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Well, please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word.
We were in Isaiah chapter 25 on the Last Lord’s Day.
We are in that chapter again, but we’ll be focusing in especially on verses 6-9, Isaiah
chapter 25, verses 6-9.
You’ll find that on page 696 in your Pew Bibles.
Dear friends, this is the Word of God.
Hear it with reverence and awe.
On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast
of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
And He will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the
veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death forever.
And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces.
And the reproach of His people He will take away from all the earth.
For the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day, Behold, this is our God.
We have waited for Him that He might save us.
This is the Lord.
We have waited for Him.
Let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation.
The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever.
Friends let’s bow our heads and seek the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching of the Word tonight.
Our Lord and our God, gracious Heavenly Father, we ask that by Your Spirit You would enable
us to receive that which the Spirit is revealing in this portion of Holy Scripture.
And we pray, Lord, that this would be to our edification and encouragement.
We would ask, Lord, that Jesus would be exalted in the assembly of Your saints tonight through
the preaching of the Word.
And we would ask, Lord, that You would use this to strengthen us, to build us up in our
most holy faith, and to give us hope, to bolster our hope even in the face of death.
For we know that Jesus, Your Son, is the Lord of life, and He is our Lord.
For it is in His name that we pray, and all of God’s people said, Amen.
You may be seated.
Title of my sermon this evening is The Christian View of Death.
And there are four key words that I’d encourage you to listen for.
The words death, sorrow, victory, and joy.
Well let us face it, funerals and memorial services are sad occasions, but they can also
be awkward events.
They can be events where well-intentioned attendees, in an attempt to comfort the grieving,
will sometimes make rather unhelpful or cliche-ish comments and statements.
And perhaps that has been true of you.
I’m sure it has been true of me as well in those contexts.
For example, many years ago I attended a funeral service for a close relative.
And either before or after the service, I don’t remember exactly when because it was
many years ago.
But before or after the service, while we were mingling with the gathered crowd, I remember
one attendee saying to me something like this.
She said, We’ve just got to learn to accept that death is a natural part of life.
I’m guessing that this individual was well-intentioned and was trying to be comforting.
But in all honesty, her statement was really ill-timed and was not all that helpful.
Plus, biblically and theologically speaking, her statement was flat-out wrong, as I hope
to discuss in a little bit.
But I figured that starting a theological debate over her comment on such an occasion
would probably be even less appropriate than her comment itself was.
And so I restrained myself and I bit my tongue and didn’t say anything.
Well dear ones, the truth is that there are probably few things that we human beings labor
the most to put out of our minds and try the hardest to forget about than the reality of
our own mortality.
It’s not a comfortable subject.
Who wants to think about their own eventual, inevitable death?
The subject of death makes people uncomfortable, obviously.
In fact, death is such an uncomfortable topic that we have invented numerous creative euphemisms
that are designed to kind of blunt the force of the harsh and unwelcome reality known as
death.
And so when friends or loved ones in our lives die, we don’t say things like, well, Uncle
Barney is dead.
Instead, we say things like Uncle Barney has, quote, passed away or Uncle Barney has departed
this life or crossed over to the other side or one that I’ve heard is that so-and-so has
met the sunset of his life.
I’m not saying it’s wrong to use euphemisms to refer to death for the purpose of comfort.
But again, why do we do that?
Well, because death is a harsh reality and it makes us uncomfortable.
Dear ones, in this fallen, sin-cursed world, all of us live our lives under the shadow
of death.
If our Lord Jesus does not return within our lifetimes, then we will all one day close
our eyes in death.
It is the great inevitability.
And the best that we can do is to try to delay this unwelcome inevitability.
And we can take steps to try to do that.
For example, we can seek to live safe lives.
We can take common sense, everyday safety precautions.
You know, when you’re on the road, you put your seatbelt on, you follow the rules of
the road and so forth.
You look both ways before you cross the street and so forth.
And of course, we can seek to live healthy lifestyles that may extend our lives by eating
healthy foods, getting regular exercise, learning to manage our stress levels, getting adequate
sleep and so forth.
But nevertheless, death is still inevitable.
So while the subject of death is an understandably uncomfortable subject, we would be wise, brothers
and sisters, to face this uncomfortable reality.
