Have you ever had a brush with death. By that I mean, have you ever faced a situation that caused you to look into the face of death and forced you to consider all its implications? It can be a frightening experience but also a very profitable one.

I had such an experience in 1984. I was in hospital recovering from a gall bladder operation. A few days after the op I was having a bath when I found that I could not get out of the bath because I was too weak.  I managed to pull the emergency cord and it took three nurses to get me out of the bath and back into bed. At that moment the surgeon who had done the operation came into the room. He took one look at me and began pumping me full of antibiotics. Apparently I had septicaemia ( blood poisoning). The surgeon did not leave me until everything had settled down.

The following day I asked him what happened in septicaemia. He told me that the danger is that the patient goes into a coma and the medical team are pulling him back from the brink of death. He said,‘ You nearly went into a coma”. Death had shook its wings at me but this time it was only a warning.

The warning shook me and I remembered some words I had read…‘ When it comes your turn to die, be sure that all you have to do is die”. In other words ,be ready. Making a will or planning the funeral is not being ready. If the Bible is right when it said that the wages of sin is death, then the only way to be ready is to get our sin dealt with. And the only one who can deal with sin is Jesus.

Lying in the hospital bed , I thanked God that I was a Christian. Jesus was my saviour and he had dealt with my sin on the cross. For me, as for all Christians, death had had lost its sting and the grave its victory. The joy and peace this gave me was indescribable . I thanked God for the doctor and nurses but more than that , I praised him for my saviour.

Has death fluttered its wings at you and have you seriously considered all its consequences?  Can you say, even if I walk through the valley of death of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil? That is only possible if the Lord is your shepherd.

The following rear we were in Aberystwyth on holiday when I had pains in the chest.  A friend of mine, Brian, took me to the local hospital for a check up. They did some tests and said that I had had a heart attack and I had to stay in hospital.  Brain went off to find Lorna my wife to give her the news. They came to the hospital to see me but had to wait awhile before this was possible. While they sat in the waiting room bells began to ring and staff were rushing around. Obviously an emergency was taking place. Eventually news filtered through to the waiting room that someone who had come in that morning with a heart attack had just died. Lorna looked at Brian and he looked at her, but neither of them spoke. They both thought it was me who had died. It was not, but it could have been.

Death had brushed past again and given me another warning. I realised that one day there would be no warning and death would mean business. It would call and I would have to go with it, but I would not go alone. In Psalm 23 David says, ‘ Even though I through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me’.  The Christian can say the same thing. Jesus , who promised never to leave me or forsake me will be with me even in death.

After a few days in hospital recovering I started to read a book that I had been reading for a while. It was Eifion Evans book on Daniel Rowlands. I had got as far as page 301 and I turned the page to 302 and read there a hymn by William Williams, Pantycelyn that I had never seen before. I dont think that words, other that scripture, had ever made such an impression on me.

Williams speaking of Jesus wrote.

To see thy face, beloved, makes my poor soul rejoice,
O’er all I’ve ever tasted, or ever  made my choice;22
When they all disappear, why should I grieve or pine
While to my gaze there opens the sight that Christ is mine?

He’s greater than his blessings, he’s greater than his grace,
Far greater than his actions, whatever you may trace;
I’ll plead for faith, gifts, cleansing; for these I’ll yearn quite sore,
But on him only, always, I’ll look and lean far more.

What is a heart attack or even death itself compared to a Christ like this. Thank God that Christianity is not a man made religion but a living, personal experience of the Lord Jesus Christ. My heart had another attack, this time of praise and thanks to God for such a saviour.

