Sermon: Why Is There Death?

I ask you to take a copy of God's word in hand. Let's turn open to the very beginning of the Bible. Genesis

very first book in the Bible. We're starting a new series, uh, this evening, looking at death and dying together. So it seems appropriate, this very first sermon to answer the question, why, why is there death? Why is that been something that is in our world and that we have to deal with?

So this evening, uh,

use it a little bit as a launching place, but Genesis two 15 through 17, but I wanna back up if you will, to Genesis chapter two. We'll start there in verse five, and let me pray for us before we open God's word together.

Father, we are thankful that in a dark world that not left us shrouded in darkness, people born into this world ignorant in so many ways that you have not left us stupid people that are deaf to truth, that you willingly open ears.

We're thankful that you are a God who has chosen to bring life where there's death. And we pray that even this evening as we think upon the subject of death, that you don't teach us anything new, but teach it afresh to us this evening, we might revel in the fact that you are God who is our creator and our redeemer. Truly it is a gift to be yours. Teach us we pray Christ's name, amen. Uh, Genesis chapter two. Let's start there in verse five.

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land and there was no man to work the ground and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground, then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a gardening in the east,

and there he put the man whom he had formed and out of the ground, the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the site and good for food. The tree of life is in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good evil. Down to verse 15, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden,

of the tree, of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Grass withers in the flower faiths, the word of God is forever. Thanks be to God. Amen.

You ask people, what are some of the societal changes that have occurred that have had a major impact upon life? I'm sure a number of those would be something like someone would say, well, it's the automobile and what that led to as far as our society being something that is transitional in nature, or maybe it's the industrialization and the fact that that led so many people to flock to cities or maybe in the modern day people when the first things

that would come to their mind would be, ah, its a smartphone. It is made us much more distracted and much less in personalized relationships with one another. And all of those are very true, have had a significant impact in our world and upon us as people and on our society. But there's one that occurred about a hundred or so years ago that I think is often lost on people. And it's something that maybe few tend to think about,

and yet I think has had just as much of a significant impact upon our society and upon the way that we think and upon the way that we live. It's just a few months ago, I was invited, uh, down to a church in South Carolina, in Columbia, South Carolina to do a conference for them. And I was excited, uh, to be presenting on the topic that they asked me to present on. But uh, and I was excited to see this great huge kind of massive architectural feat

of a Presbyterian church that there in Columbia. But what most excited me was actually going there to see their graveyard. It's old filled with all kinds of famous Presbyterians and famous South Carolinians, and it's, it's all around a whole portion of the church. And though I was there to speak, and though I was there and wanted to see the building, what I really wanted to see was the graveyard. I wanted to walk through it.

Maybe it was a Lord's soft rebuke. It rained the entire time I was there, so I didn't get to walk it in and out. But the presence of a graveyard outside a church, it, it hardly exists anymore. And most localities won't allow you to have it anymore, but it, it used to be that way. Most churches, the church and your neighborhood and your local parish, the your neighbor's church, your friend's church, your any church you went to visit

as you walked into that church, almost every church would have a church graveyard that surrounded that church. And as you walked into the church to worship alongside of those who were living, you had to pass by those who were no longer living.

And I think something is lost as a result. You know, as you would walk through these graveyards and you were going in to worship, you had to recognize that here were all of these people that are now in the ground, their bodies, and they had once worshiped in the same church, but no longer In my mind, that's a good thing.

A change from churches no longer being allowed to have graveyards is our loss. And I think it's our society's loss. Why? Because it's good to be reminded of death,

especially as we head into worship, especially as we leave worship to go out into the world. The Bible doesn't shy away from reminding us that death comes James four 14, you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? Or you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Psalm 1 0 3, as for a man, his days are like grass. He flourishes like a flower of the field for the wind passes over it, it's gone

and its place knows it no more. Psalm 90, the years of our life are 70 or even by reason of strength, 80, yet their span is but toil and trouble. They are soon gone and we fly away. But you don't need the Bible to remind you of that.

It's something that you and I live with as a daily reality. We know that we are all going to die. We know it. No matter how much we try and live apart from this reality, our society does everything to remove it from our view. We, we no longer have graveyards around our churches that that's, that's too intimate. You know, we'll put them behind walls and we'll put them up in places that are off the beaten path.

We put sick people in a hospital, infirm people in hospice.

I was talking with a family this morning that cared for a, a woman that was not a member of their family. They didn't even know her before they started caring for her. And she just needed someone to care for her for the last couple weeks of her life. So they brought her into their home and they cared for her for the last two weeks of her life. That sounds strange.

Tell them, do that for neighbors or even family members. Strange.

She needed care. We don't see much death. We have almost sanitized our culture from it. We don't even like to talk about death. No one dies any longer. They simply pass on. There's never a corpse. It's always Mr. And Mrs. So and so, we, we don't have morticians or undertakers. They are funeral directors now, but they're not even funerals. They're now memorials. Now the nu lingo is there a celebration of life?

We're not. We're not gathering together to celebrate their life. We're gathering together because their life ended, they died.

And it's always a gathering for our loved one, not the dead. And when we finally go to the graveyard, someone is not buried. They're interred. Now, it was an interesting and monumental essay that was written by a sociologist in 1955. It's called The Pornography of Death Worth. You looking up and reading it. The pornography of death as an entire thesis was that in the 19th century, sex was an off limits conversation and death was a regular conversation.

And all of a sudden in the 20th century it flipped. Now death is an off limits conversation and sex is in conversation everywhere.

But no matter how hard our society tries, there's no escaping it. All of us faith, death, death has a hundred percent success rate. No one escapes. Yes, I know about Enoch and Elijah, but you are not Enoch and you're not Elijah. Death comes. It's universal. It always has been. No matter how much we rename it or seek to distance from it, everyone dies and people don't die because the doctor didn't know what to do or because the medicine wasn't right

or the procedure went wrong. Everyone dies because everyone is human. That's why you die. So why, why is there death? Why is it that you're going to die and I'm going to die? Well, if you think back to the garden and what we just read in Genesis two, you, you have the Lord God who, who takes the dust of the ground and and he forms it and he shapes it and he molds it into man, into Adam, Adam, Adam, man. That's what that means. And he shapes him

and he molds him. And then he breathes the breath of life into him,

gives him life.

And then he takes him and he takes the rib from him and he fashions and he forms eve from that rib. And the two of them he puts together and he puts them together for a purpose. He says they are to have dominion over the earth and they're to be fruitful and multiply.

There's an interesting psalm, Psalm made. It often goes through my mind where David, he, he's looking out at the night sky and he sees all the stars. And he, this question comes to his mind when he is looking at the night sky. He says, what is man that you are mindful of him? Why is it that God, you think about man? Why?

And the answer is there in Genesis one and two, because God created man in his own image.

There's nothing else like us in creation.

We have an exalted place. We're at the very center of creation where we are above every fish. We are above every bird where we are above every beast of the field. We are even above the angels and the archangels in creation.

Why? Because you alone, as humans were created in the image of God and the mandate that he gives man is Adam and Eve. You are to come together. You are to have dominion over the face of the earth and you're to be fruitful. You're, you're to produce all kinds of little Adam and Eves that populate the entire earth. Why? Because God wants his image scattered all over the face of the earth, that when he looks upon the earth,

he sees himself reflected back to himself.

Look at Genesis three, four serpent and three, four says this.

When he comes to Adam and Eve who've been told, look, you have dominion over all of the earth, all of it is yours. You are to do with it as you will, as you have dominion and be fruitful. Multiply. There's only one exception. And that one exception is you're just not to eat from the fruit of the tree, of the knowledge of good and evil. Abstain from that. Because if you eat from that tree, God says, you shall surely die.

In the serpent three, four, he comes to Adam and Eve and he says, you will not surely die.

Death is not yet come and, and he promises if they eat from it, it's not going to come.

He's rightly called the deceiver. What is he doing? He wants Adam and Eve to operate, to substitute themselves for God just as he did in heaven. But they're created in God's image.

He, he wants them to no longer see themselves as dependable on God, no longer recognize their identity as image bearers of God. Rather, he wants them to grasp for God's prerogatives.

They already knew good and evil, right? It's a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. People would say, well, if they ate from that tree, then they were going to know good from evil. No, they already knew good from evil. They knew that to eat from that tree was evil. To abstain from that tree was good. What's the temptation? It is that as they eat from that tree, that they would be the determiners of what is good and what is evil, that they would be God.

He's saying to them that they can be God. And that's what he says in his life. You go on. He says, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil. Satan's that great betrayer. He, he wants God's chief jewel and creation, his image bearers to join him in his great betrayal. If you but exert yourself, distrust your creator, you yourself will take his place.

Let's think through it. Let's go back to the beginning and think through this. Genesis begins as only as it could begin in the beginning was God. That's the only way that this, this book and the story that you and I are a part of that it could begin in the beginning was God. That's it. Nothing else. There could be nothing else. He alone is self existent. He alone has life in and of himself. Everything else derives life from him.

He is life.

He never came to be. He never is coming to be. He simply is as he's always been. Remember when Moses is going down to Egypt and ask, God, who shall I say has sent me? And he is told you shall tell them that I am Yahweh, I am who I am. That is I exist and life. Everything else derives life from him. And so it's no accident that as Adam and Eve seek to exert themselves as if they are God, the penalty is that they cease to be

God is life. The wages of sin, as Paul says, is death because sin is cosmic rebellion against him who is life. It's seeking to overthrow him, to cast him down, to say that we are independent of him, him from whom we live and move and have our being him from whom all things are, from and through and to.