We would be wise to stare the grim reaper in the eyes and to deal with the reality of
our own mortality.
Well, beloved, as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we would do well to base our view
of death not on what popular culture or popular sentiment has to say about death, but rather
We should base our view of death on what God’s word, the Bible, has to say about this uncomfortable
subject.
Our passage for this Lord’s Day evening, found within this section of Isaiah, which scholars
call the Isaiah Apocalypse, offers us helpful and hopeful revelation of death’s ultimate
eschatological defeat.
And therefore, it helps to inform us in sound doctrine as we seek to embrace a biblically
Christian view of death.
But before we dive into the biblical Christian view of death, I think it might be helpful
for us to review some defective views of death in the first place.
Sometimes we better understand the truth by understanding what is not true, so we can
contrast it.
And so, let’s first of all consider defective views of death, which I am going to describe
and seek briefly to debunk.
Defective views of death described and debunked.
As the awkward comment made at my relative’s funeral illustrates, there are some very wrong-headed
and unbiblical ideas out there about death and about its significance.
And I want to describe three common, but biblically defective views of death and of the afterlife,
and then debunk those views from our passage for this evening, as well as from other passages
in the Word of God.
And a very prominent and common view of death that is out there today is the materialist
view.
Now this is the view that matter is basically all that there is, hence materialist.
We’re talking about philosophical materialism, the idea that the only thing that exists is
matter, time, and energy, and therefore you don’t really have a soul.
There’s no immaterial aspect to our humanity.
We are all just physical beings with brain activity, and our sense of consciousness is
simply that’s simply neurons firing off in your brain and so forth.
And this of course is the view held by most atheists and agnostics and skeptics.
I think it was the view that was held by this attendee at my relative’s funeral service
that made that comment.
And again, it is a view that denies the existence as well as the immortality of the soul.
So according to this view, when your organs shut down and when your brain waves cease,
that’s it.
You cease to exist.
It’s simple as that, according to this view.
I think I may have shared with you once in a previous church that I served, there was
a ruling elder who recounted to me an experience he had with a cab driver, I believe it was
in New York City.
This elder was very zealous for the gospel, and as he was taking a cab in New York City,
he tried to engage the cabbie in conversation and tried to share the gospel, and he recounted
to me that the cab driver basically told him, when you’re dead, you’re dead.
That’s it.
When you’re dead, you’re dead.
That’s the philosophy.
So you don’t have to be a philosopher to hold the materialist view, it’s a view that is
held by everyday people in our culture today.
And again, how do we refute this view?
Well, very simply, because the Bible clearly refutes this view.
Contrary to this view of naturalistic materialism, we human beings, we’re not merely animated
meat bags with brain waves who just cease to exist once our bodies and our brains shut
down.
On the contrary, God’s word teaches us that we were created in the image of God, and in
the words of our Westminster Confession of Faith in Chapter 4, Section 2, we were created
with reasonable and immortal souls.
We’re not just bodies and brain waves.
We have souls as well.
We are body souls, and souls that are able to reason, souls that were created to be immortal
to live forever.
As Ecclesiastes Chapter 12, Verse 7 tells us, the dust returns to the earth as it was,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
Now, the Book of Ecclesiastes is complicated to interpret, but what that passage seems
clearly to recognize is that there are two aspects to our humanity.
There is the part of us that returns to the dust, the physical part of us, but there is
also the spirit or the soul, which upon death returns to the God who gave it.
And furthermore, the idea, often presented by the materialist philosophy, that death
is just a normal or natural part of life.
Well, friends, on the contrary, our passage from Isaiah says that God will swallow up
death as if death is not natural, not normal, because it isn’t.
There is nothing normal or natural about human death.
And if you’ve been to a funeral service, or if you’ve been to a viewing, and you look
at that individual who’s in the caskets, and you remember in the past having conversations
with that individual and seeing that individual’s personality, but now there’s just the body
remaining.
You know in your heart of hearts, we all sense in our heart of hearts, this is not right.
There’s something not right about this.
We know that this is not normal.
This is not the way God intended it to be.
And so, death is not normal.
