This is submitted in honor and memory of good friend and faithful servant of the Lord, Jimmy Carter, pastor of Norwood, Colorado Baptist Church, called home Palm Sunday, 2005.
“But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’”
“There is a preacher of the old school, but he speaks as boldly as ever. He is not popular though the world is his parish, and he travels every part of the globe and speaks in every language. He visits the poor, calls upon the rich, preaches to people of every religion and no religion, and the subject of his sermon is always the same. He is an eloquent preacher, often stirring feelings which no other preacher could in bringing tears to eyes that never weep. His arguments none are able to refute, nor is there any heart that has remained unmoved by the force of his appeals. He shatters life with his message. Most people hate him; everyone fears him. His name? Death. Every tombstone is his pulpit. Every newspaper prints his text, and someday every one of you will be his sermon.” - David Cawston “Ready to Face the Music”
In that same sermon, Reverend Cawston told a story of two teenagers who were talking one day at school. One said, "Wouldn’t it be neat to know the time and the place that you were going to die?" His buddy said, "What good would that do?" The first one said, "I wouldn’t show up”.
What makes that story funny, ironically, is the universal knowledge of a truth that is not funny at all; that there is no such thing as avoiding death. Not that this fact keeps us from trying. In history and literature, from the arts to the market place, we can see evidence of mankind’s terrible fear of the inevitable, and his fruitless efforts to deny or delay it.
From Dorian Gray’s portrait, to Ponce de Leon’s fountain of youth, to the weekday morning television ads trying to sell you products that will make you look younger, feel younger, perform better, take away all the aches and pains of aging…
…you all know what I mean.
Sin entered into the world and death through sin, and ever since that very day the prospect of death has held men and women in a grip of fear so horrible that many people will get angry if you even try to discuss it in their presence. As though not thinking about it will somehow delay it.
But it is there, waiting like a bony fingered specter, pointing down at a tombstone with your name on it; and the only thing you can’t make out is the final date.
DEATH’S STING
We know from two verses of scripture that should be very familiar to the Bible studying Christian, that sin and death are universal. I’m referring to Romans 3:23 and 6:23. Those two addresses should be easy to remember.
Romans 3:23 “…for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God”
Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
In these two statements alone, Paul has established that, 1. all have sinned. There is no one born of the flesh who can truthfully say otherwise. 2. All must die.
The Apostle establishes very thoroughly in the third chapter of Romans, the utter decadence of mankind as a result of sin.
In one of the three Italian made westerns that made Clint Eastwood famous, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”, Eli Wallach’s character has been arrested and condemned to die by hanging. He is sitting astride a horse, hands tied behind his back, noose around his neck, as the executioner reads the list of charges against him for the public to hear.
There are other things going on in the movie, but as the camera goes to different people and the various events transpiring, all the while, in the background you can hear these charges being read. The list of this man’s crimes is so long that it takes about 10 minutes to read. It just goes on and on.
Chapter 3 of Romans is sort of like that. The list of man’s heinous sins and his depraved nature and his rebellion against God is so long, and so compelling, that men are left without excuse and without hope.
Verse 19 of that chapter reads, “Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God;”
So, all are guilty before God. Then we go over to chapter 6 verse 23 and find out that the payment we earn for sin is death. So if all have sinned, then all must die.
This is why Paul calls sin death’s sting, in verse 56 of our text.
One commentator used a bee as an analogy. The bee stings, and leaves it’s stinger in the person stung. Now the hurtful part of death is sin.
If you take away sin, death has lost its punch. But for all who go into death still in their sin, with the stinger still in them, that is when death has its greatest power to hurt. Because the sin separates the sinner from God and Christ forever.
SIN’S POWER
Whereas death’s sting is sin, sin’s power is the law. Going back to Romans; in chapter 7 Paul points out that the Law aroused in us the sinful passions of the flesh. Then in verse 7 he asks, “What shall we say then? Is the Law Sin?”
The answer is a very powerful ‘NO!’ The Law exposes sin by telling us what sin is, and the sinful nature in us uses that knowledge to move us to sin.
Using himself as an example, Paul says as a for instance that he would not have known that coveting was a sin had the Law not taught him so. But once he was aware of that, sin, like an evil entity living inside, moved him to commit every kind of coveting.
So while the Law itself, given by God, is holy and righteous and good (Rom 7:12), sin uses the Law like a fulcrum to move the flesh to sin. Therefore, the law becomes sin’s power.
No flesh can be saved by the keeping of the law, because the law brings awareness of sin, but has no power to keep the man from sinning.
An example I’ve used in the past is of a school bus and that arm that comes out the side, and the flashing red lights on the back, telling you to stop and not pass the bus.
The laws pertaining to passing school buses have no power to keep you from passing anyway.
But if the driver gets your license number, or much worse, you run over a child, then you will pay the penalty for breaking the law.
On the other hand, you aren’t earning any brownie points by keeping the law. It is expected of you. Most people stop when they see those red lights and those arms come out. But no one runs up to their car to shake their hand, or gets their license number and sends them a commendation for stopping behind that bus.
The law has no power to keep you from sinning, and the law has no reward to offer for keeping it.
Now a point of application here. Many Christians, and without having any statistics in front of me to quote to you I would dare to submit to you that most Christians go for many years not understanding this point of doctrine. Even when they think they have it in their head, their reactions and responses to life prove that they really don’t understand at all.
People will agree that the law has no power to keep them from sinning, and if they think it through a little farther they will agree that the law has no reward to offer for keeping it. And they might, at this juncture, even add that we are saved by grace through faith and not by works of the law.
But if you watch their interaction with other Christians around them, and listen to how they talk about God, you will hear evidence or see evidence in their behavior that they haven’t fully gotten it. That there is this thing called the ‘good Christian’, and there are rules to follow in order to be a ‘good Christian’, and the implication is that if they themselves, or others around them fail to keep that standard, they are less than entirely acceptable to God, and certainly at a disadvantage in the church.
The danger of this inherent need to keep the law, or be a good Christian or however you choose to word it, is that any sense of righteousness or rightness that you get from your efforts is a self-righteousness.
Going back once more to the school bus illustration; I said the law has no reward to offer. That is not entirely true, because the one and only reward to be gained in the keeping of it is a sense of self satisfaction. “Well, no one else is going to thank me or reward me, but I’m a good driver and I obey the laws and I’m proud that I don’t get tickets or get in accidents because of my careful attentiveness to the rules of the road”.
That’s the only reward you’re going to get.
So it is with the keeping of the law and religious duty, self-imposed or imposed by the cultural church. The Bible says that no flesh will be justified, that is, declared right with God, through the keeping of the law. Therefore, the only thing the religious person has to gain by keeping the law and putting his trust in the law to make him right, is a sense of self-righteousness.
Now I started out saying this is dangerous. Here is why. First, because he is not putting his faith in God, but in his own ability to live uprightly. To be a ‘good Christian’. There are many in the church, and will be right up to when the trumpet sounds, who will not go to Heaven, because they’ve never truly put their trust in a Savior and His sufficient atoning work to save them.
It’s always been about them and about their faithful keeping of the rules, and they’ve never come to know God’s saving grace.
Secondly, it’s dangerous because when they do stumble and fail to keep to their own religious standard, they must either harden themselves and go on, pretending it never happened and therefore being hardened against conviction the next time it comes up, or they wallow in self-inflicted guilt and self-flagellation, because they have no one to fall back on.
They serve a god who is as condemning and demanding as they, so there is no help there, and since they’ve failed their own self-imposed standards there is nothing to do but despair.
This is the sting of death, Christian. Sin, using the letter of the law and man’s own consciousness of right and wrong, to move him to sin, and sting him over and over again with its guilt and pain, until he finally takes the stinger with him to the grave.
But there is hope for the one who puts his faith in Jesus Christ and abides in His grace, and that is the message of I Corinthians 15.
DEATH’S FINAL DEFEAT
Paul referred to a passage from Isaiah, and another from Hosea to make his point here in our text. I’d like for you to go to Isaiah 25 and look at verses 7 through 9.
Isaiah is prophesying God’s judgment of the nations, and there is historical significance, as in all Old Testament prophecy. But as we see so often throughout the New Testament, the Holy Spirit, through Paul, reveals to us that there was future application as well. In verses 7-9 of Isaiah 25 he says;
“And on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples,
Even the veil which is stretched over all nations.
He will swallow up death for all time,
And the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces,
And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth;
For the LORD has spoken.” Isa 25:7-9
Then from Hosea he quotes concerning the sting of death and goes on to tell us that the sting of death is sin and the law is sin’s power, and in verse 57 breaks forth in an anthem of praise.
“…but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Does He give us the victory through the keeping of the law? NO! Does He give us the victory through the ordinances of the church and righteous living? NO!
He gives us the victory…over what? OVER DEATH! OVER THE GRAVE!
…through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Let’s take a look at how He does that.
Listen to Hebrews 2:14,15
“Since then the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.”
Slavery to what? To the law! Slavery to sin! Suffering the sting of death through the fear of death because of sin.
But Jesus took the stinger in Himself to Calvary’s cross, friend. He carried sin itself there in His own person and becoming a curse for us (Gal 3:13), he removed the sting of death for everyone who believes.
II Corinthians 5:21 “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him”.
