then if you will, to that passage that we read just a moment ago in the Gospel of John. There in chapter eight, we find, well, we find a lot of actually very bold and very clear statements that there in verse 27, they understood not that he spake to them of the Father, amazes us, doesn't it? Could they not see? Could they not hear rightly what was so plain and so evidently made abundantly clear to them? And yet not. And to those people there in Jerusalem, that memorable occasion, the Lord there in the treasury and the temple and speaking to them, we have a very, very strong statement among many. And it's the one in verse 21 that I draw your attention to, and it's actually repeated in verse 24. It is, are you dying in your sins? That's the statement he makes to these people. They were speaking to him, remonstrating with him. And he puts it to them that unless they believe in him, words of verse 24, unless something happens to them, they will be looking in vain, and they will not be finding him, and instead, they'll be dying in their sins. Then verse 21, and it's there again, repeated in verse 24. That's the fact. And he's simply declaring to them the fact. And he's not declaring to them something that is shrouded in uncertainty or that really he's not qualified to say. He's saying, in fact, he's eminently qualified to say it because he's come from above and he's not from beneath, that these people are part of the fallen world. He's actually come from heaven. And if he can announce such things, pronounce such things about, well, not only these people, but us, and speak about the human condition, declare of it that actually, you're in your sins. then that is something weighty, isn't it? That's something very weighty. And that's something that we have to give proper consideration to this morning. And that's why the sermon title is a question. Are you dying in your sins? Is that true of you? I look out at you there and some names and recognize some faces too from the past there. And like I say, I could put a few names to faces. But I can't read your heart. And I can't say, I see you. Oh, I see you. You're dying in your sins. You have to ask yourself that. And you have to search your heart. And though the Lord Jesus Christ spoke this on this occasion here, it was meant for us too today. It's held here, bound here in the Word of God, so that you and I can read it afresh, that preachers can come and take this passage and try the weight and the depth of the material here, try to unfold some of it to our understanding this morning. It is, for you, I can't tell, I see the faces and I see some of the names and people, but I don't know your heart. You must search it, because what the Lord said to those people there is for us to hear today, this morning. And there's the question, are you dying in your sins? So here's a wonder, my first Henny, he speaks to us still, doesn't he? Our Lord Jesus Christ speaks to us still, and oh, this truth that is here in this passage. You can land on any one verse there. Sermon material aplenty. It speaks, because this book is meant to speak, isn't it? Unique. It is without parallel. And it was never meant to have any rival. It's meant to have an authority that commands my attention and yours, that there is a burden upon a preacher to teach according to what is written here, because this is the Word of God. And whether it is Jesus Christ, the Son of God Himself speaking it, or somebody else speaking it, or a narrative, we may not even know who composed that narrative. but it's in this book, and therefore it is all of it, is inspired, spoken by God, and for us to consider. Though now God sends preachers, doesn't he? There is this book, inspired, and the Holy Spirit to help us to read and understand it, to weigh it, to compare scripture with scripture, God also sends preachers, doesn't he, to speak, preaching. Oh, pray for your pastor having a little bit of a break. He's been down to Wales, I think he's heading up to, he's coming up towards our way, the East Midlands, a bit beyond South Yorkshire there. Don't you pray for him. It's a gift given to this local church. bring the word of God, then searchable riches of Christ. Here's the thing, we're not inspired, we don't have direct revelation, as did prophets and apostles of old. And yet to us is given to unfold the riches of this Word. God still speaks. God still speaks when Scripture is upheld and the Spirit of God is at work. God has sent a man, a preacher, to come and to bring that Word of God. He still speaks. Don't think that, ah, this is done, finished. This is of some ancient provenance. This has no place today. Friend, it has a big place, and it's meant to. It's meant to continue, to stir. Do you not find, I don't know where you are, perhaps you're visiting, you're new to some of these things and the hymns that we sing and these Bible readings, but do you not find that there's something different about this book? Something very different