Sermon by Pastor Patrick Ramsey: Death is Gain,
Philippians 1:21-23; 26 minutes
Two people from the congregation died in January; and two relatives of congregants, one was Pastor Ramsey’s father.
The following points are sermon HIGHLIGHTS [bracketed statements; emboldening and underscoring are mine]:
- To die, or to be a loved one left behind, is terrible; yet God produces good from death
- Joseph (Genesis 36ff) suffered long because his brothers sold him into slavery; God used his suffering to bring good from evil
- God uses the deaths of Christians for His glory and our good
- That is why the apostle Paul could say that to die is gain and to depart and to be with Christ is better
- Life is full of uncertainty; however, we can all be certain that we will die: Hebrews 9: 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment
- Death is an intruder into God’s good creation; the Bible calls it an enemy
- Sin brought death; the rebellion against God’s law in Eden: we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God; the wages of sin is death
- Death is God’s punishment for sin
- Death is gain for the Christian because of what Jesus has done, He took the sting out of death
- How is our death gain? It kills all misery and suffering.
- Patrick’s father was diagnosed with cancer on the 17th of December, and he passed away on the 22nd of January
- Colon cancer had spread throughout his body, Patrick describes other relevant aspects of his father’s dying
- Puritan Thomas Watson said that death is the funeral of all our sorrows
- It kills that which is mortal and corrupt; in 1 Cor. 15, Paul stated that flesh cannot inherit the kingdom of God…
- When a seed is sown, it dies before it can become something new; so too, we by death put off mortality and rise anew to immortality
- Death also kills sin: the day you became a Christian, you began warfare with the world, the flesh and the devil; that warfare continues until the day you die; death frees the Christian from that formidable struggle
- Hebrews 12: 22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel
- Death is the doorway to Christ: Paul in Philippians 1: 21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.
- [The Bible tells us: Genesis 3: 17 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”]
- That is, our body turns back to dust after we die; but our soul goes on living
- [For example: Revelation 6: 9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. 10 They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”]
- [More on the soul continuing to live: Luke 20: 34 And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, 35 but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36 for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. 37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.”]
- Pastor Ramsey talked about how special the death of a believer is and quoted a hymn about crossing Jordan
- Nevertheless, death is not good, although God uses it for our good; it is the last enemy that Jesus will slay
- Psalm 23 discussed, ‘the valley of the shadow of death’ and how Christ’s Spirit will accompany the believer through that…therefore, we need not fear
- Isaiah 41:10 fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
- Jesus is perfectly qualified to help us in our passage from death to eternal life, as He experienced death as a human being, He took his last breath, His soul departed from his human body…
- Final points made by reading from his father’s obituary: “great sadness” because death is terrible; “great hope” because God, in Christ conquered sin and death and uses our own death for His glory and our good
- The hope we have is not whimsical, it is certain as it is based on God’s word, and God cannot lie
For other sermons by Pastor Ramsey, click the following link to Sermon Audio: