The Fear of Death: Satan's Last Weapon Part 1

Not many preach and teach on this topic, but it is a topic that can free many believers from the bondage of fear. Join Pastor Tim and Pastor Kris for this series on the fear of death. Learn how Satan uses this fear to control believers and learn how to be free from it. Learn how to live as God has called you to live!

Transcript

The Fear of Death: Satan’s Last Weapon (Transcribed)

Pastor Tim Howard   
Hello, everyone. Glad you could join us on the Real People Real God podcast. We'll spend the next little while getting to know God a little bit better by getting into the Bible and hearing what he has to say to us and through us. Welcome. 

Thank you for joining us on the podcast. I'm Pastor Tim Howard. And today I have with me Pastor Khris Shepherdson, say Hi, Kris. Yes, welcome. We've got a hot topic for you here, hot in the sense that a lot of people don't like talk about it. So, we're excited to bring it to you. And the title of this podcast is called, “The Fear of Death: Satan's Last Weapon”. And so, we have a ton of scripture for you, and we have a ton of information. This is going to be a multi-part series. And we're just so excited to bring it to you. I believe we might be the brave ones in tackling this topic. But I also do believe this is going to free a lot of people from the, from the hand of the enemy. And so, hold on to your hat, get your Bibles out, get your notebook, your journal, whatever you're going to use. Like I said, a lot of information. And we also urge you to look this stuff up yourself. We'll give you scripture references and we'll take our time. But it's important that you just don't take our word for it, that you get into the Scripture and see what the Holy Spirit has to show you. So, we're excited to bring this to you. And we also, you know, we'd like to hear your comments. You can always comment on the podcast wherever you listen, or you can email us which we will prefer at info@ValleyViewChapel.net. We'd love to hear your comments and your questions. So, let's get into it. So we've kind of framed out a question that we're basing this whole series on. And we'll start with that question. And then we'll just kind of take off from there. And the question is, you trust Jesus with your salvation, but do you trust him with your death? That one, we could probably ponder on a long time Yeah, so let's get in it. Let's get into this thing. And, you know, you might have had heard a lot of thoughts about death in the past, and so on. But we're talking about a lot of this from the believer’s perspective, from those that believe in Christ, and live for Christ. And so that's kind of the angle. So, let's open it up. What is death? 

Pastor Kris Shepardson 
Well, death. I mean, it's pretty obvious death is the end of something. The end of life. We, you know, we have lots of family members that have passed on before us, you know, as kids, we see our pets die. And, you know, to some people, this is a very scary thing. But it's with it's the end of life. That's what people pretty much see that as the end of life.

Pastor Tim Howard 
Yeah, I mean, we, we look at death. And you know, we, we look all around us, the flowers, the trees, the, you know, everything, the animals our pets, you know, everything has a beginning and everything has an end. And for the believer, that's a little different. And we'll get into a lot of that here after a while. But I want to focus on death for a little bit. In Psalm 116:15, it says, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. Now, this is a, this is not what a lot of people were thinking, you know, that precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. And when we're talking death, here, we're talking this physical death, you know, when this body is done, and it's lived it's time on Earth, and it's done its thing. But the body doesn't make up who we are. So, death is is something that you know like, as children we didn't want to face we didn't want to look at our Fluffy, dying, or whatever, you know, because we knew it was going to be a sad thing. And we carry that on even sometimes through our faith. But for the believer, this should be a whole different concept. So Biblically speaking, what does the Bible say? 

Pastor Kris Shepardson  
Death according to Scripture, and according to what Jesus had said, and Paul talks quite a bit about it. Its absence of the physical body and spirit now is immediately in the presence of God. It's a change. I see death as a change of location. Because we are believers. The scriptures say we never die. Jesus died for us so that we would never have to face the second death or the final death. We get to live forever and that is the hope we have as believers that even some Christians and including myself for a long time, don't quite grasp and understand the depth of what that really means.

Pastor Tim Howard 
Yeah, yeah, that's so true. And I have found something here really neat that I want to read. It is a quote from Natasha Dongle on September 3, 2020. “Christians in the Fear of Death”, and it's from the Wesleyan Church website wesleyan.org. But listen to this, this is pretty cool. Western or North American culture does not promote a human story in which death makes sense. Its narrative stems from an ideal of self-made freedom, happiness and success and tends to deny the spiritual or metaphysical idea of eternal life. Other than the burial and the funeral after a loved one dies, there are little to no celebrated traditions or rituals in our majority culture that retell the ongoing story of loss in the context of our natural human experience. She goes on to say we seem cornered by both a fascination with death as evidence through movies and media, and a denial that it exists. We separate the idea of death from the idea of life, desperately trying to convince ourselves that we have outsmarted it with enough money, enough technology, enough medicine, good choices and precautionary measures. Surely, we can avoid this evil. Surely, we can climb ourselves out of the curse, in a way from those finger-like tentacles that wrap around our ankles and draw us one day at a time into death's gaping maw. Now, there's a little bit more I want to read here, two more paragraphs. Many of us within the influence of American Christianity are affected by these tendencies and mindsets. We have not reformed the deep foundational pieces of our inner paradigms to live in the true Christian narrative but continue to interpret our lives through our culture's version of the human story. The result is a mixture or disconnect in which we celebrate salvation and victory in Christ. Without a true understanding or healthy respect for the disease of death that clings to our bodies and wreaks havoc within our souls. I see this contributing to a fascinating division between contemplative Christianity, which is a more introspective, mystical and soul focused expression. And charismatic Christianity, which is a more spirit led celebratory and victory focused expression of Christianity, this generation is trying to reconstruct the Christian narrative in our new global context of understanding but struggling to place all the right pieces in their Gospel Place, according to God's design. Without each other, we lose perspective and live in parts of God's story. Now, that's really, really good, because that's exactly what we're doing. We're fooling ourselves. By avoiding it, by trying to not admit that it's ever going to happen there, they have some hope that we're not going to die, you know, that this body's not going to die. And our society and culture has so much to do with that.

Pastor Kris Shepardson   
So, I mean, you see so much like, for instance, I mean, how many times have you seen shows or TV programs were about? They're searching for the fountain of youth? What is the fountain of youth? That is the idea that if I can find this secret place, I'll never die? I can live forever, and you see it in makeup commercials. I mean, when we get older, we get wrinkles. I mean, it's evidence of what is to come kind of like fall we see the leaves changing, and we know okay, this is coming. And we desperately do everything within our grasp to stop it. And another thing that I noticed too, is there's such a fear to even make your own funeral arrangements. