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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/bruce-rodgers/how-will-you-die/
Numbers chapter 23, and there's an expression here that a man called Balaam uttered, a wish which tragically was never fulfilled. Numbers chapter 23, verse 8, how shall I curse whom God hath not cursed?
Or how shall I defy whom the Lord has not defied? For from the top of the rocks I see him. Now that's actually talking about the nation of Israel. And from the hills I behold him. Lo, the people shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations.
Who can count the dust of Jacob and the number of the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his. And Balak said unto Balaam, What hast thou done unto me?
I took thee to curse my enemies, and behold thou hast blessed them altogether. Now I'm not sure how familiar you are with this story, but Israel is approaching the land of Canaan, the land of promise, and one of the kingdoms were shaking.
They were afraid that they were going to be overtaken. And so they hired this prophet to come along and to try to bring a curse upon the people of Israel, God's chosen people. And as this man Balaam had a glimpse of God's people, and as he became aware of what God's intentions were for his people, he became overwhelmed with the reality that these are people that God has blessed.
And his cry became, and I think he probably was sincere in his own way, let me die the death of the righteous. Let my last end be like his. Now we're going to read a few more verses down the chapter, because this other king who was trying desperately to get him to bring a curse upon the nation, he wasn't ready to give up yet.
And so he takes him around to another area, and then he begins his parable again. Verse 18, he took up his parable and said, Rise up, Balak, and hear, hearken unto me, thou son of Zippor. God is not a man that he should lie, neither a son of man, literally a son of Adam, that he should repent.
Has he said, and shall he not do it? Or has he spoken, and shall he not make it good? Behold, I have received commandment to bless, and he that is God has blessed, and I cannot reverse it. He has not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither has he seen perverseness in Israel.
Now at that point, the king that had tried to him to do this, wanted to call it quits. He wanted to say, Okay, let's just stop it right here. Neither bless them nor curse them. Let's go home. He says, Just wait a minute.
Just wait a minute. God has more to say. And he continues on and to speak about the blessings. And ultimately, he says, Blessed is he that blesses you, that is the people of Israel, the people of God, and cursed is he who curses you.
Now, if that is still true today, there are some people in the world who are in a lot of trouble. It seems to be very popular today for people to want to curse Israel. But God isn't finished with them yet, even though they are out of his sphere of blessing at the present time.
I really want to just draw from this incident and to help you to appreciate some very significant things about yourself and about God. The first thing about yourself is this, you are going to die. As has been mentioned already, at times we're not touched very closely by death.
And so it's possible for us to sort of think hypothetically, theoretically. But when death touches close to home, it becomes very different, doesn't it? At various times in my own life, I have had those who are somewhat close to me die.
And I'm not going to go into all the different incidents throughout life. But I have held a little baby in my arms, four hours old, that the Lord took home. I have sat with my mother as she passed away in her seventies.
I was with my father in those last days and hours before he passed away. A number of years ago, when we lived in Timmins, and my wife and I were serving the Lord along with another Christian couple, fellow preachers, we watched a fellow laborer dying of cancer.
My preaching brother's wife, Doris Pratt. Four months later, another brother in the assembly had his wife taken away suddenly in an accident. That had a impact upon us as a small assembly of maybe 15 people.
Two sisters in their thirties taken away among us. So yes, at times, death becomes real to us. But here is a man who had a glimpse of the blessing intended by God, and he said, let me die the death of the righteous.
Let my last end be like his. So my question tonight is this. Now you are going to die, but how are you going to die? Are you going to die blessed, or are you going to die in the other category that is brought before us here under a curse?
That's why I chose that hymn that speaks so powerfully of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in that death upon Calvary, he entered into the bitterness of dying, suffering under the wrath, the curse of God.
It's almost incomprehensible in the measure that I have come to know and appreciate the Lord Jesus, to be able to contemplate how could God, how could God bring his wrath upon the one that he loved, upon the one who was blessed forever, the one who was one with God, the one who brought delight to the heart of God.
