PREVIOUS SERMON  (sorted accordingly,starting from recent )

This was Stephen’s dying pattern (his life end on earth) just like that of our Lord Jesus Christ and it is the divine pattern of dying on earth that all true Christians’ death is supposed to follow, committing our spirit into the Hands of our Lord at our point of death and this is only possible if the Scripture and the Gospel have tutored us enough not to fear death but to see and recognize it as a pathway that leads us to our Lord God Almighty to continue our life after death with our Lord Jesus. The whole teaching of Scripture, and particularly the Words of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospel, concerning life after death, deepens Christian confidence in God if we well understood the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are delighted in the words, ‘I go to prepare a place for you’, but Lord Jesus said something that surpasses even this as He also said: ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you, I am going there to prepare a place for you’ as seen in John 14:2. Lord Jesus says, in effect: ‘If 80, 90 or even 100 years of life were all you could expect to live on earth, I would encourage you to make the most of the time you spend on this earth … but in my Father’s house….’ Take again the way both Lord Jesus and New Testament use the words ‘death’ and ‘sleep’ to describe the end of our existence here on earth. To the mourners standing around the lifeless body of a little girl, Lord Jesus said: ‘The child is not dead but asleep’ as seen in Mark 5:39. He used the same word when talking of the death of Lazarus: ‘…Lazarus has fallen asleep: but I am going there to wake him up’ as seen in John 11:11. In all of these explanations, it becomes very clear that Lord Jesus saw that man’s understanding of death is grossly wrong compared to what God actually means it to be and the role God uses it to play in the affairs of man, and also seeing that in addition to this misconception of the position and function of death in the recreative dispensation of God, man also fears death so much that if he man has his way, he will even try to avoid death which is why many people fears death and fights it whenever it comes instead of peacefully and joyfully welcoming it knowing that it is a pathway in God’s recreative processes that leads to either the place where Lord Jesus promised He goes to prepare for us (in His Father’s House) or to its opposite! Although I haven’t checked this, one commentator makes the daring assertion that in the New Testament, after Lord Jesus’ death and resurrection, it is believed that no True Christian was ever said to have died or will die; death-sleep according to our Lord Jesus Christ is safely keeping them until when He comes to resurrect them just as He came and resurrected dead Lazarus. He, this commentator claims that when man’s sin had done its utmost in nailing Christ to the tree (cross) and hiding His tortured body in a sepulcher (grave) sealed by a huge stone, man’s death-sin was still powerless to destroy the Life (God) which used His flesh. Remember the word ‘Sin unto death’, Lord Jesus proved that Death was dead –not He Lord Jesus! In other words, with His apparent death on the cross, our Lord Jesus Christ proved that He is actually LIFE that He claims while Death is the actual entity that has died, not He! Making it that Now Everything ‘in Christ’ is alive because of our Lord Jesus resurrection from death, and thus this vocabulary or Entity called Death has to be changed to fit the proven facts of our Lord Jesus’ Death and Resurrection on the Cross of Calvary. What we call ‘death’, and Lord Jesus called ‘falling asleep’, is simply the transition from one life to another –from earth’s muted colors to full glory of heaven; especially for true Christians, that is for all those who truly and sincerely believe in Him, trust in Him, rely on Him and adheres on Him and His Name! Remember that in His selection of disciples, He strongly used the word Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men for my Father’s House…to be filled with True Men instead of this counterfeit men that today fills the earth—My Father’s Garden—due to Adam and Eve’s disobedience in not following the clear true divine instructions given to them not to dabble into the forbidden fruit of the tree situated at the centre of the garden! When Adam and Eve Sinned, that is dabbled into the forbidden fruit by disobeying God’s command, it become inevitable that the earth will be peopled with a Mixture of Humans; those with the attributes of the True God and those with the attributes of the counterfeiter of God (Lucifer who is making himself God) this existence of the state of a mixture of people on earth makes it that man would no longer be able to differentiate between true man and the resembler of man which was Eve’s mistake then and even is still her mistake till date which is why you see broken homes everywhere today with the wrong people mixing with the right people on earth figured in our Lord’s parable of the Wheat and the Tares! And you remember that when His disciples asked if the tares are to be separated, He answered in the affirmative but added that the separation should not be done when both plants are still very young rather that they are better allowed to grow together until maturity when their fruits will clearly differentiate them for a better separation so that you will not mistakenly uproot a good plant thinking it is a tare or that by your process of uprooting the tare, the good plant will follow! So the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ kick-started that separation process and you saw what happened in His process of selecting disciples, when He said, have I not selected you twelve and one of you is a devil! What do you understand by that?

