The following message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. Well, I have just, I confess to you an incredible burden for this subject. I'm delighted but burdened to bring this to you. Would you join me and we'll open in prayer. Our God, we thank you that the gospel is big enough, is deep enough, is wide enough for death. We thank you that that last day has been answered because of the work of Jesus Christ. We thank you that the one we know, we thank you that the good shepherd that watches over us is greater than any dark valley, including the valley of the shadow of death. We are so grateful for a hope that is truly unique in this world. While many claim they are ready for death, you alone have prepared your people for death in whole, in truth and full. So we pray that you would give us the consolation and the courage of the gospel. Please help us now to consider deep and difficult subjects and make us the better for it. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. So brothers, I have a simple goal today, and we'll see how I accomplish it. See, maybe my first mistake was to let the whole church know that I intended to talk about death today. And I look at you and I say, oh, these are the brave ones, because here you are anyway. I started out reading this book, Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go, just for my own benefit. I read it beginning as just something to consult, then I started treating it as a devotional, and then I recognized I can't keep this to myself, and so I asked my wife if she would join me. We started for some time using this as a devotional as well, and I found in it that it was just utterly compelling. We're gonna go through this book today, but for the simple reason of I want you to have a spark placed on your heart that was placed on mine. And maybe I'm catching up to you, and maybe you've been considering this for a long time. But maybe you're just like me, maybe you're just like so many people in general, where if we ask ourselves, will I be ready for death? We're saying maybe. Now we have every confidence in our savior. We have every confidence that he in fact will be there for us on that last day, that he is the one who will meet us. But I imagine some of you are like me where you're thinking, I don't know how I'm gonna behave, how I'm going to handle myself when my time comes. I've met just a few people, a few brothers and sisters, who have looked at me and been able to say in such a way that it absolutely grabbed my attention that they said, yes, I am ready to die. They didn't say it with the worldly bravado. Many people have been willing to die in the world's history, and they've done it because they're courageous. They've done it because they believed in something, whatever the reason may be. But I looked at these brothers and sisters, and they were not speaking as merely those who are courageous in the worldly sense. They were speaking as those in faith. and it seized my attention. It seized my attention like if you were to ever go out on the ocean and find it perfectly and placidly still. You imagine the entire ocean brought to a calm repose and that's what it felt like to see a brother or sister who I looked at and I believed 100% when they said, yeah, I'm ready to die. and seeing them was inspiring, seeing them was convicting, and I found myself again asking that question, will I be ready to die? And as I was going through this book, this book, this is, this anthology, there's some 26 authors in this book, and I'll give you a brief rattle down of who they are. But as I was going through this book, I realized that even that was the wrong question. Will I be ready to die is this future kick the can down the road question. The question that this book taught me to start asking is not, will I be ready to die, but am I getting ready to die now? Am I ready to die today? And so you go through this book and there's like this, I imagine it like a choir. Have you ever seen a choir sing? A good choir, right? They break out into their parts across the stage and you find each of them is able to do something. Each of them is able to sing a part. that the others couldn't do. Sometimes they sing together and the power is just so high because of it. Sometimes they isolate because that specific person can sing that specific note. I look at this book with all these great men and women and I am just astounded by the gospel song they are able to sing both together and independently. And so these are the names you will see if you will join me on this journey, either independently, or I really would love to see you at Sunday school for the next month or so. These are the tour guides we will have of this deep subject. Names like Packer, Horton, Piper. Lloyd Jones, Warfield, Bailey, Alcorn, Sproul, Kuiper, Eves, Taylor, Keller, Owen, Baxter, Luther, Boston, is it Erikson Tata or Tata? You know, Johnny Erikson Tata. Calvin, Edwards, Dabney, Spurgeon, Sibbs. Oh my... If you could build yourself a dream team of men who would stand by you to prepare you for death, if you could prepare a team of people who would visit you in the hospital when you were dying, you would pick a few of these at least. And what you find is powerful testimony, but not just all of one note, not just all the same part. Some of them will speak with such incredible depths of compassion and encouragement, recognizing that men and women everywhere have a tremendous fear. of that death that is awaiting us all. But some of them are going to speak with this compelling authority. Some people, I mean, I picture Spurgeon. Do you picture it was ever the case that Spurgeon spoke up in a room and people ignored him? I don't. I picture this man with just such gravitas and authority that when he spoke, people listened. Even if they disagreed, they listened. There are people like Spurgeon who will speak to you and call you to courage and call you to play the man. There are people who will say things that are truly audacious because they are 100% different than what the world has taught us to think and feel. But what you will find across this book is this gospel choir singing with incredible biblical faithfulness. On the one hand, you will hear things that you have not heard. On the other, you will think, well, of course that's what it is. And that's what great teaching so often is. It's like connect the dots. You, after hearing it, you say, why didn't I think of that? Why wasn't I living like that? Why hadn't I connected those dots? And so what I decided I could do to try and give you a taste of this, and Lord willing, provoke in you what's been provoked in me, is I want to give you a flyby of this book. I wanna preach a sermon with other men's words. I wanna run you through just a taste, a sample of what it is you would get if you would be willing to commit to this journey with the rest of your church family. I went through with a highlighter as I was reading this book, and this thing just turned into a rainbow of highlighting. I thought, I just want to know these things. I want to have a safe spot where I can keep these notes. Brothers, I have 20 pages of notes now. I transcribed them all. I have 20 pages. I could not get it slimmer than that. This is a gold mine of biblical nuggets of wisdom, of gospel encouragement and truth. This book is tremendous, I cannot recommend it enough. If you will go on this journey, the first thing you're gonna find is a reality check. You're going to find a reality check. Time after time after time, these men are going to say, you do realize we are all going to die. every single one of us. And in our heads, we all have that, oh, you know, except if Jesus comes back, right? Because we're all sitting there thinking, it might work out for me that I don't have to be one of those who dies. But you know what? Most people die. And we might say, but I don't want to think about death. I think it's depressing. I think it's morbid. And to you, you know what J.I. Packer would say? I love it. Playing the ostrich is not gonna help. Sticking your head in the sand as death inevitably creeps closer and closer to you. He says it's the height of folly. It is the height of folly to say because this is an unpleasant subject, I don't want to talk about it. Packer will lead us through this survey of somehow death became bad form. Somehow it became impolite to bring up the inevitable future of all of humanity. But he said, don't you realize that Christians in the past actually believed in the art of dying well. They saw all of life, he says, as a preparation for leaving it behind. Think that's what the world's preaching? No, the world is preaching that life right now is all there is. They're preaching that this is the primary thing. Whatever comes next, well, we'll see, but this is what we've got. So seize the day, right? It is the eyes of faith that can say, no, you can't possibly call the temporary life that we have now the primary thing when the Lord is preparing for us eternal life that will never fade. He says, considering death, it's not just some morbid subject, it is realistic wisdom. No philosophy, he says, that cannot make sense of death can make sense of life either. No one's living will be right until these truths about death are anchored in his heart. Do you hear what he's saying? This is not simply about your deathbed. This is about your life every day until that deathbed. Packer is saying you cannot live the life you are meant to live before the Lord if you have not rightly considered death. Only when you know how to die can you know how to live. I brought in reinforcements today. The Martin Lloyd-Jones contributes to this. And while you may not have recognized him sitting where Bob is sitting right now, that's actually Martin Lloyd-Jones, who has said he is willing to read just one quote from Martin Lloyd-Jones' section. Would you, brother? And do you mind if I draw near so the microphone can hear you? I'd just like you to know that I had absolutely no intention of speaking to you today, but due to God's miraculous and marvelous providence, here I stand. My governing thought is that I am a pilgrim and a stranger in this world, going on to God. So I spend my time in thinking of my soul and my destiny. I do not get annoyed when anyone, anybody faces me with the fact of death, because I remind myself of it day by day. I realize that this is the one thing I have to start with and that I am a fool if I do not. Amen. Thank you, brother. You will find a reality check if you will go on this journey, but you will find fuel for your fight. It's not simply great men smacking you upside the head saying, why aren't you thinking like I am thinking? You will find fuel for your fight. Our departed brother, R.C. Sproul, contributed to this book, which really just sort of strikes a soft spot in my heart since it's only been two months since he graduated, we'll say. And you can picture Sproul with all his passion looking at you in the eye and saying, death is a divine appointment. It is part of God's purpose in our lives. God calls each person to die. He goes on and he tells this story. He tells the story of how his father died. His father had had a stroke and for some years was just getting worse and worse and worse. And Sproul will reflect in this just heart-wrenching moment how his father died well. And Sproul, for his part, he said he was ashamed of how he handled his father's dying. But what he saw in his father, his father pulled him close and he said those famous words, I have fought the fight, I have run the race, I have kept the faith. Sproul would see that and he would say, after he sort of repented of how he shamefully handled that death, he said, I saw how my dad died, now I want to run my race well. Brothers, don't you want to have a testimony that leaves those who see you dying wanting to run their race well? And doesn't it grip your heart to think that when our brother, R.C. Sproul, was dying in the hospital, he was living out the cumulative result of that time when he saw his father die well? If he died well, it's because he saw how dying well looked, and he made sure that he would have that kind of testimony also. Randy Alcorn joins the conversation, joins it to say, so how? How are we actually going to do this? Because if we all look ahead, if we fast forward to that day, whenever it is, the car accident or the cancer, wherever we are, when we are done, we don't want to be those men who are riddled by guilt. and regret. Not a single one of us wants that. That sounds like one of the greatest burdens you could bear on that last day. And Alcorn takes that subject up. He says, you don't want that, so how? How today are you going to live in such a way that you can die with few regrets? And so you have a man very practically taking on the challenge to say, every day we are becoming someone. The question is who? You are going to be what you are now becoming. And so he prepares us to live a life of daily choices, of daily choosing what is best, the things that are found in the Lord, of seeing in that perspective a willingness to say, I don't need the just good things, I want the best things. I want the things that will leave me on that last day in peace. So he leaves it with a question. Let's ask ourselves, when our life here is over, what would we wish we had done less of and more of? And as soon as you hear a question like that, as a Christian, you say, oh, that's the right question, isn't it? But are we living according to that kind of question? John Eve steps in, he was a recent preacher, and there he is three months from his death. He had been battling with cancer, and he's looking at his congregation, and he's trying to give them the wisdom that Lord has given him through all his suffering as he has died. And you imagine, it's three months, three months before he dies, he's looking in his congregation and he says this, he says, life is not about us. Life is about Jesus. Life is about our witness for Him in this world. And you picture Him on His way out saying, and it has taken me a lifetime to get my mind around this fundamental truth. He says, contrary to popular belief, God does not place us on the sidelines of life when we walk through hardship. Rather, he takes us to the center of the playing field so that the world can watch and observe his faithfulness in our lives. Man after man after man, they exhort us to prepare now, no matter how old you are, to prepare now for the testimony that we are going to leave behind. And all of these men just saturated in the gospel. And you find that the gospels, the gospel has this overwhelming answer to the fear of death. Because the truth is in every one of us, there is something that recoils from death because we say, I don't want that. I'm not meant to shut down. We can still feel God's design on us that says, I want to last, I want to be eternal. And so man after man also steps up to bolster our courage with the encouragement of the gospel. John Owen, by the way, if you read this book, you will find for every sort of century back you go, you need to slow down as you're reading. because they are saying so much. John Owen steps up and he tells us about the power of specific Christian hope. He says, you can tell people there's a better life ahead. You can tell them that something good lies on the other side, and that's a general hope. And so often that's what we've settled for. But when the times of despair come, when the times of discouragement come, general hope is going to wilt. General hope will not hold you up when the storm is crashing down on you. Owen says hope is this glorious grace, but so many Christian men, they don't actually take advantage of it. And the reason they don't, the reason they don't make use of this glorious grace from God is because they have not set their hearts and their minds to think specifically about the hopes that have been promised us. He says, we need specific hope. We need to meditate on eternity, on being united with our savior, on the death of our sin, never to sin ever again. We need hope tattooed on our hearts, and that is how we will persevere. Richard Baxter steps up. Oh man, I think the whole book is worth buying just for Baxter's contribution to it. My heart soared to read what he was saying. He says, nothing will more powerfully overcome both the poison and the fears of death than the believing thoughts of Christ who triumphed over it. And so there he goes through all these remedies to this poison, remedies to this fear. And I offer you just a couple, because I don't want to steal his thunder. But on the one hand, he's going to say, shall we be afraid to follow into death where the saints of all generations have gone before us? and shall the company of our best and most and happiest friends be no inducement to us. He visualizes by faith that there's this long progression of the saints and there they are, they have all passed through that veil and by faith we know they have passed through and they have found life on the other side. They have found their savior on the other side. They have persevered and they have found their reward. And he's saying, is there anyone that you love and you miss, that you respect, that you desire to be with again? Don't you realize they're on the other side, waiting for you on the other side? Will that not be an incentive for you to be willing to pass through that veil too? He says, is it not desirable to you to sin no more? How many of us week after week are just reaping the fruit of saying, oh God, I hate my sin. I can't believe I'm still like this. I can't believe I'm still doing this. Baxter says, is it not desirable for you to sin no more and to be perfect