What is the explanation for why death eventually comes?
Here it is.
This fits the facts, folks.
People are as they are
and they die like they do
for reasons that can be traced back
to historical events -
real historical events recorded for us
in Genesis 3
where a certain thing happened.
What was that thing that happened?
Our first parents rebelled against God.
They spurned the divine voice
and this is history.
And we see what happened.
And I find that the answer
to two fundamental questions
is found in this book.
Two questions.
Two questions that we all ought to be asking.
The first question is:
Why are things the way they are?
And then the second question is:
What's the remedy?
How do we fix it?
Brethren, for 15 years,
I struggled to be an engineer.
I recognize this,
you didn't have a problem with a machine
and run out and just start fixing it.
You first determined what's wrong with it.
Why is it like it is?
And then, only then -
you diagnose the problem first,
then you fix it.
Diagnosis, then remedy.
But have you ever noticed?
The world doesn't want to consider the first question.
What's wrong? Why is it all broken?
They just want the remedy!
Make the pain stop!
Take the fear away!
Just give me something to make me forget my problems.
That's what the world wants.
Sedate me.
Amuse me. Intoxicate me.
Make the symptoms go away.
I don't want to die. The world doesn't want to die.
They don't want to face death. They want to forget death.
They want to just put it out of their minds.
It's coming up behind them, and you know what they do?
They just don't look behind them.
They just want to ignore it.
I don't want to think about it. I don't want to go there.
Make me forget I'm going to die.
Try to convince me there's no death.
Or try to convince me that if you freeze my brain,
somehow I'm going to come back later
when scientists have it all figured out
and I can live forever.
But you and I know that any good doctor
is not going to simply address the symptoms.
He wants to know what is the disease
at the root of the matter.
That's always the case.
He wants to heal the patient at the deepest level.
Listen, is it uncomfortable to go to the doctor
and find out you've got cancer?
Yes. People don't want to hear that.
But would it be wise to stay away from the doctor
because you don't want to hear that
because you're afraid to hear that
because you don't like the diagnosis?
The Bible makes us uncomfortable.
Because it does what a good doctor's going to do.
It's going to be truthful with us
and it's going to tell us what the problem is.
And it says that we cannot have the treatment
until we've submitted ourselves to the diagnosis.
And that's what Jesus says.
He comes along and He says,
"Those who are well have no need of a physician,
but those who are sick."
No remedy until we recognize the sickness.
But the world hates the diagnosis of Genesis 3.
Man hates the first part of the Gospel.
And this is the first part.
Why do you think the law came in?
You see, that is the first part of the Gospel, is it not?
I mean, who was it - Wesley?
He said if you had an hour to preach to a man,
he'd spend an how much?
45 minutes on the law?
15 on the Gospel?
You see? The first part and the second part.
Why 15?
You know what the difficult thing is?
The difficult thing isn't to say:
Here's paradise over here. Do you want it?
Everybody says line up!
No, the difficulty is when you say:
Listen, God isn't going to give you the remedy
until you deal with the sickness.
What's the sickness?
You preach the law to them
because you're showing them is that they're lawless.
They're rebels against God.
Men are wicked
and they don't like that.
He wants the cure immediately.
You know what they want?
Just tell me that when I die,
I'm going to go to a better place.
I don't need some fairy tale
about a naked man and woman
in some mythical garden.
That's not what I need.
I need something real.
Seriously?
Way back there in that chapter
you're going to tell me it applies...?
Come on. I live in the real world.
I need something practical.
I need something real.
I need something that applies to me,
something that meets me and my problems
right where I am.
And you know as well as I do,
that as much as they talk like that
in all the places they look for a remedy,
they never find it.
And I've looked at people on their death bed -
people that scoffed.
I have a picture in my mind
so indelibly written there
of my aunt dying in her last days.
She was pleading.
She was calling out like a little girl,
"Mama, Mama!"
She was like 50 years old.
She was terrified.
Absolutely terrified.
They don't find.
They just go on looking and looking
and never finding.
Scripture says, "always learning
and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth."
This excerpt was taken from the full sermon:
Dying You Shall Die