So the right penalty for such high handedness thinking we have life in ourselves is to no longer have life in ourselves and is to have death. And when Adam and Eve's sin in the garden, they immediately experience death, don't they? They experience death and their relationship with one another. As they become ashamed and they hide their nakedness, they eventually will experience death in the relationship with one another.

As they accuse one another, they then experience the death that comes to the world as it suffers the fall with them. And now there are thorns and thistles and there's disease and there's corruption and there's deterioration. But ultimately they suffered death in that their bodies die. And most importantly, that they suffered death of no longer having that intimate communion with God that they enjoyed in the garden. Now they're forced to go east of Eden, separated from him,

kind of living death.

And then you immediately go from Genesis three to Genesis four, and what do we have?

One brother turning against another brother and putting him the death sin has come and so it's wage has come Death.

Death is truly an enemy. It it wasn't meant to be part of God's good creation after each day as he creates and he says, this is good, this is good, this is good. This is good. It wasn't there.

Same Paul who calls death gain in Philippians 1 21, he calls it the final enemy in one Corinthians 15, death is only gain for the Christian because of what we already lost. It's a true enemy. It's an enemy that entered creation. Paul's entire argument in Romans eight is that creation groans until the day that we experience a resurrection of our bodies. And why then? Because then, then and finally, then all of this suffering

that continues in the world and all of this death that continues to afflict all of creation, then it will be done away with. It's over no longer be death and no longer be dying, no longer be pain, no longer be crying.

Death is an unwelcome guest. It is a hostile foe and is an intentional thief. And it's one that's been defeated that will be banished forever.

Remember when Adam was formed from the dust of the ground and God breathed that life into him? He created Adam as, as both body and soul. Both of those things make us up. We, we are, we are embodied soul being.

And so it, it's, it's an an abomination. It's, it's truly awful in the greatest sense of that word, that what happens upon death is that there is a separation of the body and the soul that the soul is, is ripped out of the body. And that our body goes into the grave and that body decomposes and it goes back to dust.

It it, that's awful.

If we can say it this way. There's a, there's a true sense that though it to be opposite from the body is to be present with the Lord. And that is a wonderful and glorious thing. There is a real sense in which can say it this way, our, our souls are embarrassed to be apart from our bodies

because that's not you. You were created body and soul. That's you. And that's why it is so very important that when the Lord Jesus Christ returns that our bodies are raised from the grave and they're reunited to our souls and that body, soul is never to be ripped. The sunder again. We exist forever,

always living as embodied souls for all of eternity like we were meant to

as we were created to be.

But the penalty for sin is death. And all of us born into this world are sinners except one. The Lord Jesus Christ,

as our catechism says, all those descending from Adam by ordinary gen, ordinary generation fell in and with him in that first sin all by ordinary generation. Did you see His was an extraordinary generation. That's why the virgin birth is so very important because that means that he was born in this world without sin.

And because he was born without sin, there was no penalty for him to pay. The wages of sin is death. He didn't need to die.

He could die for others. He saw that this morning. He gave himself for our sins.

He died so that we might live. It is the death of death that has famously been said that we might have the life of life.

So this leads to this. You can't escape death and you can't escape death

to bring back the church graveyard. Love to do that because this is what it screamed to worshipers every Sunday as they walked in and they walked out, they'd walk in and, oh, there's Mr. Jones, there's Mrs. Smith. You remember Mr. Jones? I do remember Mr. Jones. He used to worship with us in this church. He's not worshiping with us anymore in this church. Ah, but he's worshiping in heaven. Just a reminder as Mr. Jones is, so I shall be.

It's actually I think wonderful to live with death and view. And that's what I wanna think about here at the end.

Psalm nine, Moses says to the Lord, he says this, he says, teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. That's Moses's prayer. Lord, help us to think about death. That's a prayer. Help us to think about death. Why? So that we might have wisdom.

This isn't being morbid, it's actually life giving. So a few applications here at the end. First, living with death in view helps us not to underestimate our own life and your life today. It's worth just not to underestimate it. The person living with death in view lives today. Like it matters. It's easy to wake up and look at our, to-do list for the day and to go through it with drudgery and then brush our teeth and turn off the lights and go to bed

and fall asleep only to wake up again. Get up, look at our to-do list. Go and walk through it in drudgery. Come to the end of our day, brush our teeth, get ready for bed. Lay down and go to sleep. That's an easy routine to get into.

But when you live with death on the horizon, when you can see it, it animates your day.

You start doing the calculations. I I only have so many hours. I only got so many days. I only got so many weeks, maybe only so many years to love and be loved to labor for eternal reward, to give glory to my Christ in this body of flesh only God so long. It makes today matter.