It breaks my heart to know that he died for me, that he took my curse, that he took what belongs to me, and that I am tonight free. I am blessed because of what my Savior did. Let's go to Romans chapter 4.
Romans chapter 4, there's a number of verses in the New Testament that speak about the the blessedness of being justified. Romans chapter 4 and verse 6 says, even as David also describes the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputes righteousness without works, apart from works, saying, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Now this chapter is actually taken up with two Old Testament men who had been very significant to the people of Israel, two men who bear witness to the blessedness of being counted righteous by God on the basis of faith in God, faith in his word, faith in his promise.
And Abraham would not cause a question in anyone's mind. He was the father of the promise. He was called the father of faith. They look back to Abraham. David was a beloved king. But the context of this quotation from the Old Testament should have been very unsettling for those who thought that they could be righteous and could be counted righteous before God on the basis of their own personal righteousness.
Because David uttered these words after he was forgiven of a terrible blot in his life, of a sin for which there was no forgiveness under the Old Covenant, a sin which should have caused him to be cut off from the promises of God, cut off from the inheritance under the judgment of God forever.
He'd committed adultery. He had taken the wife of one of his most trusted men and he had sent the death warrant for that man back to the commander of the army in his own hand, knowing that that man would be so honorable, so faithful, he would never look at the paper in his hand.
It's hard to fathom the depth to which sin drew this man David. And yet God forgave him when he came to repentance. When he broke before God, God pronounced forgiveness of his sins. And he pens these words, oh the blessedness, the blessedness.
Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered. That's a quotation from Psalm 32. And in that same psalm, he goes back earlier in his experience to a time when he tried to cover his sins, when he tried to stubbornly maintain his own silence.
And he says, my bones became old. I want to tell you there's nothing that will make you grow old as sin. I have seen people who should have been looking quite youthful yet, and they look like old people because they have given themselves over to wickedness.
It takes the life out of you. It destroys you, but ultimately it brings you to condemnation and judgment. But here is a man who learned the blessedness of a God who was capable, even though David may not have understood the full impact of how God could justly forgive his sins.
But looking back from our perspective, we can understand it in this very clear way. God can forgive our sins because he laid them upon his own son, because he caused him to experience what we deserve, what is owing to us.
There's something that is very beautiful in this section because he talks about righteousness being imputed or counted apart from our life altogether, apart from our effort, apart from our achievement.
And then he talks about our sin being forgiven, our transgressions being forgiven and covered. And so really he is speaking of righteousness in a particular way. He is speaking about the righteousness that is pronounced in a court when someone who has been charged, someone who has been accused, someone who has been brought before the judge, and the judge is now giving his sentence.
And yet the paradox, the contradiction, is this. Paul, through the treaties of the Book of Romans, has already told us that we are already guilty before God. We are already condemned before him. So how can the judge, who has already said, you're guilty, and the only thing left is a sentence?
How can the judge then be righteous and clear the person and let him walk out of court? It's not naturally possible. The only way it can be possible is if somebody else steps up beside the guilty one and is willing to take his place and the sentence be carried out upon the substitute.
And that is precisely what the message of the gospel is. And God is calling us to this moment of honesty before him. However young or old you may be, however close you may be to death, you are going to die.
You must face the issue of yourself before God. And how can God justify you? How can God bring you into blessing? The epistle to the Romans brings us to this wonderful, wonderful understanding that God is now presenting to us, holding out to us, his Son, and letting us know that his Son has offered himself for our sakes.
And having gone to Calvary and laid down his life, as the end of this chapter says, he was delivered up for our offenses. I've only been in court a few times. Thankfully, not for myself. But there's a certain seriousness about being in court.
And the more serious the issue, the more serious the court. And one of the things that I noticed one time is that the person who was the defendant, when his name was called, and he was, he stood up and he stood forward to a line on the floor.
