Sermon Tone Analysis
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BEING PREPARED FOR HEAVEN
2 Timothy 4: 6‑8
The Reformer's Fire ‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑ Max A Forsythe
Sometimes my personal preparation for preaching leads into difficult ideas
and unanticipated results.
Earlier this summer, I proposed a short series
on hades, hell and heaven.
As the time drew near to begin teaching a
biblical view I found that I had a responsibility to prepare you all for
our focus on these less understood topics of our time.
Before we consider
those topics in detail, we must first deal with the question of death.
That door leads to eternity.
And since we must all pass through it
eventually, this lesson seems altogether necessary before we consider the
other topics.
My first concern is that I should not unnecessarily frighten
the saints who belong to Jesus Christ.
If you sincerely believe in Him and
His sacrifice on the cross for your personal sins, then our meditations of
the next few weeks will academically confirm what you already know.
However, there may be some within the hearing of my voice or on our
congregational mailing list who rightfully need to have the hell scared out
of them by the witness of God's Holy Word!
Let us begin today with the fact of death.
One winter I was changing my
daily calendar on my Farmer's Almanac Calendar.
A particular pithy saying
took an old proverb and developed it further.
Remember the old saying
"Nothing is certain except death and taxes"?
Well, this calendar date made
this observation: "Thank heaven that whenever Congress meets, only taxes
can be made worse.
Praise God, they have no control over the realities of
death!"
The first thing that we need to know about the reality of death is that
there are three kinds of death: spiritual, physical and eternal.
Let us
consider each one briefly.
The first kind of death is spiritual death.
This means the separation or
alienation of the soul from God.
This is the condition which Satan and his
demonic angels are in.
We as Christians know that we can only truly live
in communion with God.
We have this through spiritual life in Christ.
This life we have in Christ is the opposite of spiritual death.
To a certain extent even the worldly around us are restrained from becoming
all they could be by common grace.
By God's grace, our world today is
neither as bad as it was just before the flood, nor yet as wicked as the
cities of Sodom and Gomorrah!
Like the Sodomites, the Canaanites during
the Israelite conquest had to be destroyed because of their wickedness.
Centuries later, the leaders of the Aztec and Carib Indians of the New
World deserved their fates as well.
Even in our own century, the execution
\\ of Nazi leaders for war crimes is justifiable.
Like all of these examples,
if we were left to our own instincts, we know from history and from God's
word just where man would end up without the restraint of God's word and
Spirit.
The second kind of death is physical.
This means the separation of the
soul from the body.
This death is also a part of the penalty for original
sin.
At death our body chemicals return to the earth.
At last count, the
chemical compounds of our bodies were worth about sixteen dollars.
It is
only their combination that allows us to even talk about a six million
dollar man!
However, when death intrudes, the natural six million dollar
man is worth nothing more than the sum of his body chemicals.
For the
Christian, this is not absolute tragedy, because we know that God takes His
elect home to be with Himself.
Further, at the last day, we are promised
that our bodies will be gloriously restored in some recognizable form.
The third kind of death is eternal.
This is spiritual death made
permanent.
A person's inward state may become their eternal outward
condition.
The full weight of the wrath of God descends on those who are
eternally separate from God.
We should well note that those who are born
only once in a physical birth, go on to die twice: both physical and
eternal deaths.
By contrast, for those Christians who are born again, there is only one
death: the physical.
Thus we may say: The twice born die once, the once
born die twice.
The new birth described by the Apostle in John 3 is
absolutely essential for those who call themselves Christian.
This new
spiritual birth is accomplished by the Holy Spirit, and we learn that the
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