In fact, in numerous places in scripture, death is compared to a famished monster that
swallows up its victims.
We consider this on the last Lord’s Day, as we considered verses 7 and 8 of our passage,
but in terms of this imagery of death being a monster that swallows up its victims, we
don’t need to go beyond Isaiah.
You can look back at chapter 5, verse 14, and as Isaiah chapter 5, verse 14, it says,
Therefore Sheol, the state of the dead, the place of the dead, has enlarged its appetite
and opened its mouth beyond measure, and the nobility of Jerusalem and her multitudes will
go down, her revelers and he who exults in her.
As we saw on the last Lord’s Day, here in our passage, the Lord promises that the great
swallower, death itself, will one day itself be swallowed up.
The great swallower will itself be swallowed up forever.
But of course, all of this implies that death is not normal or natural.
Instead, death is presented in scripture as our last and final enemy.
The apostle Paul speaks of it that way.
For example, in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 25 and 26, just read that very briefly,
1 Corinthians 15, 25 and 26, it says this, I just need to get there.
For he must reign until he’s put all his enemies under his feet.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
Death is an enemy.
Death is not normal.
The materialist philosophy is wrong.
The materialist idea of death is wrong.
Death is not a normal part of life.
On the contrary, God’s Word teaches us that human death is not normal because we are God’s
image bearers and we were not created to die.
Instead, God’s Word teaches that human death is deeply abnormal.
And why is it abnormal?
It is abnormal because as Paul tells us in Romans 6, verse 23, the wages of sin is death.
We human beings die because death is the wages of sin.
So the materialist view of death is to be rejected clearly from the scriptures.
But another popular view that is out there in our culture is the reincarnation view.
This is the view held by some eastern philosophies and religions such as Hinduism, and it basically
teaches that death is the doorway to rebirth into a new earthly life, the same kind of
life that we have.
And by the way, keep this in mind.
If you’re ever in gospel conversation with a Hindu and you ask them, you know, are you
born again?
Well, they’re likely to receive that or think of that differently than you and I do.
And they’ll say, well, of course I’ve been born again.
I’ve probably been born many, many times.
I probably have many past lives.
When we say you must be born again, they say, no, I don’t want to be born again.
I want to escape this endless cycle of birth and death and rebirth by becoming one with
the divine.
But this view again holds, this view holds that when we die, we simply come back again
in another form.
However, again, the language of our passage for this evening is not compatible with the
reincarnation view.
While our passage does not directly address that view, the language of death as the great
swallower and as the great swallower that needs to be swallowed up in victory, that
language shows that death is a decisive event.
And furthermore, the Bible teaches very explicitly that we will die only once.
As it says in Hebrews 9, 27, it is appointed unto man to die once, not two, three, five,
50 million times.
It is appointed unto man to die once, and after that comes the judgment.
So we reject the materialist view.
We reject the reincarnation view.
And another view that I want to address before we see the proper view as it is explained
in our passage and throughout the Word of God is the universal salvation view.
This is a view that has more to do with what happens after death, but it is also known
as universalism.
This view teaches that sooner or later everyone will ultimately be saved.
Some versions of universalism teach that even the devil himself will one day be finally
saved and redeemed.
In this view, death will ultimately lead to eternal salvation sooner or later for everyone,
although there are different versions of universalism out there.
It seems to me, my friends, that the ultimate impact of this view of universalism is to
imply that death, well, because everyone’s ultimately going to be saved, death is maybe
a big deal, but maybe not as big a deal as we have tended to make it, especially those
of us who believe that there’s heaven and hell after death.
There’s one or two of those two options.
I mention this view in particular because it would appear that so-called Christian universalism
seems to be on the rise with its popularity within the Christian world today.
However, once again, the scriptures are very clear in presenting death as a fearful reality.
It’s a big deal.
It’s a fearful reality not only because it is the wages of sin, but also because hell
is real.
God’s word indicates that all who die apart from Christ and in a state of unbelief and
impenitence are destined for hell.
Furthermore, there are no indications in the scriptures of a so-called second chance to
repent after death.
We’ve considered just a few of probably what are many defective and unbiblical views of
death.
What then is the Christian view of death?
Let’s consider what our passage has to say that informs a Christian understanding of
death.
We learn in this passage, for example, that for the believer, Christ has swallowed up
death in victory.
In verse 6, it says this, on this mountain, the Lord, Yahweh, the Lord of hosts, will
make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full
of marrow, of aged wine, well refined.
As we considered on the last Lord’s Day, this imagery of the mountain of the Lord,
that’s a figure that points to the church.
That’s speaking of God’s covenant people.
The mountain, Mount Zion, is a figure for the church.
Here the Lord, we are told, spreads the feast of salvation for all of the nations of mankind.
This anticipates an age of redemptive history when the gospel will go out to all of humanity.
That is, of course, describing this present new covenant age, this messianic era.
In this age, the church and the Great Commission spreads the gospel throughout the world.
It makes known that the feast of salvation has been spread in the Lord Jesus Christ and
in the gospel.
Of course, this feast of salvation has only been made possible by the saving work of Christ.
We proclaim it, we declare it in the church throughout the world.
And then verse 7, it says, and he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast
over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations.
He speaks here of a covering, of a veil, and of this veil and covering that is cast over
the peoples and that this will be swallowed up by God.
Now what is this covering, this veil referring to?
Well probably, as I mentioned on the last Lord’s Day, probably this is an allusion to
the veil that was worn by those who were mourning over death.
So this is probably a picture of the mourning that results from death.
Whenever there is death, there is sadness, there is grief, there is mourning, there is
this covering, this veil that death brings.
But then we read the good news in verse 8, he will swallow up death forever.
And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces and the reproach of his people he
will take away from all the earth and to underscore this promise, it says, for the Lord has spoken.
In other words, you can bank on it.
This is a certainty.
Death the great swallower will be swallowed up forever.
While death is indeed inevitable, unwelcome, and fearful, yet for us believers in Christ,
death will not have the final say.
For death itself will be swallowed up in victory.
Death has been decisively defeated.
It has been defeated through the saving work of Christ.
We know that this was all accomplished by the death and resurrection of Christ who by
his atoning death on the cross has forever swallowed up and conquered death and whose
resurrection from the dead demonstrates that for those who know him as Savior, death will
not have the final word.
For we will be raised incorruptible even as our Savior has been.
We also notice here in having a Christian view of death, we can have the comfort of
knowing that the sorrow brought on by death will be wiped away.
As it says, he will swallow up death forever and the Lord God will wipe away tears from
all faces.
He will wipe away tears from all faces, you know, in tragic circumstances, especially
when it comes to a sudden or tragic or unexpected death of a loved one or a friend or a neighbor
or what have you.
There are many tears and the grief can be overwhelming and some who are processing and
going through that grief may wonder, will it ever end?
Will the tears ever stop flowing?
Will there ever be an end to this grief?
God’s word promises that there will be one day.
Death brings sadness and mourning for those who have been left behind, but on that final
day all causes for mourning will be removed.
There will be no more sorrow and death itself will be swallowed up in victory forever.
So take comfort if you or someone you know is in the process of grieving and feels like
this grief is overwhelming and will never end.
Christ promises, the word of God promises, it will end for he will one day wipe away
all tears.
But what about the intermediate state?
This leads to the question, okay, we’re dealing with death, we’re dealing with the grief that
death causes.
We know that death has been swallowed up in victory by Christ and that final victory will
be manifest when Christ, it will be fully manifested and consummated when Christ returns
in glory at the end of this age.
But in the meantime, what happens to us believers after we die?
What happens to us between the time of our death and the return of Christ and the resurrection
of the dead?
What happens in that intermediate stage, that intermediate period?
Now, some folks believe that what happens to the Christian during that time is what’s
called soul sleep, that the soul just kind of is unconscious and that the next thing
that you will be conscious of will be awakening on the day of resurrection.
But the scriptures indicate that our life goes on, the soul goes on after death and
experiences a consciousness after death.
We see that, for example, clearly taught and implied in the passage I read earlier in the
Let’s turn again to 2 Corinthians 5 and look at verses 6 through 9.
Second Corinthians 5, verses 6 through 9, it says this,
So we are always of good courage.
We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord, for we walk by
faith not by sight.
Yes, we are of good courage and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the
Lord.
So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.
You notice the contrast he makes there.
To be at home in the body is to be away from the Lord, away from the glorious heavenly
throne room presence of the Lord, but to be absent from the body is to be present with
the Lord.
It’s based on passages such as this one that are the teaching of our shorter catechism
in question 37, makes its statement, and again, I know we read this earlier in the service,
but I’d invite you again to turn to shorter catechism question and answer 37 on page 970
where we read this, it says,
What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death?
The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness and do immediately
pass into glory.
Remember what Jesus said to the thief on the cross who repented, who by sovereign grace
turned to him.
Jesus said, well, you’re going to sleep for a while, you’re going to undergo soul sleep
for a while and then you’ll be raised at the final day.
No, Jesus says, today you will be with me in paradise.
The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness and do immediately
pass into glory and their bodies being still united to Christ do rest in their graves till
the resurrection.
Hallelujah.
That is what we have to look forward to.
What happens at death is that the body and the soul are separated.
The soul is, if you will, ripped away from the body, but for the believer, the soul goes
immediately into the presence of the savior and dwells in unimaginable light and glory
and blessedness from that point on, awaiting the day of final resurrection.
Beloved, death is a fearful thing because for those of us who have never died, it is
the great unknown.
Only one man who has died has come back.
Now, I know there have been many documented near-death experiences and then people are
revived, you know, the heart stops and they have to be revived and brought back and sometimes
they have near-death experiences.
And there’s debate about at what point are you really dead and not coming back.
Well, again, there’s debate about that.
But once death has occurred, the soul passes immediately to be with the Lord.
But we don’t know what that experience is like because we’ve never been there.
But one day we will, should our Lord tarry in returning.
Based on what God’s word has revealed to us, if we are in Christ, then we have no ultimate
reason to fear death because for us believers, death is simply the portal into a better,
higher life, into eternal life in the presence of our resurrected savior.
Beloved in Christ, may this truth comfort your soul even in the face of death.
But in view of the fact that we each and every one of us live our daily lives under
the shadow of death, how do we live with joy given that reality?
Let’s consider finally, briefly, living with joy under the shadow of death.
First of all, in order to live in this present life with joy under the knowledge that every
day that passes by is a day closer to the day when you close your eyes in death, living
with joy requires coming to the feast of salvation.
The feast of salvation that is spoken of in verse 6, the feast of salvation that Christ
has spread in the gospel.
You cannot live with joy under the shadow of death if you have not received the salvation
that is found through faith in Jesus Christ, the resurrected Lord of life.
So if you would have joy and peace as well as forgiveness and eternal salvation and live
with confidence even under the shadow of death, may God in his grace grant you to come to
Christ and rest in him for your salvation.
Believer also live with confidence that death is a defeated enemy.
Remember that Christ conquered death and you are united to Christ.
So in him, you are more than a conqueror through him who loved you and you will be raised incorruptible
on that final day.
But understand as well, believer, that for us believers, death is the doorway into the
presence of our Savior and it is also the next step toward that final eschatological
joy of the new creation, that joy that we will experience when we are raised from the
dead in our glorified bodies to live with the Lord forever.
And that joy is depicted in verse 9 where it says, it will be said on that day, behold,
this is our God.
We have waited for him that he might save us.
This is the Lord.
We have waited for him.
Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
Indeed, brothers and sisters, let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
Amen.
Let’s pray.
Gracious Lord and Father in heaven, the subject of death is a difficult and troubling subject.
It is uncomfortable.
It is unwelcome.
And yet we know that it is a reality that we must face.
But we also know, Lord, that you have given us hope, everlasting hope in the gospel, not
merely a wish, but a sure and certain confidence that if we believe in Christ, if he is our
Savior, that we have not only been given the gift of eternal life, but that to be absent
from the body is to be present with the Lord.
So Heavenly Father, give us comfort from these truths that we’ve considered tonight
and give us, especially, grant us comfort from the knowledge that Christ, in rising
from the dead, has conquered sin and death and hell and has brought life and immortality
to light through the gospel.
We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people’s said, amen.
Let’s close our time of worship this evening.
We’ll rise and we’ll sing together.
Number 390, Christ is coming, 390.