Dying To Know

Part 1 – Everyone Wants to Know

1. An ache we can’t explain

Friends, have you noticed how every culture carries an unspoken question about what happens after the last heartbeat?

We read it in ancient poetry, we see it in the pyramids of Egypt, we glimpse it in Silicon Valley’s dream of uploading minds to machines.

People might not talk about God at the office or the coffee shop, but they do think about the after.

Maybe it first hit you at a funeral.

Maybe it was a late-night thought that would not let you go.

Maybe it came when a medical test used the word terminal.

The book of Ecclesiastes says God has “set eternity in the human heart” (Eccl. 3:11).

That’s why we’re dying to know.

It’s why the question never really stays buried.

Let me start with a simple question you can answer in your own heart:

When did you first wonder what really happens after death?

It matters, because our answer shapes how we live today.

---

2. God’s world was not built for death

Open your Bible to Genesis 1.

Every day of creation ends with a refrain: “And God saw that it was good.”

Then after the sixth day: “It was very good.”

No funerals. No decay. No separation.

Life—unbroken and abundant—was the original design.

But then we reach Genesis 2:17.

God gives Adam and Eve a single warning:

> “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Notice what that means.

Death was not a built-in feature of creation.

It was a foreign intruder, a possibility that existed only if humanity chose separation from the Source of life.

---

3. The birth of death

Genesis 3 tells the story we know by heart.

The serpent whispered, “You will not surely die.”

Doubt was planted, desire inflamed, trust broken.

Eve took, Adam followed.

And the world changed.

Not with a thunderclap but with something far deeper.

In that moment the perfect connection between the human heart and the heart of God snapped.

Two kinds of death entered.

Spiritual death – Immediate separation from God, the fountain of life. Think of a flower cut from the stem: still beautiful for a while, but already dying.

Physical death – The long decay that ends at the grave. “Dust you are and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19).

Paul sums it up in Romans 5:12:

> “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people.”

Friends, death is not natural.

It is not simply the circle of life.

It is a parasite that entered when trust in God was broken.

---

4. Death’s early dominion

From that first breach, death began its long, dark career.

Genesis quickly records the first murder—Cain and Abel.

By chapter 5 the refrain “and then he died” tolls like a funeral bell through the genealogy.

Romans 5:14 observes, “Death reigned from Adam to Moses.”

No matter your title or talent, death eventually knocks.

Every empire, every invention, every dream of immortality falls before it.

Even nature bears the scar.

Romans 8:20–22 says creation itself was “subjected to frustration” and “groans as in the pains of childbirth.”

Thorns, earthquakes, disease—all part of a world dislocated from its Life-giver.

---

5. The fear that enslaves

But death’s reach is more than physical.

Hebrews 2:15 speaks of those who “all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”

That fear drives much of what we see around us—

the obsession with youth, the frantic chase for fame or wealth, the numbness of distraction.

Psychologists tell us that fear of mortality lurks behind many anxieties.

Why do some grasp for control, overwork, or medicate their pain?

Because deep down they know they cannot stop the clock.

Death’s first weapon is not the coffin; it is the terror of the coffin.

---

6. A personal moment of honesty

Pause with me.

Where do you feel death’s shadow right now?

Maybe you’re walking through grief.

Maybe your body is aging faster than you expected.

Maybe you simply dread the thought of non-existence.

Here’s the truth Scripture whispers:

You were not built for death.

You were built for unbroken life with God.

That’s why your heart protests.

It’s not weakness; it’s memory of Eden.

---

7. A hint of hope

Even in the dark pages of Genesis, God planted a promise:

the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head (Gen 3:15).

A Redeemer would come to break death’s dominion.

We stand today on the other side of that promise.

Jesus Christ stepped into our mortality to destroy “the one who holds the power of death—that is, the devil” (Heb 2:14).