Death is so unnatural to us, so confusing, so unsettling. It is not easy to handle. When we face the death of loved ones, we do not even know how to react or what to say. When I heard of the death of Brother Vasudevan, everything stopped for a moment. It is a shocking and strange experience.
Different cultures react differently. Worldly people, who want everything to be a celebration, make loud noises, dance, and drink to manage the shock, to suppress their conscience, and to suppress important questions of life. They fill their minds with rituals at this time. We can give some answers to everything in life, but when we face death, we do not have answers until we open God’s Word.
It is at such times that the light of the Bible shines very brightly. Firstly, the Bible makes us realize our unnatural, confusing, and strange feelings are correct. That is the right way to react to death, because when the Lord made the world, the experience of death was not a natural design of his creation. He made the world very good; death—the unnatural separation of body and soul—is completely against his original creation. That is why we feel such conflict inside us. The small letter we take so lightly, sin, is what brought this death. The wages of sin is death.
Death is a divinely appointed punishment for mankind’s disobedience. The separation of body and soul is unnatural and, therefore, is only a temporary state until the second coming of Christ, when all who are in the grave will hear his voice and come out, and their body and soul will be reunited forever.
I have known Vasudevan for close to eight years; he was a member of our church, a godly man, and a very, very faithful member. I want to praise God for the grace that we saw in this elderly brother. He would sit in the front chair and enjoy the exposition of truth for close to an hour. After the service, he would always come and encourage me, telling me he had never heard such truth in his life, and how it touched his heart and did something to him. He would not just talk to me; he would talk to my shy children. He would tell John, “You should be an Indian cricketer.” He would call my daughter, “Dr. Jerusha.” He would encourage my wife for supporting me in ministry. If I allowed our church members to speak, most would come and say how they were encouraged and inspired by his life. His simply coming to church in his old age, with all his pain, was a great service and ministry he did for our church. He never complained, grumbled, or shared any of his pains with us but greeted and encouraged everyone with his childlike smile.
In his last few months, whenever he was feeling a little okay and could walk, he would want to come to church. When he fell sick and was admitted, he would say, “I want to get well so I can go to church; I want to come to church. I’m missing it.” The last time I met him, his legs were painful with infection; it was very, very difficult for him. I was wondering what words of comfort I could tell him. In fact, I was discouraged when I saw him, but after he spoke to me for a few hours, I was so encouraged. I did not feel like leaving him; I wanted to continue talking. He kept telling me about Bible truths, saying, “You said that in Matthew, Ephesians, Leviticus, and Psalms,” and about Bible stories like Job. One thing he kept repeating was, “I am ready. I am ready. I am waiting for the Lord to come and take me. I am ready.”
It is easy to talk about faith and being faithful until the end when you are young and in good health, but when your body becomes weak and full of all kinds of pains, it is so difficult to hold on to faith. But Vasudevan was faithful until the end, kept his faith, and fought a good fight. Ours is a young church; we want to thank God today that he brought a marvelous, elderly man of faith to us and displayed such grace among us. Even in his old age with so much pain, his faith stood strong. His faith shined even in the midst of terrible physical suffering.
Today, I want to share two crucial Bible lessons we can learn from Vasudevan’s life.
Lesson One: Death is an Inescapable Certainty
We may generally know this, but according to the Bible, if we want to live a meaningful and wise life (Psalm 90:12), we should live with this consciousness. We saw our brother fall sick and be admitted repeatedly, and sometimes we thought it would be difficult for him to make it, but he repeatedly escaped death and came out miraculously. Even last week, he could not get up, but his daughter said he started walking. But he finally passed away last week. Why? Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed for man once to die.” A divine appointment has been made in God’s calendar.
How did he make this appointment? Not like a dentist appointment we make, where the doctor and we discuss a convenient date and time and fix an appointment. That is a bilateral appointment. But God, unilaterally by himself, has fixed a death appointment for every man and woman in this world.
Firstly, I want to give comfort to the family and church people not to trouble yourselves, saying, “Oh, if we would have taken him there, if we had done this or that.” Beyond all our efforts, death happens by divine appointment.
Secondly, we should all learn to live with the consciousness that death is an inescapable certainty. The wise man, Solomon, says that it is this consciousness that makes us live wisely. James even says your life is just a vapor, like the smoke that comes when you boil water. That is how the Bible wants us to view our lives. To make it personal, you should learn to look in the mirror sometimes and say this unpleasant thing to yourself: “One day you will die. Your heart will stop beating.” So the first lesson is the certainty of death. The appointment is fixed.
Lesson Two: We Must Be Ready
The second lesson is that since this appointment is certain, and we do not know the appointment date—it can happen when we are old, or when we are young or middle-aged—no one knows the time. If that is the case, the wisest thing you can do is to be ready at any time. In Luke 16, through a parable, our Lord says that he who does not think about death and does not prepare for his death is a fool. Brother Vasudevan repeatedly kept telling us, “I am ready. I am waiting for my Lord to come and take me. I am ready.” How many of you can say you are ready? I have seen many, many old people die; they all died as if they were sheep forcefully dragged to slaughter. But he was ready.
How could he say he was ready? Two things made him ready:
- He believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he repented for his sins and turned to God.
- This faith gave him the assurance of eternal life and knowledge of what would happen after death.