in holiness? You are here every day lamenting your darkness, your unbelief, your estrangement from God and your lack of love to Him. How often have you prayed for a cure of all of this? And now would you not have it when God would give it to you? Spurgeon steps up, and Spurgeon, with all that authority and audacity, just dressed me down a bit. Because Spurgeon can say things like, if I said them to you, you might be tempted to just punch me. If Spurgeon said it to you, you'd say, yes, sir, right? Man, hear what he said, and hear what only you feel like he could say. You say that you cannot abide the thought of death? Then you greatly need it. Your shrinking from thinking of death proves that you are not in a right state of mind. or else you would take it into due consideration without reluctancy. We hear that and you're like, what are you talking about? Crazy people wanna think about dying. Crazy people wanna die. It is perfectly sane to not wanna die. Spurgeon looks at you and says, if you're reluctant, it shows you are not in a right state of mind. He says, you have something yet to learn. If you are a Christian and yet are not prepared to die, you need to reach a higher state of grace and attain to a firmer and more forceful faith. That you are as yet a babe in grace is clear from your admission that to depart and be with Christ does not seem to be a better thing for you than to abide in the flesh. He says, let us live as dying men, among dying men, and then we shall truly live. Again, one of these great men bringing us back to the truth that if you will consider death rightly, consider death in faith, that you are not simply preparing for one day somewhere down the road, you are preparing the rest of your life to be lived truly. You will find in this book, man after man, commending to you, look at what is to come. Jonathan Edwards lends his thorough weight to this. When he says, echoing Ecclesiastes 7 verse 1, that the day of a godly man's death is better than his birth. You say, what are you talking about? What he's talking about, how is the day of Agatheman's death better than his birth? He says, don't you realize everything, literally everything gets gloriously better when you die. And he goes through, like I said, without thoroughness. You go to a better world to enjoy a better liberty, to live with better inhabitants, to enjoy better company, to have a better light showing you better things. You go to a better parent. You go to a better inheritance than any earthly person ever was born to. He says, just like what Brian was just teaching, "'Tis a world that is filled with the boundless love of God, which does, as a river of life, satisfy all the inhabitants thereof." This is his conclusion, echoing down the years. He says, I would urge you to get into such a state that the day of your death may be so to you. That is his dying wish to you. The book concludes with Richard Sibbes and he just knocks it out of the park. He concludes it and I will let him do basically all the concluding from here. He says, death is ours and for our good. Death does us more good than all the friends we have in the world. It determines and ends all our misery and sin. And it is the suburbs of heaven. It lets us into the joys above. And so he says to die well is the action of the whole life. He never dies well for the most part that dies not daily. If we desire to end our days in joy and comfort, let us now lay the foundation of a comfortable death. Let me say that for you again. If we desire to end our days in joy and comfort, let us now lay the foundation of a comfortable death. Brothers, let us, let the brave few who showed up on this cold morning, prepare such a testimony. Brothers, I want for me, and as your brother, I want for you, and as your pastor, I want for you to have such a testimony that those who see you die will be drawn to the Savior who saved you, who upheld you, who gave you a hope that conquered all the fears of death. I want you to have that testimony. I, with all of my being, want to have that testimony. How are we gonna get there? Let us find the strength and the comfort that come from facing death in faith. Let the gospel unfold itself for all its beautiful and glorious truth to you because the truth of the gospel is that we have a savior who did not simply teach us how to live better, he conquered death. He conquered death, child of God, so that you need not fear it anymore. He went ahead to prepare a place for you so you could know what was coming on the other side. He died to give you a hope unlike all the rest of the world. He died to give you a hope that was unique, true, whole, enduring. So from today to that last day, whenever our last day is, Brothers, let us be found ready. Would you pray with me? Our God, what a gospel. We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for him who is sheer life, who is greater than death, who conquered death, and who gave us people who deserve death, a hope on the other side, a hope of a life that can't be taken from us. Lord, as your children, we pray that we would reap the benefits of our inheritance, of the hope that Christ died for. Lord, we want to be those with a testimony. We want to be those who on the last day do not have regret and bitterness be our defining characteristic. Lord, on that last day, we want to be living in the faith that you have given us that has endured us every day of our lives and will most certainly endure on that last day. Father, we thank you for the gospel and now we pray that you would drive it home for us to banish the fear of death and to give us the strength and the faith to live well. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. We hope that you were edified by this message. For additional sermons as well as information on giving to the ministry of Grace Community Church, please visit us online at gracenevada.com. That's gracenevada.com.