How to End Well - Part 1

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, December 28th. The way you start in life isn't up to you, but how you finish is.

Let's listen to today's podcast and learn how to end well. Death is not a popular subject. In fact, most people would like to just ignore it until one of these days somewhere out there they have to face it in reality. Well, God certainly does not want us to be overshadowed by the very idea of the thoughts of death.

But neither does He want us to ignore the whole idea. For the simple reason that He says in His Word, It is appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment, that it is inescapable, there is no way to escape death unless the Lord Jesus Christ comes. It is inevitable in every person's life. So the question is this, are you ready to meet the Lord? How do you want to leave this life?

What do you want to leave behind? And so people have different ideas about death. The Scripture makes it very clear that there are three types of death, three aspects of death. One of them is this, that is physical death, that is the separation of the spirit and the soul from the body. There is spiritual death, which is what God was speaking of when He spoke to Adam and Eve in the garden, The day that you eat of the fruit of this tree, ye shall surely die. Spiritual death, a person's death toward the things of God. And then there is what the Bible calls the second death or eternal death, eternal separation from God. If you're a believer, then you'll never have to worry about eternal death. You've trusted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. You're not spiritually dead. If you have not trusted Him as your personal Savior, you're spiritually dead. And likewise, you face eternal, the second death.

So those things are just absolutely certain. Now, while He does not want us being totally concerned about death at all times or let it determine how we live at our life, the question is, well, how are we to feel about it? Well, certainly, if you really and truly believe what oftentimes we say we believe, the Word of God, then as a believer, you have no reason to fear death.

If you're living in sin, then you've got some reasons to be thinking seriously about your lifestyle and meeting the Lord. If you're an unbeliever, that's the last thing that you want to happen to you, and that is to die without Christ. Well, you say, well, how do we feel about our friends? Well, we have a right to grieve over our friends and to sorrow over our friends when they pass away.

There's nothing about that that indicates a lack of faith. And when you think in the Scriptures, for example, that Paul spoke in Philippians, he talked about Epaphroditus, his friend who was sick almost to death, and he said, God saved him and it saved him from sorrow upon sorrow because he would have felt such great sorrow in the loss of his friend Epaphroditus. And Jesus wept at Lazarus' tomb, knowing that He was going to raise him, but He was weeping for the sorrow of Martha and Mary and so forth. And so, sorrowing at times of death is right. Grieving is a part of the whole process. And so, all of that is a part of living and dying and facing death.

But the issue that I want us to deal with in this message is this. And that is the whole issue of how do we end well? People end life different ways. How do we end well? And I want to show you two things in these passages.

Number one, how you do not end well. And then, what are the elements in a life that help a person and make a person possible to end well? So, I want you to turn, first of all, to Luke chapter twelve. And notice, if you will, beginning in the fifteenth verse of this twelfth chapter of Luke, the Scripture says, Then He said to them, Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed. For not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions. Then the Scripture says, And He told them a parable, saying, The land of a rich man was very productive. And he began reasoning to himself, saying, What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops? Then he said, This is what I will do, I will tear down my barns and build large ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said to him, You fool, this very night your soul is required of you, and now who will own what you have prepared? So is the man, or the woman, who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. Now think about this. There are many people who are going to live their life.

You may be one of them. Your life consists of many things, but you don't have a place for God in your life. So you've lived it out and at this point you don't even feel like you need Him because you've got plenty of money. You have friends. You have all the material possessions you want.

You can go anywhere you want to go, do anything you want to do, be what you want to be. And so, from all practical purposes in your thinking, why do you need God? Well, there are several answers to that question, but I want to show you the truth about living your life and being unprepared to die. Listen to what happens in the Scripture. The Scripture says, This man began to reason to himself, saying, What shall I do since I have no place to store my crops? And what I want you to notice is that in this passage, I, me, my.

I, me, my, I, me, my. And what I want you to notice is this, that he did his reasoning without God. He said, Now, what shall I do since I have no place to store my crops? Reasoning totally without God. No sense of the idea of the sovereignty of God that God is in control of all things.

But it appears as far as he's concerned that he is the one who is in control. He failed to recognize the very source of his wealth. What shall I do about my productive crops and my barns? I'm going to tear them down because I'm just going to have so much more, so much more grain, so much more, that I don't even have room for them.