Only these two things can make any man ready for death.
First—faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and repentance towards God. Many years ago, he heard the gospel. The gospel taught him that there is one living God who created and provides for him and who is a holy and just God. Then he realized he was a fallen sinner, that he had broken God’s laws, and that he had so much covetousness, envy, lust, and anger. And he knew that this God would judge him one day. He realized the good news is that this God has sent his only begotten Son as an atoning sacrifice for his sins. Christ took his sins upon him on the cross and died, and he lived a righteous life that he could never live. He died for his sins and lived to make him righteous before God. So he heard the gospel, believed Christ, repented for his sins, and was saved. As the Bible promises: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.”
Second—this faith gave him the assurance of eternal life and knowledge of what will happen after death. Because John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” So, because he believed, he received eternal life. This gift wonderfully takes away the fear of death by giving a clear, true knowledge of what happens after death.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism Question 37 asks, “What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death?” It lists three blessings:
- The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness.
- And they do immediately pass into glory.
- And their bodies, being still united to Christ, rest in their graves until the resurrection.
The catechism says three things: what happens to our souls, where our souls go, and what happens to our body. We believe that Vasudevan, as soon as he left this world, had his soul made perfect in holiness—a glorious, blessed state. Not only is he without sin, but his spirit has become so perfect, reflecting God’s holy law and reflecting Jesus Christ. Imagine “perfect” means no more growth is needed; he has reached the height of holiness. Holiness is the essence of all happiness. Heaven is happy because they are holy. So he is in a perfectly happy and holy state.
Secondly, you know this perfect holiness is preparation for him to go to a glorious place. Where do our souls go? Our souls immediately pass into glory. Because the purity of the heavenly glory admits no sin or imperfection, he is made perfectly holy so he can immediately pass into glory. Glory, yes, it will be a wonderful place. Revelation 21 says, “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”
But more than the absence of negative things, there are blessed positive things. In his perfect state, he will be able to stand before God with joy. No one was able to stand here; John and Isaiah fell like dead men. Jude 24 says, “Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.” He will see God face to face. Our forefathers called it the beatific vision. The very essence of happiness for us, created in his image, is the enjoyment of God. Psalm 16:7 says, “In Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” God is an infinite, inexhaustible fountain of joy, and to have him is to have all.
We shall corporally behold the glorified body of Jesus Christ. I often say, “He did so much, and yet I have not seen his face,” but then we will see it. Then he will be with the glorious family of angels and all the saints. So what happens to his soul? Perfected holiness, and it immediately passes to glory.
Third, what happens to their bodies? “Their bodies, being still united to Christ, rest in their graves until the resurrection.” We see his body here, but Christ not only redeemed our soul but even our body. He united our body to himself; it is a member of his body. His body will rest until the resurrection. The last time I met him, he was saying, “I cannot sleep because of the pain. I cannot rest.” Now, this body will rest painlessly until the resurrection. Although we will bury it, we are actually sowing it as a seed. This same body will rise with a glorious, deathless resurrection body and be united to a sinless soul at the second coming of Christ. Then he will experience the full blessing of eternal life in the new heavens and new earth.
We can have full comfort not just because our dear one’s soul went to heaven to live forever. We do not weep because our loved ones have gone to heaven; it is a joy. But we weep because their body will go into the grave—because those eyes can no longer smile at us, because those hands cannot touch us with love, and because those lips cannot speak, as the body is cold and dead and will be buried in the dust.
But the whole Christian burial service is meant to give us comfort in the promised resurrection for the body. The comfort of the Christian faith is that the very body we bury in the grave will rise again; you shall see that body once more. First Corinthians 15 uses the example of a seed and says this body is sown in the grave as a small seed, but what grows is a big tree from that seed. In the same way, this body will rise with a glorious, deathless body. Paul says in 15:42-43: “The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.”
See that this should give us hope. “He is not dead, but sleepeth.” We are not burying him permanently; we are sowing him, like a “seed sown to ripen at harvest time.” This body is buried for a glorious metamorphosis, to be prepared to live in glory in the presence of God.
The writer to the Hebrews says all the Old Testament saints, including Abraham, believed in the resurrection of the dead. The Bible says that is why he had the faith to sacrifice his son. Joseph believed, and that is why he carefully told his people not to bury his bones in Egypt but to take them and bury them in the promised land. Moses, David, and even old Job endured many things, believing that thereby they would “attain to a better resurrection.” How much more should we have that resurrection hope?
Do you know that angels will guard his body? The Book of Jude says that Michael the Archangel contended with the devil about the body of Moses. Why were two big archangels and the devil contending? Was this war only for the food of worms? The body of Moses was watched over by a great archangel. From this, we learn that an angel watches over every tomb. We may bury it, but God will guard every atom of his body. Whatever metamorphosis it may go through, God will gather it and raise him from the dead with more glory to dwell forever with the Lord. This body is buried for a glorious metamorphosis, to be prepared to live in glory in the presence of God.
So death is an inescapable certainty, and we do not know the time, so we have to be ready. The only way to be ready, as Vasudevan’s life taught us, is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and to repent of your sins and turn to God. This faith gave him the assurance of eternal life and knowledge of what would happen after death. May those of you who have not believed in the Lord Jesus Christ believe him today and experience the blessing of eternal life.
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 