The theme continues: God cannot do for us anything greater than which He has already done in Christ. When we were dead in our sins His Holy Spirit moved into our lives, cut into our sinful nature, and now continually seeks to render inoperative the power and energy of sin. Does that mean it is not possible to sin again? No, but it is possible not to sin. Because God has made us alive with and in Christ, and when His life pulses through our soul and spirit as we believe in Him then freedom from sin is/becomes possible in our life. From this point on Paul launches and linked this phenomenon into a graphic description of salvation, explaining that God has not only made us alive in Christ but He has cancelled the written code that was against us, nailing it to His cross, making it possible that whosoever believes in Christ is freed from sin and is saved! What a beautiful word pictures structured to give hope that enables us to work hard to resist sin and boost our chances of being saved in Christ Jesus. To get a better understanding of this: Let us take the first phrase: ‘cancelled the written code’. ‘Written code’ means a handwritten note. It is the Greek term for an IOU –an acknowledgement of a debt and recognition that payment is obligatory or compulsory, with certain penalties being required if payment is not made or met. The word translated ‘cancelled’ means to sponge or wipe off. This is what our Lord Jesus in Christ has done with all our sins because we cannot do it for ourselves due to the weakness that sin has rendered us. The written code that condemned us as a result of our sins has been sponged off by the blood of Christ that was poured out on the cross. Once we believe everything about Jesus Christ: His birth, life, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension into heaven, it is as if sin had never been or occurred in our life before. We then live our life in the sinless Life of our Lord Jesus Christ and thus become acceptable before God Almighty! This is why believe, trust, adhere, and rely in our Lord Jesus Christ is all about! You can now see why it is very important that we believe and trust in everything concerning our Lord Jesus Christ. But Paul uses one more word picture: ‘He took it away, nailing it to the cross.’ In ancient times the record of a debt, after it had been paid, would sometimes be nailed to a public notice board so that everyone could see that the matter was settled. Our Lord has taken away the debt of sin we owed and nailed it to the most public place in the universe –the cross; so that both the physical and spiritual could see as it serves ‘to whom it may concern’. When our Lord Jesus Christ cried ‘it is finished’ as seen in John 19:30. He meant that the work of our redemption and salvation was complete. The cancelled note hangs on the cross for all to see. This is why if you are able to live a sinless life to a very recognizable level here on earth, whoever that is spiritual will see it in you with a glance and the person will start looking at you with some kind of amazement as to asking in his or her mind: what kind of person is this but you will not know except you are spiritual too! This explains the reason why I will always tell you that some times, people see us in the public place and shout because once you attain this state of being, unseen beings as life guide always move along with you like bodyguards. Let us from hence try and be living a sinless life so that the Christ in us, as a part of God in our life right from birth will grow in the same proportion with our carnal bodily growth, this is the only time we can live a life of body and soul (spirit) together because the spirit is meant to guide and direct the body aright otherwise everything that you do in life will always be in error!

We said last week that the fear of death is often composed of three elements, and we have considered the first of these –the fear of the physical act of dying. Today we look at the other two –the fear of finality and the fear of judgment. Christians have no need to fear that death is equivalent to extinction, for Lord Jesus has said: ‘I am going there to prepare a place for you …that you also may be where I am’ (v2-3). Dr W.E. Sangster tells how, as a young boy living in the heart of London, he went for a walk one day and got lost. A kindly policeman took him by the hand and led him to the police station. After waiting for what seemed like several hours in a dingy room, a stern officer came and took him down a dark passage where he saw his father waiting for him. Sangster said, ‘It will not be different, I think, when I die. At the end of the dark passage (of death) my (heavenly) Father will be waiting.’ Though we shrink in the frailty of our human nature from what some refer to as ‘the Grim Reaper’, death really has but one mission –to bring us into God’s more immediate Presence and give us an eternal place in our Father’s house (where there are many mansions) of which our Lord Jesus spoke about. So from hence do not fear death for it is not finality extinction for real human beings as many people thought rather it is a passageway for us to meet with our Lord Jesus! Finally, let us take the fear of judgment. Research conducted a few years ago showed that this fear of judgment is not as common as it was many years ago. Fewer people now attend Church, and those who do generally speaking, rarely hear a sermon on ‘future judgment’. No man or woman, however, who knows Christ need fear judgment. And why? Because, as Apostle Paul so beautifully puts it in his letter to the Romans: ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’. In Christ, condemnation and finality extinction is in the past tense. This is the reason why every man must Endeavour to have Christ in him or her life by all means!

We ended last week with the question: can we experience a release from the fear of death? Our answer was yes, we can! Many people, some Christians included, see death as an intruder. Gandhi, the great Indian leader and politician, started his model of the Swaraj movement to help people overcome the fear of death. Politics was only a minor part of his purpose. ‘My aim’, he said, ‘was the abandonment of the fear of death. So long as we let ourselves be influenced by the fear of death, we can never attain freedom.’ So the fear of death is one tool that Lucifer and his cohorts uses to hold people down as slaves instead of people seeing death as a gateway to freedom into a more better life in eternity especially for true Christians, they resorts to fear! When we come to look at the fear of death, it seems to consist of three elements: First, the fear of the physical act of dying. Second, the fear of finality. Third, the fear of judgment. Let’s look first at the fear of the physical act of dying. This is very real to some people. Perhaps they have suffered and know, through bitter experience, how pain lacerates and hurts. Doctors assure us that what some people call ‘the agony of death’ is felt much more by those who are watching than by the one who is passing away. Sir Frederick Treves, an eminent surgeon, said, ‘A last illness may be long, wearisome and painful, but the closing moments of it are, as a rule, free from suffering. There may appear to be a terrible struggle at the end, but of this struggle the subject is unconscious. It is the onlooker who bears the misery of it.’ Add to this natural phenomenon the supporting power of God’s never –failing grace, and it is possible to look even this physical aspect of death quietly in the face and say, ‘My enemy –you are not really the terror that you seem.’

We come now to the phrase which many commentators see as marking the halfway stage of this Psalm: ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.’ The scene these words conjure up in mind is that of the evening time, when the shepherd leads his sheep down the mountainside into the valley, where long flickering shadows lie across the trail. The sheep, because they are so timid and defenseless, are often frightened by this experience. But they follow the shepherd and are comforted. They will not fear evil because he is with them. Millions of Christians have been greatly comforted by this verse as they have passed through the dark valley of death. It underlines the fact that although death may appear to be a dark valley, it is not something to fear, but an experience through which one passes on the path to a more perfect life. The Good Shepherd is well aware of our fear of death and constantly seeks to reassure us that, for the Christian, death is but a dark valley opening into an eternity of endless delight. He has told us: ‘Surely I will be with you alway’ –yes, even in the valley of the shadow of death! What a comfort –what a consolation. Many Christians fail to enjoy life because of a morbid fear of death –it overshadows all they think and do. The message translates our text for today: ‘…. Free all who cover through life, scared to death of death.’ Note the fear in some of the words: ‘cower’, ‘scared to death’. Can there be a release from such fears? Thank God –there can! And there is! This is why we must make sure that we are in Christ all the days of our life without falling by the way side out of temptations!