No place, no understanding, no recognition of the source. Left God out of His plans altogether. Here's what I'm going to do. Here's how I'm going to live my life.

And also very presumptuous about how long he was going to live. Notice what he said. This is what I'll do. Tear down my barns, build larger ones. There I will store all my grain and my goods, and I will say to my soul, Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come. Take your ease and drink and be merry. Who said he was going to live a long time? Many people have the idea that they're going to live a very long time.

And therefore, they have time to do all the things they want to do, accomplish all they want to accomplish, and then what? And if you'll notice, for example, there's no thought of afterlife in here because here's what he says. He says, I will say to my soul, Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry and what?

Wait a minute. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry and what? And he never asked the next question, what follows ease and making merry? Because you see, he would not and did not consider the fact that one of these days he was going to have to meet God.

So, the Scripture says, something very interesting happens here. He's given himself, told over to materialism. He's greedy. He's self-centered. He says, what am I going to do about my barns and my crops and my this and my ease and my comfort and my pleasure? And you think about it.

There are many people today who are living just like this man. They're living for themselves and themselves only. It's what they can achieve, what they can accomplish, what they can have. It's their ease, their comfort, their pleasure. It's their security. It's what they're able to handle. It's how they want to handle their life. It's how they want to live their life.

It's all about them. So, the Scripture says, But God said to him, You fool, this very night your soul is required of you, and now who will own what you've prepared? Death struck him unexpectedly. How many people leave home every morning going to work and never come home? Get on airplanes, never come back to this ground? None of us knows the hour, the moment, we don't know.

Would you not agree that it's foolish not to be prepared for something that is inevitable? And some people say, I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to think about that. I'm young. I'm eighteen years of age, don't talk to me about death. You better listen carefully. A lot of your friends have already died and will die.

I'm in my twenties and I've got my whole life in front of me. Well, you know, I'm in good health and that's for those weak Christians who are afraid of death and I'm not afraid because I just believe that somehow everything's going to be all right. And this is why this Scripture's here. This is a warning from the Lord Jesus Christ to say to us, a person who lives their life for materialistic purposes and gains and only seeking pleasure in life, one to satisfy the desires of their life, no relationship to God, no account of God, no belief in God except some hazy, self-imposed kind of belief that is totally unscriptural, here's what He says. He says, you fool, this very night your soul is required of you.

Now, here's what makes this so serious. When God calls a person a fool, it's all over. It's all over. No matter what you have in this life, no matter who you know and who you fraternize with and what your position and how much wealth you have and how much recognition and all the rest, when the last breath comes and God calls you, that's it. And He said to this person, to this man, you have all of this?

Who you going to leave it to? Because you're gone. This night your soul is required of you. At some point on that calendar, on that clock, on that time piece, at some point on there, here's what He says. Your soul is required of you. We're going to have to give an account to God. And putting it off and saying I don't believe any of that does not change one single thing.

So think about this. The consequences of this is that God called him unexpectedly, to call him to give an account. He died without God.

There is no excuse. There is nothing left. And if you'll remember, for example, in the sixteenth chapter of Luke when Jesus once again, He's not talking about a parable, this is something He saw, He knew. He said this rich man died, Lazarus, the poor man. When he died, the angels took him to heaven. The Bible says that the rich man wasn't his riches, it was the fact there's no place for God in his life. He died and was buried. And the next phrase says, and in torment.

You may have some funny belief about God, but here's the true, serious belief. Absent from the body present with the Lord for believers. Absent from the body for unbelievers present in torment.

That's why God says a person is a fool. To know the truth, to hear the truth, and then to put it off, to ignore it as if it's not going to happen. Death is inevitable, it is inescapable, but the believer does not have to be afraid of death. We do not have to be afraid of death when he says, absent from the body present with the Lord. You say, well, now it's that time between my dying, that time between that time when I breathed my last breath, and what about that time? What time are you talking about? Absent from the body present with the Lord. How fast do you think that'll be?

