The Worst Way & Best Way to Die - Part A

So far in the Gospel of John, we've seen that Jesus has a knack of boiling everything down to the irreducible minimum. You're either this way or that way. Either you're in the light or you're in darkness.

You are either born again or you're not born again and not entering the kingdom. Welcome to Connect with Skip Weekend Edition. There is this movie where at the end the bad guy falls over a railing and plunges five stories into the street below. There a bus runs over him, a steamroller, and a marching band.

This wasn't a serious movie. The hero cringes as he says, what a horrible way to die, not having my parachute open. That's how I want to die. Okay, so that's probably some fairly morbid humor, but have you ever thought about how you will die?

Do you have a preference? All joking aside, there are some good ways to die and bad ways to die. And today in Connect with Skip Weekend Edition, Skip Heitzig examines them both.

But before we dive into our study, here's what we have for you this month at connectwithskip.com. Freedom is precious and in human history not common in governance. America was built on the cornerstone that man is endowed by his creator with rights that cannot be taken away. Our government was formed to secure existing rights, not provide them. But there is a higher permanent liberty, the freedom from sin. If you want to fix a society, they need truth.

If you want to fix a broken political system, you need to infuse it with truth and expose ourselves to the truth of the word of God. True freedom is ours, but we need to understand the terms. That's what you'll find in our freedom package of resources by Skip Heitzig. The package features Skip's 10 full length message set of your path to freedom messages, including securing the foundations and Jesus in the age of confusion. The freedom packages are thanks for your gift of $50 or more to support Connect with Skip Heitzig.

So request your freedom package today when you give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. We'll start today in verse 21 of John chapter eight. So if you turn there in your Bibles, Skip Heitzig will get us started with a few reflections on death. In my business, for lack of a better description, I see a lot of people die. I bury a lot of people. I was going through a record of funerals that I have given over the past several years, the names of people, and I was considering them this week.

And as I was reading them, certain names came to my mind as very poignant and easy to remember. Some were very sad funerals. The death of a child is always sad. Death of a young mother, also very sad. Suicide victims, murder victims, soldiers in battle die at a young age.

Those are tough. But then there were some other funerals that were really wonderful, filled with joy. Those who had lived a long life, they knew the Lord. They passed on that heritage to their family and friends, influencing so many people, and they were ready to go home to be with the Lord. Those are wonderful times. Then there were other funerals that frankly were very confusing because I just didn't know where that person stood with the Lord.

And I know that everybody wants the preacher to push their relative over into heaven at the funeral, but I can't do that. So it was tough. It was very confusing. And I'll just say this.

Take it from someone who's done this for a number of years. People die differently. Two come to my mind in terms of contrast. One by the name of Tony. I walked into his hospital room before his death, and he was panicked, filled with such fear as an unbeliever, at least at that point. Then I remember walking into Barb's room.

Now Barb was full of life. I remember her sitting in church, always smiled, always had her Bible open, always trusted in the Lord. But she was dying at a young age of a very, very rare disease.

And as I walked into her room, I was a bit taken aback when she sat up in bed and she looked at me and she smiled and she said, I'm ready to go. People die differently. I'm going to read to you the account of two people from history who have similar stories. One, Thomas Paine, very influential as an intellectual in early America, wrote the book Age of Reason, wrote many books.

That's probably his most famous. The Age of Reason. He was an unbeliever.

When he died, he said, I would give worlds if I had them that the Age of Reason had not been published. Oh, Lord, help me. Christ, help me. Oh, God, what have I done to suffer so much? But there is no God. If there should be, what will become of me hereafter? Stay with me. For God's sake, send even a child to stay with me, for it is hell to be alone. If ever the devil had an agent, I have been that one.

That is the worst way to die. Summed up in a nutshell. Now, contrast that with the words of John Newton. You know him. He wrote Amazing Grace. He was a slave trader turned believer, died at the age of 82.

The last months of his life were spent confined to a single room. Among his last words were, I am like a person going on a journey in a stagecoach who expects its arrival every hour and is frequently looking out the window for it. I am packed and sealed and ready for the post. God's amazing grace was even evident at the time of his death. I want to talk to you today about the worst way to die and the best way to die. I'm doing that because, as I see it, that's the emphasis of the paragraph we're about to read in John chapter eight. Jesus speaks of dying three times in that short paragraph, as if to imply everybody in that audience he was speaking to would indeed one day die, and they did.

Also, he alludes to his own death two times in this paragraph, because that is the key to a person dying the right way. So we're going to pick it up in verse 21. Jesus said to them again, I am going away and you will seek me and will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come.