Jesus is God. God reveals himself in Scripture as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This is called the Trinity. There are not three separate Gods, but one God. This is a great mystery: none the less it is a fact.
Jesus was not just a good man, a healer, a teacher, a prophet. He was all of those things. But he is the eternal Son of God. He is divine. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ (John 1:1). The whole of the first chapter of John makes it clear that Jesus is ‘the Word’.    ‘The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us’ (verse 14).
The New Testament leaves us in no doubt as to who Jesus is. ‘He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created’ (Colossians 1:15, 16). ‘For God was pleased to have all his fulness dwell in him’ (Colossians 1:19). ‘For in Christ all the fulness of the Deity lives in bodily form’ (Colossians 2:9). ‘The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being’ (Hebrews 1:3).
In the Old Testament the prophet Isaiah was given a remarkable revelation of the glory and holiness of God. He sees and hears the angelic host crying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory’ (Isaiah 6:3). The prophet himself says, ‘My eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty’ (verse 5). In the New Testament the apostle John refers to this incident and says, ‘Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him’ (John 12:41).
Jesus is the holy God the angels spoke of. Jesus is the King, the Lord Almighty, whom Isaiah saw. Jesus is God.

THE REALITY OF DEATH

What is death? Is it merely the cessation of life in this mortal body after which there is no more? Most people believe it is because it is convenient for them to do so, but the Bible teaches that death is not the end. Death is a judgment. Man was created to live not die. So why does death exist? Why will we all die? When we die a doctor will write on our death certificate the cause of death. He may write heart failure, can- cer or whatever it is, but that will not be the cause of death. That is simply the means by which death has come. The doc- tor is giving a physical reason only for death, but God in his Word declares that the reason is not physical but theological. Death is the wages of sin. We die because we are all sinners.
Loraine Boettner in his book Immortality, tells us that the Bible speaks of death in three ways. Spiritual death is the separation of the soul from God. This is the condition all men and women are in because of their sin. Physical death is the separation of the soul from the body. This is what is gener- ally known as death and is also part of the penalty for sin. Eternal death is spiritual death made permanent.
Everyone accepts the reality of physical death but spiritual and therefore eternal death are not so readily accepted. There are several reasons for this. One is that physical death is tangible and can be seen, whereas spiritual and eternal death do not for most people have this reality. This is be- cause God is not taken seriously in their thinking and inter- pretation of life. Once the fact of God is rejected then all that matters is the here and now. Present happiness, prosperity and materialism becomes a reasonable philosophy and death is only a cessation of life with nothing after it. Therefore there is nothing to fear in death and in certain circumstances it may even be welcomed. But most people do fear death. When David says that in the experience of death he will fear no evil, he says so because this is unusual and most folk are terrified of death. Atheists, agnostics, rejecters of God, fear death. But why is this if death is only the end of physical life? Is it that such people’s beliefs are not strong enough to cope with the reality of death? Why is it that when people who never attend church die, their relatives want a vicar to stand over their coffin and bury them ‘in sure and certain hope of resurrection unto life eternal’? Is it perhaps that spiritual and eternal death are not myths after all?

The fact is that death ushers sinners into the presence of the holy God. We all have to stand before the judgment seat of God and give an account for our sin. Heaven and hell await us and without a Saviour we have no hope, therefore sinners ought to fear death. They have every reason to fear it.

The reality of death means the reality of Hell and the only answer to that is what Jesus did for us on the cross. Salvation was planned in heaven but it could not be accomplished in  heaven. Atonement for sin must be made to God by man’s representative. But there was no man qualified to do this, for all men are sinners. The eternal God became man, ‘so that by his death’ (Hebrews 2:14) he might accomplish salvation for his people. God became man so that as the man Jesus he could die for his people and purchase their salvation. Paul puts it like this in Romans 5: 17: ‘For if, by the trespass of the one man [Adam], death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.’

If we were to ask, ‘What is God like?’, the answer the Bible would give is that he is like Jesus –    holy, righteous, good, full of compassion and mercy)He loves sinners and stretches out his arms in love and grace to them, calling upon them to come to him(The sinner’s only hope of salvation rests on this great truth of who Jesus is, because God can only be known through the Lord Jesus Christ»

THINK ABOUT THIS

 

‘You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool; you can spit at him and kill him for a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to’ (C. S. Lewis).