It doesn't morbid to live with death on the horizon. It is in fact life giving wisdom, Moses says, comes from numbering our days. Second, living with death on the horizon also helps us not to underestimate our own life in this way by rightly valuing the things of earth. It just stymies the pursuit of more

just halts it. If you and I are consumed with the desire for more in this life, our eyes are off the prize. We can secure more stuff, more reputation, more honor, more earthly security, more. But in the end, death takes it all

vanishes and you live with death in view. It stymies that truly dead end pursuit. It seems so silly when death is on the horizon to want to accumulate more.

And you realize that there is that which death cannot take it can't touch. It doesn't take a genius to realize that you and I should ultimately invest in that which not only outlasts us, but will remain for eternity. To not only invest in that which meets our immediate gratification, but that which we will not just enjoy for years or decades. But for millennia upon millennia upon millennia. It doesn't take a genius to realize that there is more

satisfaction in living for that which I was created for

than that next meal or that next vacation. Or it just puts things in perspective, right? Perspective today, third, living with death in view helps us not to overestimate our own life. I'm not the center of the universe. You are not the center of the universe.

I'm going to die. And you know what? The world's gonna keep going on. It's just gonna keep going.

Again, I love graveyards. They help orient me.

I love to walk 'em and I like to let my mind just kind of, oh, it just goes all over the place. You know, one of the things I often think about as I read all the different tombstones, I think, you know, every single person that is laying here in the ground, someone or some people loved them or there wouldn't be a grave marker. And yet I can walk in that vacation destination of Holt, Michigan where we have a couple of good graveyards

and I can walk through those graveyards in my own community and I can literally walk through the entire graveyard and I don't know a single one of them.

And you know what? I start to think, I started to think, well, I'm walking around that graveyard. There are the vast majority of people in these graveyards. Do you realize that there's probably nobody living that remembers them or that thinks about them. They're gone. And yet they were important people in their day. Maybe they were the center of their community, the center of their family, known in the world,

but just very small.

You're very small.

My life was given for him.

You were created for him. You were redeemed for him.

He is big

forth with live, with death in view as a daily reality so that we rejoice daily in the reality of Christ's triumph over death.

It is easy to go through a morning or even a day or even a week without thinking upon the significance of Christ's resurrection. For me today, we can treat it as if it is a nice little addendum of hope at the end of our lives. It's, oh, it's so wonderful that we have that to tack in, tack on at the end, after we get through all the things that we're trying to do in this life. Oh yeah. And I get resurrected.

Oh, it's a present help for us. It's to be a daily reality for us. That we live in light of the resurrection of Christ, that we live in light of the fact that we shall exist embodied souls forever.

That really in a real sense, I have nothing to fear because death has been triumphed and all of my enemies have been triumphed over. He has risen from the grave and I just now get to labor for his glory. He who I shall exist with for all of eternity.

It's a daily reality and it leads us to rejoice the daily and his triumphal reality. If we avoid thinking about death, we avoid thinking about Christ's triumph. If we avoid thinking about death, say it this way. You avoid living in any meaningful sense. He said, I came that you might have life to have life abundantly.

That is a present reality because sin is a present reality. There's no escaping it except there is Christ.

The number 23 has become famous. It, uh, famous and our day because of LeBron. But there was a 23 before LeBron Jordan was 23, but there was a 23 that was before Jordan, and that was Ryan Sandberg, the second basement for the Chicago Cubs.

But you know, there was a more famous 23 even before Ryan Sandberg, and it's one of my favorites. You go to St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland, you walk into that great cathedral and say, where's John Knox's grave, my favorite grave in the world?

Because if the docent knows, which I've asked a couple of them, I'd like to test them. I just, they don't even know a lot of them. But if they know, let's say, ah, it's out back, it's parking spot number 23

that seems right to me.

A man that was known in all of Europe.

A man that Queen Mary said, I would rather face an entire army than the prayers of that man. John Knox had so much power

and he's buried in a parking lot. Seems good to me. There you can recognize him. Look, he's dead. He's gonna be raised, and yet really not that significant compared to Christ. Yet Christ purchased him. So he's going to raise about 23 is gonna be opened up.

It's good to think about death, have it on the mind.

Pray together.

Father, we are thankful that you are a God who has not only created us, that you are a God, that redeems us, that our high handedness does not have the final say, but your grace us. There shall be a day that we shall eat from that tree of life and shall enjoy everlasting life with you, body and soul forever, mourn never ever to face death. The dying of loved ones, even deterioration again, what a great God. You are a God of life.

May we live our lives to your praise and glory. We pray all of this. And the strong name of He who is the way, the truth, and the life for Jesus Christ. Amen.