1701 to 1705. And the person's name was, you know,

Cindy. And I would say to Gracie, how old are you, Gracie? She'd say, I'm four, daddy.

And I'm thinking, you know what? And the other kids who are older, everybody's going to die. And even when I would take the children to the funeral.

So let's talk about that for a second. I am shocked and saddened. And by the way, there's a good time to start doing this.

And that's now, once they lift the restrictions. People don't take their kids to funerals. I can't come to the funeral.

I can't come to the wake because I've got my kids. Really? That's why you're not going to come and encourage somebody else?

Because you're afraid of your children seeing death? Maybe they should be at home taking the koala fear quotient factor questionnaire.

That's bad parenting in my mind. You can do whatever you want as a parent. And I have no way to do anything except guilt you and shame you.

Don't laugh. I'm talking about you. But seriously, bring your children. And then you, the dad, and you, the mom can walk through.

What's going to happen when they go see that dead body? And what does that mean? And then you get to talk about the

Lord Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Raising people from the dead with his word.

Raising himself from the dead. John chapter 10. Who does that? That's amazing. Did you know between the years of 20 to 40 are the years that death anxiety starts coming on to people the most.

And it peaks in years 40 to 64. I'd like to know how many billions of dollars did it take for that to happen?

You know, when you're 18, you never think you're going to die. Then between 20 and 40, you start having a family. And you're like, well, you know,

I probably should have some life insurance. And then when you hit 40 to 64, you're like, I am going to die. But here's the interesting part.

In this particular study that I'm referring to, after people hit 65, they don't have much anxiety.

But they should. If they're unbelievers, they should have death anxiety. I want people to be afraid.

Studies show that females tend to have more death anxiety than males. I don't know why that is. What's religion's effect on death anxiety?

A study in 2013 involving people from the United States, Turkey, and Malaysia.

I don't know how you pick those three countries. Maybe because it fits the data. I don't know. Found that religiosity is...

He was just teasing about the terror management. On a more serious note,

I have taken your advice from past shows and brought my children to funerals of friends and family. Although it's very sad and sobering, it brings about great conversations.

Mr. Ahali, that is excellent. Because what happens? Now you, the dad, get to talk. And by the way, those children that you bring are comforting to the people who have lost loved ones.

And I would tell my children, you don't have to say anything except, I'm sorry. Or you can say, I love you. Or you just give them a hug.

That's all you have to do. So let's go. We need to weep with those who weep. Do we not? It's easy to go to the hospital to see the newborn.

But how about it on the other end? Right? So excellent job, Mr. Ahali. Religious people fear death more.

Now that's weird to me with this study in Turkey, Malaysia, Popeyes, and the United States.

That's amazing to me. Does anybody go to Popeyes these days? I did break down and go once for some spicy chicken or something with my daughter.

And I think I gained four pounds of water weight that day. But it was tasty. By the way, how can people go to Walmart, dirty?

Grocery stores, dirty? All these people there, not social distancing.

But you can't go to a church building where it's pretty clean. I would say the bathrooms here are cleaner than the bathrooms at any grocery store or any

Walmart. There you go. Should people be afraid of dying? Online poll, 30 % yes.

70 % no. Should you be? They're trying to say you shouldn't be. And I don't know why they're saying that.

But here's what I will say. These are the no compromise radio data numbers. If you're an unbeliever, should you be afraid?

100 % yes. If you're a believer, should you be afraid to die? 100 % no.

You are delivered from the fear of death and you are subject to lifelong slavery, but you're not any longer a subject to slavery because you've been delivered.

Jesus breaks the power of Satan. And that is the only weapon he had is broken now is death.

Jesus delivers. That's the passage really in Hebrews chapter. Two Christian, you do not need to fear death.

I'm trying to think of my notes here. It's a little farther up. If you think about how

God even talks about the death of a Christian in the New Testament, one of the things that is written is terms that is used is sleep.

He's sleeping. Remember that? How interesting to take the edge off of death by calling

Christians asleep. This is not soul sleep. This is not, you know, I'm waiting to get my body and therefore

I'm still kind of like wandering around. No, absent from the body, present with the Lord. But I don't think any believer, any unbelievers called sleeping when it comes to New Testament terminology.

First Corinthians 15, O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? And because of that, we have terms like sleeping.

Christians sleeping. My wife is texting me right now. I thought

I was hiding here in the radio studio. Sleep. Christians sleep in Jesus.

Now that is wonderful. They're resting. Paul talks about a departure when he was going to die.

You know, SOS Johnson would say, finally, the mast seems to sink into the water.

In which it is, someone says by your side, it's gone as you're watching something sail into the horizon, but it really hasn't gone.

On the other side, someone will see it coming and they will see it arise and they will say, there she is.

And the death is very much like that. It is a departure from home. And it may appear that we have gone, but we have not really gone or rather we have gone.

We have gone to be in the presence of the Lord. It is a departure at which there is an arrival following.

In other words, you depart, but then you go someplace. Paul says, I want to depart and be with the

Lord, but I want to stay with you. Second Corinthians. So anyway, my name is Mike Abendroth. Wester Shorter Catechism.

What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death? Answer. The souls of believers are at their death, made perfect in holiness and do immediately pass into glory and their bodies still being united in Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection.

That's good news. My name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio. You can write me, Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com.

And we're still planning the trip to Israel, February 24th, next year, 2021.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.