The Fear of Death

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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afraid of death. Yet, I want us to look at this passage and I want to call us to courage here.

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This passage, in this passage, the author of the Hebrews is talking to a people who are afraid of death, who are afraid of shrinking back to destruction, and he calls them to courage by reminding them to keep the gospel.

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When fear of death and its solution to the gospel, we talk about very real fear.

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That's all. In other words,

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Jesus himself became man, subject to death. You know, as our inclination to life and death,

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Jesus ran towards death, becoming incarnate, susceptible to death.

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Through death, he might destroy the one who has the power of death. That is death. Much that death refers to is not just death where your body and soul are ripped apart.

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It is also the eternal death, the eternal torment the soul undergoes if we are not found in the right.

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It is also the suffering that we go through in this life. That is also death. The fear that a lot of people have is not necessarily of death, but of death as typically thought of, but of a temporal suffering.

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Remember, God told Adam that on this day he surely died, right? And did he die that day?

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Yes, he did, because we understand that death is more than just. It is more than just the body and soul being ripped apart.

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It is. It is more. It is suffering. It is all these things.

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These are all death. These are all death. It is the power to dictate our actions, to decide the things that we will do.

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It is the side of things that many people will do today. I have had several acquaintances of recent ones who have heard speak of their existential dread.

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Their existential dread meaning that all is meaningless, right? Because if they die, it is not just that, you know, they suffered this horrible thing that even

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Jesus, you know, was willing to leave without. It is that what was the point of any of this once they die?

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If there is nothing eternal after that, what is the point? Existential dread. The devil uses his power.

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He manipulates us by fear. He is able to accuse us, signing us guilt, sideways with guilt, and then tempting us with pleasure, right?

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And we are running not just from that eternal death, but also from the suffering in this life.

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We are running from that as well. But he is tempting us, saying, why don't you run from this, or from the suffering that you might encounter in this life?

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Why don't you run towards these pleasures? You know, this is a real spiritual war that is going on.

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This is not just something that exists in the world by general profit, although that is partially the case.

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But the devil wields this tool of death in order to manipulate the actions.

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Christ is conquered. He became a man susceptible to death so that we would not have to suffer guilt, so that we would not have to suffer that eternal damnation.

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It says that through death we might destroy the one who has the power of death. That is the devil. We deliver all those who, through fear of death, were subject to life -long slavery.

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We are not just freed from that eternal death. We are also freed from the fear that encompasses, the fear that dictates our actions, so that we might act without fear, so that we might act not worrying about this existential dread as any of this meaningless, but being freed and having an eternal meaning, knowing that even if we die, even if we suffer in this life, that our actions have real meaning.

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Because if we are found in Christ, there are eternal ramifications for everything we do, everything we do.

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And so people are in bondage, not able to serve God because they are worried about themselves.

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But if we know that the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever, and that is true pleasure, as opposed to running from Him to endure all suffering, that frees us to serve

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Him as we ought, to do the things that we ought. The gospel is not just eternal life with Him later, it is also freedom to serve

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Him now, that otherwise people are in bondage, not able to do. So let me tell you about this very real fear that is surrounding us.

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You know, this decision for me was not an easy thing to do. Very few people are making this decision.

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This is the kind of thing that I would like weeks to decide, and I was not ready for this. So let me begin by telling you some of the principles involved in making this decision.

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The importance of physical gathering, you know, as a congregationalist church, we believe Matthew 18 -20 is a special way where two or three gather in one room.

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There is a special authority that comes with the gathering.

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YouTube sermons, live streams, these things are not the same. And while I do not fault churches who are using them to edify those who will not be able to go through a service, there are some people who think that they are proper substitutes, that they don't need to be gathered physically.

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And that is just not what God has ordained. If God just wanted teaching, He would have ordained letter writing.

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Or, you know, we have the apostles, they could have just written letters. But no, all trained up preachers preach.

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If you want to just the message itself, there are better teachers in New York, Josh, you should go, you know, watch live in New York.

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There is something special about being here gathered, hearing preaching.

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You know, what I have for you today is woefully underprepared. Put this together in a few hours, and most of you know that I usually don't have this many notes, but I just typed them today because I was not prepared.

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First Timothy 4 .2 says, be ready in season and out of season. This is an out of season message, but yet there's something special about it.

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It is a real sermon the way a sermon was meant to be heard. You may not hear a good sermon, but you will hear a true sermon, one that is in person.

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Additionally, God has called us to pray together. You know, a few weeks ago, I mentioned that good suffering is called communion.

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We are under corporate suffering, right? Singing is the same.

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This is not something that can be replaced outside the gathering. People know, you know, people know that there's a difference between live music and not live music.

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Communion is obviously not something that can be done at home. People might try to duplicate the same thing. I've heard churches keep someone else, take it on the live stream and just be a part of it.

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I heard a pastor recently suggest that, you know, he's going to tell his congregation just to, on the live stream, he's going to tell them, you know, just to grab some

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LaCroix and some crackers, you know, go ahead and grab them. You know, there's something, there's a special authority that we have to gather people to declare who is a monster, to remember who it means gathering.

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Etymologically, a lot of you know, it's called out once, but that's not the way it's ever used. It's, it means the gathering.

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I've heard some people say the church is not a building, right? Which is true, but it's the gathering.

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That is why while there is one church globally, there's, the Bible is willing to speak of churches as gatherings.

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There's not one large gathering until one day when there's really one church when we gather congregations.

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So I woke up at 3 30 a .m. on Saturday morning terrified at the thought of churches in the land failing to meet for a week before.

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Who knows? The original thinks that three weeks is probably going to be much longer than that.

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You know, it does not take, well, as you said, there's a lot of churches also that have a good theology of private worship.

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So not only are those public worship things, private worship, if your mind isn't formed by a whole lot of imagination, just suppose that it is our gathering week by week that keeps

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God's wrath at bay on this godless land. And so it terrified me thinking what would happen if churches failed to meet week after week after week?

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Now there are real dangers. There are real dangers about it. And the sixth commandment requires us to preserve our own lives and the lives of others.

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So there is good in curtains. Stay at home if they feel the need to.

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We do not live our lives in fear of death. And as it stands, we must look at the risks and weigh them out.

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What it is, you know, you look at the mandates, there are people receiving deliveries, they have no idea who's going to touch them, but people going to stores, buying bread, having no idea who's touched the bread, being in an indoor place where we've got a

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HVAC that's recycling air from everyone who's gone in before. Now these things are considered necessary.

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It's necessary and yet it's not necessary for us to meet accordingly.

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I would rather go without food for a week than to know that. One of the other things that is mentioned in a lot of these mandates, or at least a statewide one, is that workers who support the entertainment industry are still considered essential.

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Now I don't know exactly what that means, but what I imagine is Netflix needs to run, needs to run to keep people satisfied.

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What about worship, to keep God satisfied? Not that he needs anything from us, but he's required to serve him and not ourselves.

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There was no mention of churches in the county one, which is a sad sign. Small mention of faith -based services in a statewide one, but only to allow for streaming, which is considered, you know, an essential service, but they have no estimation of the value of public worship.

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Who are they to make these decisions to say, oh, it's okay for two people to be together to stream, but it's not okay for them to be together to not stream.

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Who are they to decide these things for us? If they can say, it is good to gather, or it's good to gather into the store to buy bread, and it's good to gather to receive the spiritual bread.

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So I do not claim that this is a threat. I do not claim that I am qualified to make any medical judgments about how dangerous it is to gather, but I am qualified to make a spiritual judgment about how dangerous it is for us not to gather to come to fear

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God. I disagree. And once again, if we are willing to do these other things to meet our physical needs, not just meet our spiritual needs also,

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Hebrews 10 25 says that we are supposed to gather all the more as we see the day approach. And then at the end of the chapter, it says not to not to be those who shrink back.

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So I hate to spread anything that scares me greatly. I don't want to do that.

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But everyone who is here today, I hope is here voluntarily, offering their lives.

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So if you are me, I hope it is out of a mutual desire to love

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God and do what is right. We do not wish to be defiant, but we must not fear death and be bound by it.

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We may take the necessary precautions to be discreet, to avoid death, yet we should not fear death itself, but fear

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God in our own perspective. So I do not want to be remembered as reckless.

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I also don't want to be remembered as reckless. I do not want to be bought into the fact that we are meeting. It is only out of humility that I do this.

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It is not a decision that I make early in the week. It is not with bravado that I do this, but with humility, knowing that God has called me to humble myself before him.

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The truth is not to me, and I really mean that, because the issue is not whether or not we gather, but whether or not our actions are out of true, godly prudence or out of fear.