And then his lawyer came up beside him and stood right beside him. And the lawyer represented him in the court. Now, I've never seen a lawyer yet pay the fine, or go to prison, or be willing to offer his life for his client.
But the greatness of the gospel is this, is that God, in his plan to bless us, in his longing to rescue us from the outcome of our own folly, our own sin, he has devised this plan where his own son has been sent to become our mediator.
And as we would say, our lawyer. The one who will and has the capacity to represent my case before the eternal God. And as David expresses it here, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered.
It has been wiped out, blotted out. And in the last phrase, the last sentence, verse 8, blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. I would like to emphasize what is here. The word not is a little stronger than just the word not.
It really means never. Never. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will never, never impute sin. And I stand before you as an ordinary human being who has accumulated a certain level of guilt before God.
My own sins that I have accumulated to my account. I want to tell you tonight that I have come into the blessedness of my sins being completely blotted out. And my sin account with God has been closed.
And God in heaven will never charge to my account again one single sin. You say, but yeah, you haven't died yet. It seems a little presumptuous to think you're completely clear already. Dear friend, this is what God wants us to understand.
This is what God wants us to know and to be able to come into the joy of, the blessedness of being a forgiven and a justified man. I want to take you to Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11. Abraham was mentioned in Romans chapter 4.
We didn't read about him, but he's mentioned also in Hebrews chapter 11. And a number of details of his faith are mentioned. But then it says in verse 13, which is a bit of a summary of Abraham's life, and of Sarah, and of Isaac, and Jacob, and so on, it says, these all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country that is a homeland. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.
But now they desire a better country that is in heavenly. Wherefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. This chapter is a beautiful chapter to look at. Every once in a while, we go to a funeral.
Sometimes it's someone close to us, and we're more deeply affected by it. But every time that I go to a funeral, and I look at the person in the casket, there's one thing that matters above all. And that is, how have they died?
Have they died under the blessing of God? Are they one of those that God calls blessed? Or are they one of those who have died without hope, and come under the curse of God? Here are people who lived long before Calvary.
The promises were just being given progressively through the Old Testament time. But these people heard the promises of God that were given at that time. They embraced those promises, and they died. But they died in faith.
They died having trusted God, and continuing to trust God up until death took them away. Where are they now? Chapter 12 tells us they're in heaven, in the presence of God. They are the spirits of just men made perfect.
Just men made perfect. They're still waiting for the fulfillment of the promises of God that we are still waiting for—the coming of the Lord Jesus, the bringing out of death entirely, being set free from all the effect that death has brought, that sin has brought.
And if I have to die, I'm willing to die. I would just as soon go without dying. But I've come to appreciate that even if I do die, I'm not going to miss out on anything. And I certainly won't miss the rapture, because when the Lord does come, those who are the dead in Christ will be raised first.
Simultaneously, those of us who are Christians, who are living in faith in God, in Christ, we are going to be instantaneously changed, and death will have no possibility of claiming us. We'll be changed into eternal, glorified creatures.
And together with those called out from the graves, we will respond to the voice of the Son of God, and we will rise to meet him in glory. The very same Son of God who came into this world, and which is acknowledged at this time of the year as having died on Calvary, he rose.
He came out of death. He triumphed over death. He has conquered it. And today he has an absolute supreme authority. He holds the keys to hell and death. He has absolute supremacy over all things. And so your faith, your trust placed in him, brings you into all the blessing of God.
And death itself cannot erase it or take it away. So tonight, the question still comes to each one of us. We're going to die. We must die up until the moment when the Lord comes. We must face death. But how will you die?
Balaam wished to die the death of the righteous, but tragically he died with the enemies under God's judgment. Would there be somebody here who would face that awful, awful finality of dying without hope, dying without the Savior, lost forever?
May God help you tonight to put your confidence in the only one who can take you through life, through death, into eternity in the complete blessing of God.