about Jesus Christ when it's his word that we're reading in this book. Do you not find that it's provocative? It was here, these people were well and truly stirred. You see, the Christian message, when it's properly announced, is not there just to send us to sleep or just to give us a nice sort of warm and comforting thought, the kind of thought for the day kind of thing. No, this word here, we can use this, put it like this, it's quite annoying. Why? It's very worrying. Because it's talking about eternity, isn't it? It's talking about heaven. It's talking about hell. It's talking about death. It's talking about life. It's talking about us and asking us such things as we're asking ourselves this morning, are we dying in our sins? It's worrying. You mean we could be? You mean this could be true? Yes. Others get rather annoyed at that. How can that be? We're modern people. We've got technology. We've got science. We follow the science, don't we? Or do we just? Well, friend, pause and ask a question of yourself here. Really? Do you know better than what God has given here? You sit as judge over this, you sit as some authority, when here is this book that has outlived ages, empires have come, empires have gone, kings have come, kings have gone, wise teachers have been buried and have finished, and the word of God endures forever. Here we are still taking these words, preaching these words, and they're still coming to us with compelling power and authority. And we don't hear this anywhere else. We don't read this anywhere else. This is different. This is something from somewhere else addressing us with an authority and a conviction and some compelling power. God still speaks, just as he spoke here through his son on this famous occasion in Jerusalem, one of many famous occasions in Jerusalem and elsewhere, when his words, his actions were so clear, tangible, palpable. Yes, he was still. So friend, are you listening this morning? Are you listening? Or really, are we having to compete with some alternative voice in your head? Some alternative authority that at the moment is holding you? I noticed as we read on, it was talking about being slaves, wasn't it? Being held, being set free. Well, it may be that that's your need, actually. That there's some other narrative, some other kind of controlling thought that's stopping you, holding you, and preventing light, if you like, from reaching you, or think. Who are you listening to? What are you listening to? What at the end of the day is your authority? What do you bow to, submit to, hold up as that thing which commands your attention? Because I say to you, it's not the word of God. And it's not the things that Christ came to reveal that are missing the way. And in fact, you're dying in your sins. Are you listening? My second heading, the message hasn't changed. This message hasn't changed. And this statement, That's unless you know the Son of God, if you're not believing in Him, if you're seeking other things or another Christ, in fact, then you're dying in your sins. Poorly stated, authoritatively stated, and it hasn't changed. I've hinted at that. Here are the advances, we'll call them that, let's be generous, the advances that mankind has made. Oh yes. Technology, medical science, certainly great progress, advances have been made. Understanding, at least in some measure, of the universe above and the expanse of it. Yes. And what we're made of and bodies and cells and all the complexity and the wonder of that. Yes, yes, we've moved beyond. We've really made advances. I'm sure we have. But for all of that, the fundamental issues remain the same. The fundamental questions have not gone away. And what the Lord Jesus Christ came to do, to say, to offer, to bring to our full attention and to do it most supremely when he goes to the cross to die, when he talks there about him dying for our sins and him being lifted up, then he's talking about the cross. That message has not changed. Its power hasn't changed. Its relevance hasn't changed. Because just as those people in that day there were dying in their sins, so friends today, here in Cheltenham, up in Derbyshire where I've come from, People, lots of them sadly, are dying in their sins and the message of hope, the message of relevance to them has not changed. It's the same message about the same Lord Jesus Christ. It's about the same cross upon which he died and then that he rose again and he's alive forevermore. It's all of that. And it hasn't changed. Oh, how people try to say it has. How they try to say, well, he never said it. No, he never said those things. It's just the invention of men. Some invention to manage to over a period of thousands of years to make sure all the parts sort of perfectly fit together and what's being said at the end is exactly what's being said at the beginning and every part in between. That is some clever invention of man that is. That's impossible. This is divine. This is unusual and exceptional. It was said, all the things that are here, they were said. Or that somehow, when our Lord Jesus Christ said the things that he did, somehow he never meant them. He never meant them. And when he's being, well he is, isn't he? Every time serious about what he says. Every word is a weighty word. But that we would say, no, but he didn't mean it. Don't panic. Worrying these things eternity, heaven, hell, dying in your sins. Don't worry. And I'm afraid church men, church women, often rush to try to reassure you, no, no, don't hear this. Let me help you understand it. And they help you understand it by actually totally misunderstanding it, changing it, putting different words, different meanings into the mouth of our Savior over and against the true and the very crystal clear meaning that he gave. They run a sort of interference there that distracts you away, a bit of gaslighting or something there that you think you're seeing it clear. No, you're not. This is what it's saying. Distract you away, distract you away. Friends, don't be distracted. He meant it. Every word of it, he meant it. He said it. He said it seriously. And he said it to people so that they could hear and understand, do something about it, and be saved from their sins. It was kindness, it was mercy that brought every of these solid and serious words from his gracious lips that proceeded from them. It was compassion, that we shouldn't be ignorant and we shouldn't live in a fool's paradise and persuade ourselves all is well, all is well, or have church leaders persuade us all is well. He didn't mean that there, or he never wrote it in the first place. and cheat you of what you could have, and take away from you this very person who here in these words speaks to us. The message hasn't changed, that we're dying in our sins. Sin, death, death, sin, they belong together. Death is the outcome of our first parent's disobedience, their sin, their breaking of the law of God. and it incurred death, death for them. And sure, we know about death. Some family members here have had a fair few funerals to have to attend over these last few months. Physical death, sure, physical death. But it's more than that. Death, death, is actually something that we live, a living death. That seems a contradiction of terms, doesn't it? But death, that's a funeral, right? They walk up at Chosen Hill, there was a last night, all the gravestones there, and there we are, there's the evidence of physical death. Yes, but that's in a way is just the symptom of the underlying problem, which is a moral problem and a spiritual problem. that we are separated from God. That's what sin is. That's what it's done. Sin is the result of that separation. It's the cause of that separation. Death is all bound up within that. And we're living a death at the moment if we do not know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. We're living a death. because death is to be in a state of not knowing God, of being apart from him, not having the life-giving spiritual power that is there when a flesh and blood human being, but now new nature, born again, is in relationship with this God of immense glory, this God who has no beginning, no end, who is the Ancient of Days, who has power that is limitless, but with whom we can have friendship, relationship. That is life. And the opposite is death. You could be the fittest person that there is. You could be able to run for miles, hardly break sweat. You could have intelligence that you can turn your mind to anything, science, social sciences, the arts, and it just comes as easily as anything to you. You could be the most entertaining company to be in. You've got stories and anecdotes. You know something about everything. Name a place you've been there. That's where you should eat if you go to that place. Just a mine of information. You can be dead in your sins. Where it counts, you're dead. So much intelligence, so much joie de vivre, so much happening, and yet, where it counts, nothing happens. It's dead. and it's inert because your soul is not alive and in relationship with God. You're dead in your sins. And that's sin and death. Death and sin are just locked in together. And so death is confirmed, that state of our being under the judgment of God apart from God is met with then when we die physically. And everything that leads up to that, unless we know Christ, unless we're born again in the Spirit, is death. It's death where it counts, because there's no response to God. There is no love for Christ. There is no willingness to submit to his law. Instead, there's enmity, and opposition, and dullness, and reasons why we won't, and questions about it, and hurling back this truth, back in the face of God. That tells us, well, that's what sin does. And that tells us, that's what death looks like. It's an empathy. It's a lawlessness. It's an unwillingness. And friend, if those things are still true of you, essentially true of you, then the word of God says, you're