Unavoidable Appointment with Death

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains how the writer uses the once-for-all character of Christ's sacrifice - contrasted with repeated Old Testament offerings - to argue for a completed salvation…

Martin explains that Hebrews 9:27 functions as an analogy within the argument: just as the once-for-all event of death is inseparably linked to its sequel of judgment, so Christ's once-for-all sacrifice is inseparably linked to the completion of salvation for all for whom it was made.

Now he desires to enforce that truth with an illustration, with an analogy, a likeness. He wants to find a parallel of something in human experience where you have a once-for-all event followed by a consequence, and the two will never be separated. Because the once-for-all sacrifice cannot be separated from the accomplishment of full salvation for all for whom the sacrifice was made. And in looking for that analogy, in looking for that likeness, in looking for that illustration, the writer uses what we have in the language of verse 27. And inasmuch, or just as, or in accord with the way that i...

5:25 - 6:50 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin defines 'appointed' as the Greek word meaning 'laid up' or 'reserved' (Colossians 1:5; 2 Timothy 4:8), then defines death biblically as the radical separation of soul and…

Martin uses Luke 16 to demonstrate that biblical death is not cessation of being but entry into conscious existence: the beggar is found communicating in Abraham's bosom, and the rich man is found conscious, communicating, and intelligent in hell.

He calls to die as that abnormal that radical separation of the soul and the body in which the soul enters a realm fitting to its condition at that separation. Death in the Bible is the separation of the body from the soul. The material part of me is separated from the non-material and as the material part of me is buried or cremated or goes to dust in whatever form it goes to dust the non-material part of that which constitutes me, me will enter a realm of consciousness and continued existence commensurate with the state of that non-material part of me. This is clearly taught by our Lord in s...

12:58 - 14:12 Read in full sermon

The point: Dismiss the secular hope of conquering death through science or technology as folly against the immovable decree of God - 'What God appoints man cannot frustrate.'

Martin vividly pictures the exalted Christ from Revelation 1:18 jangling a key ring before John - 'I have the keys of hell and of death' - to make God's sovereignty over death concrete and memorable.

You remember John saw this representation of the exalted Christ and he jangles as it were a key chain or a key ring before John and says I have the keys of hell and of death. He is Lord over death. And my friends it is because the appointment is made by the sovereign living eternal God of the universe that you and I need to face two very simple simple facts. Number one the unavoidable unavoidable certainty of our death and the unpredictable time of our death.

19:04 - 19:45 Read in full sermon

The point: Dismiss the secular hope of conquering death through science or technology as folly against the immovable decree of God - 'What God appoints man cannot frustrate.'

Martin invokes the contemporary boast that scientists will unlock the secrets of aging and usher in man-made immortality, dismissing it as folly against the immovable decree: 'It is appointed once to die.'

And I laugh at the silly things proud blind men are saying. We will yet be able to unlock certain secrets that will conquer the problem of old age and atrophy and man will usher in his own eternal life. No he won't. It is appointed once to die.

20:07 - 20:29 Read in full sermon

The point: Dismiss the secular hope of conquering death through science or technology as folly against the immovable decree of God - 'What God appoints man cannot frustrate.'

Martin uses the metaphor of trying to remove God from his throne to convey the absolute impossibility of escaping one's appointment with death - the certainty of the appointment matches the certainty of God's own immovability.

And it is almighty God who has made that appointment and that appointment that you and I have with death can no more be scrubbed from that which will come to us than God can be shoved from his throne. And because it is God who makes the appointment death is not only an unavoidable certainty it is an unpredictable thing as to its timing. You see the appointment book is in God's hands. And he inscribes our name and the time and the circumstances of our death without consulting us.

20:29 - 21:10 Read in full sermon

Driving home: But when this text says it is appointed unto men once to die it is a unilateral appointment. God holds the appointment book writes the time and the circumstances and names of those whom death shall seize and none can ope…

Martin contrasts God's unilateral appointment with death with the bilateral arrangement of a doctor's appointment - both parties agree on a time, either can cancel - to make vivid that God alone writes the time and circumstances without consulting anyone.

When you want to make your doctor's appointment it is a bilateral agreement. You call in the nurse looks at the appointment book and she says well Dr. Jones has time such and such and such and such and you look at your schedule and it is a bilateral arrangement. He has a slot you have a slot there is common agreement we make an appointment.

21:10 - 21:32 Read in full sermon

The point: Every person should tell themselves regularly and frequently, using their own name: 'I must die. I do not know when I shall die.' This discipline of self-address is presented as basic wisdom for every human being.

Martin extends the doctor's appointment illustration - the doctor may have a surgical emergency, the patient may have a conflict, either is free to break it - to sharpen the contrast with God's unbreakable, unilateral appointment with death.

Furthermore the doctor is free to call up and the nurse says you know I am terribly sorry the doctor had an emergency bit of surgery or a baby came a week early and he is going to have to break the appointment. Or you can call up and say I am so sorry but such and such has come up. You see it is a bilateral arrangement. You agree as to when it is mutually convenient to visit the physician.

21:32 - 21:53 Read in full sermon

The point: Recognize that the only certainty from birth is death - 'that little one that breathes its first shall breathe its last' - and let this certainty govern how you live and what you pursue.

Martin cites the common experience of patients written off by medical science who continue to live, alongside a student's account of an athletic, healthy eighteen-year-old relative struck dead by a stroke, to illustrate that no one can predict the timing of death.

Have we not often heard of people who say how in the world are they alive? Doctors gave them up, medical science gave them up and they are still alive. Others in the flush of youth one of the young men who came to the has come to the academy spoke of a relative athletic beautiful young man beautiful young woman healthy eighteen years of age snatched away with a stroke. Eighteen year olds don't have strokes.

25:31 - 25:58 Read in full sermon

The point: Reject the doctrine of purgatory as 'sheer medieval nonsense' - there is no post-death period of probation or alteration; the soul's condition is sealed at the moment of death.

Martin notes that even those who have been in the intermediate state for thousands of years - Abraham, Moses - are still awaiting the great eschaton; the Bible passes over the intermediate state with only a few clear statements because everything points through it toward final judgment.

But it is not the intermediate state upon which the Bible focuses. For that very reason it's just the intermediate state. And though it may last for thousands of years for some like Abraham and Moses compared with the eternal state towards which everything in the Bible moves the great eschaton the great culmination the great climax of all the Bible as it were passes over with just a few illusions and clear statements here and there enough to give us confidence as we could have as we gathered on Thursday and contemplate absent from the body present with the Lord. But you see that which everythi...

29:10 - 30:26 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin establishes from John 5:28-29 and Revelation 20:13 that judgment follows resurrection because God will deal with the whole man - body and soul united - not merely the…

Martin instructs hearers to look at the very hands and feet with which they sit in the building, naming them as the body - raised from the dead - that will stand before God in the day of judgment, making the abstract doctrine viscerally concrete.

And it will be the whole man united body and soul that will stand before God in the day of judgment. May I put it as plainly and crassly as I know how. Look at the body with which you are now sitting in this building. Look at your hands.

32:58 - 33:14 Read in full sermon

The point: Understand that a salvation by faith which does not transform the totality of life is not recognized anywhere in Scripture - genuine faith produces the works that will vindicate the verdict at judgment.

Martin ridicules the popular notion of God balancing good deeds against bad on a cosmic scale to determine entry to heaven or hell, in order to clear the ground for the biblical teaching that works reveal character rather than earn merit.

Listen, the Bible teaches that the judgment according to works is not a judgment in which God is weighing our good against our bad to see whether or not we've earned heaven or earned hell. No, no, my friend, that's not the teaching of the Bible at all. But the teaching of the Bible is this, that a man's true character is reflected in his deeds. Therefore, if a man is a true Christian, he begins to be one when he believes on the Lord Jesus Christ.

35:39 - 36:18 Read in full sermon

Driving home: As death leaves you, the judgment will find you. And as the judgment finds you, eternity will hold you. That's the teaching of the Scriptures. As death leaves you, judgment finds you.

Martin highlights the visceral offense felt by those who dislike eternal punishment: men have wished they could scrub Matthew 25:46 from the Bible precisely because it places eternal punishment and eternal life in the strictest grammatical parallel, making universalism and annihilationism impossible.

Men whose native disposition has no appreciation for the burning holiness of God have wished that they could scrub this text from the Bible because it places in the strictest parallel relationship eternal punishment, eternal life, unending bliss, unending torment. For the last verse of the judgment seen in Revelation 20 and whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire. So when the writer to the Hebrews says, as it is appointed unto men once to die and after this cometh judgment, what is that judgment to which he makes reference? It will be what I've descri...

38:53 - 40:01 Read in full sermon

Driving home: As death leaves you, the judgment will find you. And as the judgment finds you, eternity will hold you. That's the teaching of the Scriptures. As death leaves you, judgment finds you.

Martin crafts a three-link chain metaphor: death releases, judgment seizes, eternity holds and never releases - the sequence is inexorable and irreversible, designed to move the conscience.

As death leaves you, the judgment will find you. And as the judgment finds you, eternity will hold you. That's the teaching of the Scriptures. As death leaves you, judgment finds you.

40:15 - 40:37 Read in full sermon

The point: As a believer, recognize that all the penal element of death has been removed by Christ's atonement - death is now a fatherly discipline that lands you safe in His presence, not a punishment to be feared.

For the believer, Christ has transformed death from a penal sentence into a fatherly discipline that 'lands you safe in His presence' - removing all the terror and replacing it with confidence.

Christ bore it. And He's changed death from a penalty for sin into a fatherly discipline that lands you safe in His presence. There's a wonderful anthem I heard many, many years ago. And I don't know who the author was, but these words indelibly stamped themselves upon my mind.

45:23 - 45:43 Read in full sermon

The point: Because Christ bore the judgment, a believer can look in the mirror, acknowledge the certainty and unknown timing of his death, and live confidently - this is the practical shape of gospel assurance before mortality.

