Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2008 : March 30, 2008

Theme: Death's Door Is Life's Gate - in Christ

Church year occasion: Easter 2

This morning I want you to be an actor in a movie. I want you to come up with some of the dialog. Here's the scene. It's a classic "Good Guys against the Bad Guys" type of movie, and you are one of the two good guys. But the bad guys are chasing you and your good-guy friend, and they have guns. And you don't. So what do you do? You run for your life, of course. Bullets are flying all around and it seems impossible that you can escape, but then you see the light at the end of the tunnel -- you're almost safe, if you can only make it a little farther. But then just as you are almost in the clear, you turn back and see that your friend has been shot. He won't make it another two feet without help. So what heroic thing does your good-guy friend say to you as he is almost dead and the bad guys are closing in? Any ideas? How about: "Go on without me. I'll hold them off so you can get away. I'm at Death's door anyway." Then you have to make a decision: Do you leave your friend behind where he will certainly die, or do you do the heroic thing and try to save him, thus almost ensuring that both of you will die?

Which of the two good guys do you relate to more, the one who's at Death's door or the one having to make a decision to save him? Like it or not, each and every one of us some day will stand before Death's door with nowhere else to go but through it. How will we face it? Heroically, bravely, without fear? Or screaming and crying, trying any way we can to avoid it? Really it all depends on what happens when we go through that door. But here's the catch: We can't go through and then come back. Once we walk through that door, it closes shut behind us, and there's no knob or handle on the other side. There's no second chance to figure out what's on the other side, so we better be right about it when we die.

And that's where Jesus comes in. No one alive today has ever gone through that door and come back except for one man: Jesus Christ. So let's learn from the Apostle Peter as he tells us what happened to Jesus when he went through Death's door, and what we can expect when we go through that door ourselves.

The Apostle Peter spoke the words of today's text to Jews in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, one of the three major festivals of the Jews. Jews from all over the world had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the wheat harvest, acknowledging that all their food and everything they had was a gift from the Lord. It happened 50 days after the Sabbath of Passover. And only when Jesus died and rose again during the Passover and then poured out the Holy Spirit on the New Testament Church on the Day of Pentecost, do we finally see the complete significance of these festivals. God saw to it that when Jesus died and rose from the dead and when the Holy Spirit began to work through the apostles to spread that message to the world, there would be Jews from all over the world in Jerusalem.

Peter said, "Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know." How did God show that Jesus wasn't just an ordinary man? By the many miracles he performed. What were some of those miracles? He healed people, turned water into wine, walked on water, raised people from the dead, multiplied a few loaves and fish to feed over 5000 men, and later 4000 as well, and forgave sins. What did those miracles show Jesus to be? At the very least they showed that he was sent by God. But there was more to Jesus. While many prophets and even false prophets had done supernatural things before (like God changing Moses' staff into a snake and the magicians of Pharaoh using the devil's power to turn their staves into snakes as well), Jesus was different. Jesus did them to show who he was -- the promised Savior and God the Son himself. And Peter says the people saw these miracles -- they could not deny them. Even Jesus' enemies had to admit that he was performing miracles.

But Jesus' enemies didn't want a Savior. They didn't think they needed a Savior. As a result, Peter says, "[Jesus] was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross." The people Peter was speaking to, men of Israel, were just as guilty as their leaders were in Jesus' death. They had cried, "Crucify him!" They had said, "Let his blood be on us and on our children." They couldn't find an excuse by saying that Roman soldiers were really the ones who crucified Jesus. The nation as a whole had blood on their hands. Peter was accusing the Jews of doing the unthinkable: murdering the very Son of God, the promised Savior. What a terrible accusation to make! The Jews had been waiting for Messiah for centuries; in fact, since the first sin, believers had been waiting for the Savior to come. And then when he did come to God's chosen people, they crucified him! They had the blood of the Anointed One on their hands.

But our hands are just as covered with Jesus' blood as any of theirs. Haven't we followed the crowd many times as well? When someone was being picked on, did we stand up for that person or did we let it happen? Did we even join in the ridicule ourselves? Have we always lent a helping hand to those who are hungry or homeless or those who are simply in need of encouragement? Or did we come up with excuse after excuse of why we were too busy to help them? When we had an opportunity to hear and study God's word of life, did we take that opportunity, or did we think that listening to God's word wasn't as important as TV or sleep or some other excuse? The Jews were part of the crowd that crucified Jesus, and we were part of that crowd as well, because Jesus said, "Whatever you've failed to do for the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you've failed to do for me." And because of it, we will one day face Death's door because God's word tells us that "the wages of sin is death." And the Bible tells us all too well what is beyond that door for sinners: an eternity of pain and agony as those guilty of sin are punished for their sins. We were like that one who had been shot and was facing certain death -- eternal death.

But thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ! He was the one who had the choice of either leaving us where we fell after being shot through with Satan's deadly arrows (which is what we deserved) or saving us. And, of course, God chose to do the latter. But our situation in sin was quite a bit different than just being wounded and left for dead. We were dead, as Paul says, "But as for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins." So, spiritually, we were already dead. Now who in their right mind would want to come back and try to save someone who was already dead? Jesus would. In fact, he did much more than just pick us up on his shoulders and carry us away from danger of sin and hell that surrounded us. Jesus actually came back for us and fought all our enemies head on, knowing that by doing so he would lose his own life. But by doing so, he gave us life. Really, he raised us from the dead spiritually. And the way we can be sure of that is because he rose from the dead himself. Peter says, "But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him." The only thing that was on the other side of the door when we died was eternal punishment for every sin we've committed. But Jesus walked through Death's door that we should have walked through, and suffered that punishment for us. The punishment has been paid in full. It is finished. How do we know that? Jesus walked back through that door alive and glorious on Easter Sunday morning. Now, instead of Death's door holding all kinds of pain and misery and mystery for us, Jesus has changed what is on the other side of that door for those who believe in him. Now, when we someday go through Death's door, we will be in heaven. Death's door has become Life's gate in Christ. Because of Christ, we will live forever.

David foretold it when Jesus spoke through him in Psalm 16: "You will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay." David's body had been buried in Jerusalem. They could see his remains if they wanted to. But no one could show Jesus' remains, because he never decayed. He rose from death. He lives. And as a result, we can say the same thing David said, "I saw the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will live in hope, because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence."

There are many religions in this world. They all have their own idea of what happens when a person faces Death's door -- you either go to some happy place or you get reincarnated or you get reabsorbed into God or you go to a place of torment or you simply cease to exist. And whatever you believe will determine how you live your life before you reach that door. But those who look to Christ as their Savior have a different view. We trust the only one who went through Death's door and then came back again. He assured us he paid the price for our sins. Now we aren't part of the crowd. Now we want to stick out. We want to serve Jesus with every moment of our lives, with the entire fabric of our being. We want people to know who he is and what he's done for us and also for them. We want to help others who need our help, because by doing so Jesus says we are actually helping him. Through faith in Jesus, we, too, have gone through Death's door and have come back, to a new life -- the life of a child of God and heir of heaven. There are no questions about what lies behind that door for those who are in Christ. And as a result, only two questions remain:

1) How many days do you have before you face Death's door which has been turned into the Gate to eternal life? And,
2) What are you doing with those days?

Amen.