Romans 8:3 “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did; sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh…”
You’ve heard me say this before. I’ll never tire of saying it. God sent His only Son to the cross, and when He was nailed to that cross, God the Father reckoned Him to be the physical embodiment of all sin for all time, and placing the entire weight of sin on His person, while sin was nailed down and couldn’t get away, He judged it, once, for all.
“And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross…” Colossians 2:13,14 …and people, Jesus took the stinger. He took all your sin for all time and cast it in the depths of the sea. He saved you by His grace alone. He sustains you by His grace alone. By His grace alone He will see you through and bring you home, because by His grace death has been swallowed up in victory, and He now passes that victory on to you in full.
O Death, where is your victory? O Death, where is your sting? Gone! Gone forever, thanks be to God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is not the laying down of the body that should be feared. Not that last kiss from a loved one, or that last shuddering breath and stepping out into the unknown.
No, what should be feared is the sting. The presence of sin that separates the dead and dying from God and living, forever.
That is precisely why for the believer in Christ there should be no apprehension whatsoever. No fear of death. The believer is reckoned dead to the flesh and alive in Christ already.
Someone has said;
“Death is not extinguishing the light from the Christian; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come”. - unk
That’s all it will be for us; for you, if you’ve turned from sin to God and believed in Jesus’ shed blood and resurrection and confessed faith in Him.
Death has no stinger for us. It will just be a doffing and a donning. Taking off and putting on. We’ll shed the perishable in order to put on the imperishable. Leave this mortal frame behind to put on immortality.
LIFE AND VICTORY!
One more glance at our text and then I’m done.
There is a ‘therefore’. Paul has just given the most profound defense for the doctrine of the resurrection to be found anywhere, in scripture or outside of it.
In his typically systematic and irrefutable style of logic he has answered every objection and brought his readers to a place of certainty that their eternal future in Christ is sure, that it is already provided for, that death’s sting has been removed, that the grave is an empty place because our forerunner has gone before us and now stands as the first fruits of a sure and certain resurrection.
We cry with victory! Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?
Thanks be to God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Is he done? NO! Because for every born again believer in Christ who has done with the keeping of the law for righteousness, and now walks by faith in the Grace of Him who brought the victory, there is a therefore.
And in verse 58 he calls for three things that you’ll never witness in the life of the legalist. You’ll not see these things in the one whose faith is in the dead letter of the law; who has not understood and embraced the all-sufficiency of the death and resurrection of Christ and his own part in it.
Steadfastness, Immovability, Abounding work in ministry.
I’ll talk about these briefly in closing.
There’s nothing especially deep or mysterious about the words themselves. Steadfastness has to do with being well-placed and established. In fact the Greek word can be applied to sitting down. Not in a sense of laziness, but in place. Not wandering or faltering.
Immoveable means just what it says. Rock solid. So we get a picture here of someone who is confident in his faith and doctrine and cannot be moved from it; not because of a stubborn or stiff-necked attitude, but because he has received the witness of the Holy Spirit and the revealed Word of God and cannot be shaken from the foundation he is being built up on.
That is the kind of person who will abound in the work of the Lord and not grow weary. Because he knows that true Kingdom work is never in vain, but has an eternal quality and value to it that will go on producing long after that which is passing is gone.
I don’t want to go negative on you at the end of a sermon, but just take a pause to reflect on the behavior and the lifestyles you’ve seen exhibited in people in the church, and much of what you have witnessed over the years and in the various places you have been should be sufficient to convince you of the validity of my words earlier, that many just haven’t gotten it.
Say what you may, or they may say what they may, we’re seeing far too little, far too few examples in the church any more, of people who are steadfast, immovable, abounding in the work of the Lord.
This tells me that what must be done to correct the problem, is not to browbeat people into service, not put them on guilt trips about giving of their time and resources, not cajole and plead with them to help fill this need or that, not keep after them and babysit them and hold their hand through one crisis after another.
This tells me that what must be done is that preachers and teachers of God’s Word must go back to the clear and accurate exposition of sound biblical doctrine, as it relates to sin and salvation, justification and sanctification, and loud and clear teaching about the all-sufficient, all-encompassing grace of God, who has paid it all; who has given us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Christian, death is swallowed up in victory. Jesus has removed its sting and its power, and as first fruits of the resurrection He stands glorified forever, He has declared that because He lives you too shall live.
You are not on shaky ground with God. You need not fear death, for it has been swallowed up and the victory has been passed on to you. Ask the Lord to bring the eternal truth of this home to your mind and heart with a clarity you have never before known, and then be steadfast, immovable, abounding in the work of the Lord. You’ve been given life and victory so you may do His work with joy and purpose.
And those who toil for Him do not toil in vain.
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For Jimmy: "The term is over, the holidays have begun. The dream is ended, this is the morning"
- Lewis