Martin quotes an anthem of unknown authorship: 'Thou hast made death glorious, and triumphant, for through its portals we enter into the presence of the living God' - the pivot from terror to confidence, expressing the believer's transformed view of death through Christ's atonement.

Speaking of Christ's work in taking away the penal element of death, the anthem goes like this. Thou hast made death glorious, and triumphant, for through its portals we enter into the presence of the living God. For through its portals you see all the king of terrors can do is land me safely on the bosom of Jesus. And that's the confidence with which the child of God can face the certainty of death.

45:43 - 46:20 Read in full sermon

The point: Because Christ bore the judgment, a believer can look in the mirror, acknowledge the certainty and unknown timing of his death, and live confidently - this is the practical shape of gospel assurance before mortality.

Martin describes the believer who can look in the mirror, name his own coming death and its unknown timing, and yet live confidently - because Christ bore the judgment - as a practical model of how assurance changes a Christian's relationship to mortality.

He can look himself in the mirror and say, man, you're going to die. You're going to die. You don't know when you're going to die. But you can face those two realities, the certainty of death, the uncertainty of the time of death, and live confidently.

46:20 - 46:36 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin presses the second question through Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress: like Christian who cried 'What shall I do to be saved?' and was confronted by Evangelist's 'Why standest…

Martin reads the famous scene from Pilgrim's Progress where Christian, walking in the fields with the book, bursts out crying 'What shall I do to be saved?' - used to model the proper response of a person who takes seriously the reality of death and judgment.

The Lord may say, Thou fool, this day thy soul is required of thee. Oh, I urge you to do what Bunyan has his pilgrim doing. You remember that well-known incident under the allegory of the man who leaves his family in the city of destruction. Bunyan says this, Now I saw upon a time when he was walking in the fields that he was wont, as he was wont, or as he was accustomed, reading in his book and greatly distressed in his mind, and as he read, he burst out as he had done before, crying, What shall I do to be saved?

50:49 - 51:33 Read in full sermon

The point: If you are unprepared for death and judgment, do not stand still - your bedroom should be a witness to earnest prayer crying to God for mercy; passivity in the face of spiritual peril is damning.

Martin reads Christian's words to Evangelist: 'I perceive by the book in my hand I am condemned to die, and after that to come to judgment, I find I am not willing to do the first, nor able to do the second' - applied as the proper recognition of one's peril.

I saw that he looked this way and that way as if he would run, yet he stood still, because I perceived he could not tell which way to go. I looked then and saw a man named Evangelist coming to him, who asked, Wherefore dost thou cry? He answered, Sir, I perceive by the book in my hand I am condemned to die, and after that to come to judgment, I find I am not willing to do the first, nor able to do the second. He took the book seriously.

51:33 - 52:10 Read in full sermon

The point: If you are unprepared for death and judgment, do not stand still - your bedroom should be a witness to earnest prayer crying to God for mercy; passivity in the face of spiritual peril is damning.

Martin reads Christian's explanation of the burden on his back that would sink him below the grave, and Evangelist's convicting challenge 'Why standest thou still?' - directly applied to every unprepared hearer in the congregation.

And he said, Because I feel this burden upon my back will sink me lower than the grave, and I shall fall into hell. And, sir, if I be not fit to go to prison, I am not fit, I am sure, to go to judgment and thence to execution. And the thought of these things makes me cry. And then said Evangelist, If this be thy condition, Oh, get the question, Why standest thou still?

52:32 - 52:58 Read in full sermon

The point: Face the reality that most of those in any congregation will be dead within fifty years, including the preacher - let this perspective strip away the unreality with which death is typically held at arm's length.

Martin imagines the congregation fifty years in the future - the children now present will be elderly grandmothers, most of those present will be dead, and those who remain will recall Pastor Martin and Pastor Clark only as names - making the certainty of mortality personally vivid.

If we build that new building and you give me a few years to preach in it, 50 years from now, think of it. Some of you kids, you youngsters, if you're still in the area, you'll be old. Some of you girls, think of it. You'll be old, gray-haired grandmothers.

55:19 - 55:35 Read in full sermon

The point: Face the reality that most of those in any congregation will be dead within fifty years, including the preacher - let this perspective strip away the unreality with which death is typically held at arm's length.

Martin contrasts two pastoral experiences: the joy of preaching the triumph of the gospel through tears at a believer's funeral (quoting 1 Corinthians 15:51 on resurrection) with the heartbreak of being summoned to bury those for whom there is no reason to believe they are in Christ.

It's appointed to die. Now, man, how long before you take it seriously? Oh, may God grant that today will mark the day when you were prepared, not through any doings of your own, but as you found an interest in the doings of another and embrace the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world. And, oh, my fellow believers, what a joy it is amidst the pain and the agony to preach at the funeral of one who's in Christ, to look through one's tear-filled eyes into the tear-filled eyes of the bereaved and to say, this I say to you by the word of the Lord, we shall not all sleep, but we shall al...

56:05 - 57:32 Read in full sermon