Faster than that. Why? Because time is not an issue with God. Absent from the body present with the Lord. So He says one way to live your life out and to end it is to end it having God called you a fool because you lived your life without Him. So I want to ask you this question. If God were to call you die, don't get into that preacher trying to scare me. If I thought I could scare you into heaven, I would do it. But I can't.

But I can tell you the truth to say this. You need to take your life seriously. You likewise need to take death seriously because you do not know when it's going to happen. And your fuzzy beliefs about God and death will not make a bit of difference. It's crystal clear in the Word of God that every single one of us will give an account for the life that we've lived. And to live your life without God, to be caught up in mere pleasure and materialism ends up by simply saying this, God calls that kind of person a fool for living that kind of life. So none of us want to end our life that way.

So the question is, how can we end our life well? So I want you to turn, if you will, to Second Timothy. And this is the letter of the Apostle Paul. And I want you to look at this passage. You're going to read a few verses here. And here's what I want you to remember in the very beginning. Second Timothy, that fourth chapter. Listen carefully because you may have a tendency to say well. Now I can't end like the Apostle Paul because I'm not a preacher and I'm not a missionary and I'm not a theologian and all the rest.

That has nothing to do with this. What I want you to do is to see what are the elements involved in a person's life. Listen, who comes to the end of their life and ends well. It's crystal clear in this passage how you and I can end well. And so, if you will notice beginning in the sixth verse of this fourth chapter, Paul says, For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought thee good fight, I have finished thee course, and I have kept thee faith. In the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to those who love His appearing.

Now think about this. Here's the Apostle Paul facing imminent death. He is in prison. Nero's going to take his life execution block.

It's very close by. And if you'll notice in this fourth chapter and the sixteenth verse, he's already had one defense and he says, At my first defense no one supported me, but all deserted me. May it not be counted against them, but the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, so that through me the proclamation might be fully accomplished, and that all the Gentiles might hear, and I was rescued out of the lion's mouth. Now, here he is facing death. And so, what I want you to see is how he ends well. Because all of us can end well if we choose to. Oh, we can end, and God say, You fool. You heard it, you heard it, you heard it, you heard it, you heard it, and you ignored it.

So, the first thing that I want you to notice here is this. When I think about all the things that could have happened to Paul, here he is coming to the very end of his life, and what is he doing? He is still giving himself away. Giving himself away to young Timothy. Sharing his knowledge, sharing his understanding, sharing his experience, sharing his confession, bringing up, for example, his own failures. What is he doing? Here he comes to the end of life, and what is he doing?

He's giving himself away. One of the ways that you and I can end well is to end, listen, to end up in this life giving ourselves away to the people around us. Helping them, giving to them in some fashion to the last days of our life. God has saved His children in order that you and I would serve Him all the days of our life. He said He created us in Christ Jesus for the purpose of good works. Not for the purpose of retiring and doing nothing.

Good works. Now, when I'm speaking of retiring, to believe is that's what I mean. And that is, at some point, you have to resign from your position. At some points, you have to retire from that position. Does that mean you quit?

No. What do you do? You go to work for God. You say, I don't know what to do. Well, just try us.

We'll help you. And I think about how many churches out there where the pastor pleads week after week after week for people to help in the church. Help do the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Whether it's ushering or parking automobiles or whether it's helping in the nursery. In other words, there are many, many jobs besides other things and other ministries in ways you can serve God. The way we end our life and well is to end doing what He called us to do and that is to serve Him. He didn't save us just to sit around and just to enjoy life and do what we want to do when we want to do it. He saved us to serve Him. And most Christians, I'm afraid, are going to sit in church week after week after week and to think, well, you know, I'm retired now and so there's nothing, oh, I'm going to attend church and keep giving and praying and reading the Bible. But God wants us to serve Him.

And I do believe I can't prove this because God is sovereign and He makes decisions. But I do believe that a person has a better chance, if we can say it that way, of living longer and living healthier if you will invest your life in serving God and giving it away. There's something in itself that's healthy about that. Because it does something to your attitude. You feel that love giving it away. You see the results of the fruits of your life.

And so, it doesn't make any difference how old you are, how long you've lived, whatever it might be. You can give yourself away and in the process of doing so, you get blessed laying up a reward in heaven. That's the way we end well. Thank you for listening to How to End Well. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.