So the Jews said, will he kill himself? Because he says, where I go, you cannot come. And he said to them, you are from beneath, I am from above. You are of this world, I am not of this world. Therefore, I said to you that you will die in your sins, for if you do not believe that I am he, you will die in your sins. And they said to him, who are you? Jesus said to them, just what I have been saying to you from the beginning. I have many things to say and to judge concerning you, but he has say and a judge concerning you, but he who sent me is true, and I speak to the world those things which I heard from him. They did not understand that he spoke to them of the Father. And then Jesus said to them, when you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself. But as my Father taught me, I speak these things. And he who sent me is with me. The Father has not left me alone, for I always do those things that please him. He spoke those words, many believed in him. There's something that I've noticed, and this accentuates it for me.

Maybe you've noticed it as well. So far in the Gospel of John, we've seen that Jesus has a knack of boiling everything down to the irreducible minimum. You're either this way or that way.

He just sort of boils everything down to its simplest form. As an example, this is what we've learned so far in John. Either you're in the light or you're in darkness. You are either born again or you're not born again and not entering the kingdom. You are either going to be in the resurrection of life or you're going to be in the resurrection of damnation. You are either dying of thirst or your thirst will be quenched by the living water. You either labor for food that perishes or for food that endures to everlasting life.

See how everything is just boiled down to the unmistakable, simplest form. So it is in this paragraph. You either die this way or you die that way.

Now we're going to consider, first of all, the worst way to die, and it's summed up in your bulletin by three statements. In sin, in self-righteousness, and in worldliness. Go to verse 21. Jesus said to them again, I am going away and you will seek me and you will die in your sin. Now did you notice that it's singular in verse 21 but plural in verse 24? Verse 24, therefore I said to you, you will die in your sins.

Maybe it's helpful to make this distinction. The first sin singular is sin in its essence, sin plural, sins is sin in its expression. One is because we have a sin nature and the other is simply the expression of that nature. I sin because I'm a sinner. If you hear a dog bark, you don't say it's a dog because it barks, but rather you say it barks because it's a dog, that's its nature. See I can bark and I have faked out some pretty good dogs in my time.

But a dog barks because it has that nature and it expresses itself in that nature. So with people it's the same. We commit sins because we have the nature of being a sinner.

If a person dies without any change to that, that is the worst way to die. Now we've got to press this a little bit further. How did we get to be sinners? What's up with that? When did that happen? Was it when I turned a teenager?

Is that it? My parents may have thought so. Now you've got to go back further than teenage years.

How about two? When you turn two, you know the terrible twos? Is that when, wow, that's when the sin nature manifests itself?

No, you've got to go back further than that. How about birth? How about birth? How about birth?

Was it when I was born? No, actually you have to keep going further back all the way to your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandpa Adam. We're part of that family.

We're part of the Adams family. We have that nature. Paul does a beautiful job in outlining the progression of what happened in Romans chapter five when he says, by one man sin entered the world and death entered through sin. And then he goes on to say death spread and then finally death reigned.

That's the progression. Sin entered, death entered, death spread, death reigned. And that happened because of Adam. Adam did it. He set death in motion. Adam acted as the federal head of all of the human race when he sinned.

Why is it important to know that? Because this answers a fundamental question that every person asks, I believe, in every generation and that is why is the world as bad as it is? Why after thousands of years haven't we learned from previous generations and solved all the world's problems like famine and hunger and murder and war? Why is it that we seem to be escalating in those things rather than diminishing? Who do we blame for that? Do we blame the Democrats or the Republicans or the United Nations or do we blame the liberal media or do we blame Lady Gaga or whoever else we want to blame? That would be wrong to blame them. It stems from deep within the heart of every single person and it goes all the way back to Adam.

When Adam sinned, he generated a constitutional change in his very character that was passed down to us. Whenever I talk about this, a picture comes to my mind of a family vacation at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Ever been to Jackson Lake?

Beautiful. Foot of the Grand Tetons. On that summer day, the four Heitzig boys were standing at the shore of Jackson Lake. The four Heitzig boys at that time had a fully formed sin nature. The Grand Tetons was a perfect mirror-like reflection that morning. I'll never forget it. But we were four little boys and that was a placid lake and somebody had to do it.

I don't know if it was me or my oldest brother, but one of us took a stone and tossed it at that beautiful lake, skipping the stone across, and as soon as we did, ripples shot across the lake and marred the image of the mountains that we were seeing. That's effectively what Adam did. He was the guy that first threw the rock and marred the image of God within man, so that everyone born after him has the image marred, marred. And so we were born into this world dead, the Bible says, dead on arrival. Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2, and you, he has made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins. So here's a question, what's the solution to spiritual death?

Spiritual birth, born again, Jesus said, unless a man is born again, he will never see the kingdom of God. So here's the worst way to die. Dying of sins unrepentant of and unattoned for is the worst way to die. It's a famous illustration. Many have used it, I've used it. The only thing is I actually have the photograph of the tombstone itself from the East Coast. A real tombstone reads this, pause stranger, as you pass me by, as you are now, so once was I.

As I am now, so you will be. So prepare for death and follow me. That's written on a tombstone. Somebody saw that and wrote a little sign next to it.

This I don't have a picture of, I only heard it. And the sign read, to follow you, I'm not content until I know which way you went. And the sign read, to follow you, I'm not content.

Good advice. Worst way to die is to die in your sin. Following along on those heels is also to die in self-righteousness.

It's all part of the same package. Look at verse 22. The Jews said, will he kill himself because he says, where I go, you cannot come? You gotta understand that that is a very sadistic and self-righteous comment they just made.

And I'm gonna give you a little background to help you understand this. 2,000 years ago, in Jewish thinking, if a person killed himself, committed suicide, they would have reserved for them the darkest place in hell. Even Josephus, their historian, wrote, the souls of those whose hands have done violence to their own lives go to the darkest Hades and God will visit the sins of the evil doers on their descendants. So when they say, where is he going?

Is he gonna kill himself? Here's what they're saying. He must mean he's going to hell and he's right, we won't follow him there. They are so smug and so self-righteous.

What they're basically saying is, we, the Pharisees, we're going to heaven, Jesus is going to hell. That's self-righteousness, smug self-righteousness. Solomon, Proverbs 30, verse 12, said, there are those who are pure in their own eyes and are yet not cleansed of their filth. You know what the worst form of badness is? The worst form of badness is goodness. Goodness that substitutes itself for the new birth. So worst form of badness, self-righteousness. The worst form of badness is goodness that substitutes itself for the new birth. Dwight Lyman Moody, the preacher from Chicago a hundred years ago, he said, you can always tell that a person is far from God by how much they talk about how good they are.

Just a dead giveaway, you want to talk about how good I'm good and I try and I work hard and don't you know, you can always tell that person's far, far away from God. Man is incurably addicted to working for his own salvation, his own righteousness. Did you know there's only one righteousness God will accept and it's not righteousness that comes from you, it's the righteousness that comes to you through Jesus Christ.

That's the only one he'll accept. That's why Jesus even said, unless your righteousness exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom. When he said that, everybody went, what? Who could be holier than the scribes and Pharisees?

They try so hard. Jesus said, not good enough because the only righteousness God will accept, here's the biblical theological term, is imputed righteousness. That is Jesus' perfect record is put to your account by your faith in him. Here's the third, all part of the worst way to die and that is in worldliness. Verse 23, he said to them, you are from beneath. Imagine having Jesus say that to you. You are from beneath, I am from above. You are of this world, I am not of this world. In other words, you and I are from two totally different dimensions.

I'm from heaven and I'm going back to heaven. You, you're all about this earth, this world, you're from here, beneath, the world. The word Jesus used is a word some of you are very familiar with, others should be. It's the word cosmos. You've heard it, yes, cosmos, cosmology, a cosmopolitan, we get those words from cosmos.

John uses the term cosmos 77 times in his writings. It's a word that doesn't refer to the world like the earth or the world of people, but the system, the ideology. When Jesus uses this term and when most New Testament writers use this term, it speaks of an ordered system of values, ideas, activities, people that are opposed to God and under the Bible says the control of the devil. 2 Corinthians 4, Paul calls Satan the God of this world who has blinded the minds of those who believe not. That's the world as Jesus. You're from that, this system, I'm from above. Big distinction, big contrast.

Here's something to make a note of. The people Jesus was talking to, they were religious people. They were spiritual people, but Jesus calls them worldly people. Isn't that amazing? Did you know that within this world system, there are many religious, there's a lot of religion and spirituality and intellectualism and cultured stuff all opposed to God, all opposed to Christ, and they're not too crazy about you. That's the world that we live in. So let me sum it up. Here's the worst way to die. The worst way to die is with your sins unrepented of and unattoned for, smugly clinging to your own self-righteousness, I'm a good person, I deserve, I work hard, and living for the world with enough religion to blind you from your real need. That's the worst way to die. You know, the important thing isn't so much how we die, but rather whether or not we're in Christ when we die. You see, the best way to die is knowing that death isn't the end of life, but rather just the beginning of truly living as we head to eternity. When we know that, then the fear of death will suddenly lose its grip on us. And that's going to wrap up our time for today. But before we go, if you'd like a copy of today's study on the best and worst ways to die, it's available on CD for just $4 plus shipping when you contact us at 1-800-922-1888 or when you visit connectwithskip.com or write to us at P.O.

Box 95707 Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87199. We'll talk more about death and the best way to face it when we resume our study next time. So I hope you can join us right here in Connect with Skip weekend edition, a presentation of Connection Communications. Connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.