dying in your sins, you're dead in your sins, you're dead in your sins and your trespasses. You need actually to be made alive. would help from under all of that misery and that bondage. So it continues. It's the thing. It continues beyond the grave. That's why in a way where physical death might to you and me look very final, very conclusive, it's not. There's more. and what lies beyond the grave. I ask you, does your authority, as it were, whoever you listen to, do they have knowledge that goes beyond the grave? This book does. What it tells us is this. Yes, there can be a second death. There can be a second death. Death as life ongoing, apart from God, without God, for eternity. And that is very weighty. It's called hell. That's hell. That is where when Christ returns and we are judged, each of us, for our sins, and if we haven't got life, if we haven't responded to God in this life, then that's it. And we're confirmed to be dead. That though there we are, life, thoughts and we have intelligence and will and every part of what it means to kind of be a human being but because essentially we're dead we have no response to God that is confirmed and we're told to depart leave you you and even if we have a semblance of religion as people did in those days they cast out demons in your name and we prophesied in your name as they depart from you lawless ones knew you. You weren't alive. You did some religious things. You had some religious speak, but you weren't actually alive. So you now stay dead. You go away from me. Second death, which is hell and going and misery and happiness, frustration, sense of what you've lost and what you've missed, that here he was just as in this day here. And the Lord said, well, you'll seek me, but you won't find me. You will look for me, but I won't be there. It's too late. I've gone. I've left. The Bible is no longer there for you. The preachers are no longer there for you. And then at the judgment throne. Too late. Don't look for me there to be able to help you. I can't, and I won't. You have borne your judgment, carried it to the judgment throne, and you must carry it on, being in a state of death, a living, breathing death, a thinking, reasoning death, but which is life without God, life in sin, life which is death. Third heading, recognize this moment. Recognize this moment. you and actually, yeah, you know you do not know this Christ, that you haven't had your sin forgiven, that you are in a state of perplexity, fear, concern, that you know you are adrift, you are spiritually dead under the judgment of God. Recognize the moment. Recognize the moment. You see, when our Lord came to Jerusalem, it wasn't so that he could destroy the people and bring, as it were, the final judgment there to be brought down upon them. He came in peace. He came in love. And he came to speak to such people as were dead in their sins, to warn them, well, if you look for me, after I have gone, after I have been removed from you, you won't find me. But of course, if you look for me now, you will. And if you put your faith in me now, you will have life. What that means, oh, the reversal of what sin and death are, what that means is immense. This is true freedom. This is a reality bursting into the very state of our being to touch the very core of who we are. and to tell us I've been doing school assemblies with looking at the Christian gospel we say it turns you upside down actually or if you like turns you inside out it's a revolution and a wonderful one and one when the spirit of God is at work in us we are only too happy to receive We're only too happy to submit. Oh, we're so proud, aren't we? We want to be our own person. We want to work it out our way. Oh, that's sin, friends. That's a sign we're dead. And it's a sign of life when we stop. and we admit that we are apart from God and that we deserve the wrath to come, that we have offended against him and that something needs to change. Something needs to happen to us to bring us into a fit state to meet God. And that's where we can see how wonderful the cross on which our Lord died, that he died. And that's a big word to say that he died. Yeah, we know he died physically and they took him down off the cross and the women saw his body being taken to this new tomb of Joseph of Arimathea and that there the body was put. Well, for three days it was put. After he then rose again from the dead. Sure, that death. There's so much more happening before that physical death, so much that he was bearing, that the scripture is very sparing in the detail because it's so deep, so actually horrific, so all-consuming, all-encompassing. It's just engulfed our Savior. because that was the wrath of God. Wrath in which he fully agreed, because remember, he's God as well. He's man, but also God. And he wasn't on the cross there angrily, reluctantly, not sort of thinking, well, I didn't think it'd be like this. He knew exactly what it would be like. That's why he wept and sweat blood in the Garden of Gethsemane before it, because he knew what it would be. He would have to bear the wrath of God, which he fully agreed and concurred, and do it on behalf of other people. The end of sin. but he was doing it for those who were dying in their sins. He would die for their sins. He would be the one who would taste death to know what it means to have darkness thrust upon us, to lose fellowship with God, to have withdrawn from us even the kind favours we enjoy at the moment, the sun that shines, the rain that falls, the birds that sing, for Christian or non-Christian. That's the favour of God. The favour of God in its entirety was removed from him as he bore the sin of people. thing that he was doing, not simply to make some public spectacle, make some statement, not quite sure what it might have been. No, it was precisely this, to die for such people as were dying in their sins, so that those people now have a true savior to seek. a savior who has laid down his life for their sakes, one who so loved the world that he came and did that very thing. And we have the evidence that it was working and was vindicated by being raised from the dead. That message hasn't changed, God, because it's good news. And it means today that you can have life in Christ. Turn from your sin. Turn from your rebellion. Look at yourself. Acknowledge, I am dead. There is no love for God. There's no love for my neighbour here. I am wrecked with pride. I am pulled down by selfishness. I am an idolater. There are so many other more things I put ahead of the Bible. I'm undone." Because then you can see a need of a savior. Here he is, speaking here in Jerusalem, speaking still today through the scripture, by his spirit, through feeble preachers, but a message of life for any who would receive Oh, don't look for him here or there. He's not gonna kill himself as some of the people thought he was going to do. He's not going away to the Greeks as some thought he was talking about that, that he's going away. No, he has come to do good to sinners, to the lifeless and to the dead. There is the cross upon which was done this great transaction. have I there the weight of our sin placed upon him, all that it means to be dead in sin became his to experience and be punished for, that we might then have the forgiveness that his blood shed for us brings. And there's so many more things I can tell you that actually, we haven't had time to look, have we? The perfect life that he lived, all of the purity and the glory of it, the words he said and the heart of love for God and people. Well, that actually gets accounted to us when we believe in him. God then looks upon us, not as dead in our sins, but as living like his son, as those who have newness of life and in whom now he sees and beholds his son. He's his son, relates to us, loves us as he loved his son. And that is all of ours, if we believe. It's life. Living now with God, not apart from God. living now with comfort, hope, and joy, and then despair, hopelessness. And if this world doesn't produce that in kind of industrial loads, I don't know what it is doing. Misery that there is, and sadness. He's come to dispel, come to take gloom away, and bind up the brokenhearted, and relieve you of the fear of death, and give you whatever this world is, and whatever's gonna happen in the international scene, and whatever this new government is or isn't gonna do. It matters in one sense not. You have life, you have God, you have Christ. There we read Psalm 14, was the fool that says in his heart there is no God. He's come to give wisdom. that say there is a God. I know Him. I'm walking with him, and he deals with me, and he's sanctifying me, and there's a lot that needs to change, and attitudes, and habits, and ways, and how I talk, and how I'm selfish, and still that remains, but he's working on me. It's always wonderful, isn't it? He's working on each of us there as Christians. That's all part of this life. Recognize the moment. Recognize the offer. This is the gospel. Jesus Christ is tended to you, offered to you, to be savior to you. Will you receive? Will you believe? Will you come, leave your sins? Sounds like madness. Who would want to stay in their sins when you're dying? Well, leave your sins. Wisdom, friends, and it's life. It's change, a new nature. It's heaven to come. Why has heaven begun now? Grace there in the heart, God at work by His Spirit. So my question, are you dying in your sins? Be honest, be true, consider it. And friend, if you are dying in your sins, are you gonna stay dying? Or will you do something about it this morning? Will you come to Christ? Will you believe in him, heart and soul, speak to him? Oh, I must finish, but I must urge you, Come while there is time. Come while there's a moment. Come before the day when you might seek for him and you won't find him. It's gone. Don't be that person. You come today. You come right now. And put your faith in Jesus Christ.