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And for myself, as Sunday came close, I realized that for me it was out of fear.

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You know, this fear of death, there's a temporal fate that represents a perfect fate, and that's why people fear it.

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But I've spoken of suffering, too. There is suffering that people fear.

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Now, part of that suffering is not just physical suffering, it is mental suffering, right?

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Persecution, being talked of poorly. This was my fear. This still is my fear, if I'm perfectly honest.

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Fear of man. The same as a girl. You know, it's easy for me to say, in many counselors' areas, wisdom.

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It was my desire to not be despised, and to offload the burden of deciding matters for myself onto other people.

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Yet, Exodus 23 .2 says, You shall not follow this dominion to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a suit of law, in a court of law, siding with the dominion so as to pervert it.

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And I do not want to just side with the dominion because it's not other people that are saying this. So I began to fear

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God, to man the rest, to fear God more. I began to fear standing before a holy

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God, and to say what the current circumstance is. The reason that I do not call people together in worship is not because I was convinced it was a necessary step, but because others were.

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Matthew 10 .28 says, Do not fear him who can kill a body, but cannot kill the soul.

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Rather, fear him who can destroy both body and soul. Perhaps next week the situation will be different, the risks will be different, and it will be out of a godly prudence that we decide to do differently than we've done today.

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But that is not the case today. I do not want to be afraid of what man would think of me. There's a passage

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I'd like to read to you that really influenced the passage I'll read to you as we thought about this.

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I think this was the thing that sort of blossomed before we finalized our decision. Numbers 25.

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If you were going to get a Bible reading plan, this is what I'd like you to do. While Israel lived...

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Think about this, a lot of people are going to be reading this today. While Israel lived in the ship, the people who began to quarrel with the daughters of Noah, he invited the people to sacrifice to other gods, and the people ate and bowed down to the gods.

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So Israel yoked himself to Baal and Peor, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. And the

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Lord said to Moses, Take all the chiefs of the people and hang them in the sun before the Lord, that the fierce anger of the

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Lord may turn from Israel. And Moses said to the judges of Israel, Each of you, kill those of his men who have yoked themselves to Baal and Peor.

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And behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his family on the side of Moses and on the side of the whole congregation of the people of Israel.

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While they were weeping in the entrance of the tent of Midian, when Phaeas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation, and took the spear in his hand, and went after the man of Israel into the chamber, and pierced both of them.

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The man of Israel and the woman threw her belly. Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped.

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Nevertheless, those who died by the plague were twenty -four thousand. There was a plague that was happening because of this sullying of the people and sullying of their worship.

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And the Lord said to Moses, Phaeas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned back from the wrath of the people of Israel, and that he was jealous of my jealousy among them, so that I could not consume the people of Israel of my jealousy.

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Therefore say, Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace, and it shall be to him, and to his descendants after him, the covenant of the perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for his

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God, and made a covenant with the people of Israel. So here you have people, one man standing up, turning back the plague on the entire people, because he had a jealousy for the worship of God.

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I do not know what effect our worship will have today, but I'm hoping that as we as a people stand and decide not to be afraid of death, that our fear of God rather than our fear of Him will turn back the plague.

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Let us exercise prudence, but while we can, while people are willing to still gather in stores and receive packages, let us exercise prudence.

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While we can, let us not fear death, but be jealous of God's worship. Christ became man, making himself susceptible to death, running towards death for the sake of others.

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He did not fear death, but sought it as well. He died so that we do not need to fear death, we do not need to flee it at all, we only need to flee it as we might in order to promote eternal life.

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He bore death in our place so that all those who believe in Him do not have to worry about death, do not have to worry about what we might undergo now, as long as we are faithful, as long as we are faithful, we can rest assured that our sins are forgiven and that any mistakes that we make will be covered by the

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Lord so that we can be certain that He will reward our faithfulness.

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For God is a God who rewards faithfulness. So we are free, perfectly free today, knowing that one day we will stand before Him.

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To know Christ is to cease fear of death. To know Christ is to begin to fear

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God. To fear God is to live fearlessly. Dear Heavenly Father, we pray that you would turn back this plague.

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You would allow us to continue to gather. You would give wisdom to the governmental powers that are making a lot of decisions right now.

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We pray that you would give wisdom to them. ... ... ... ...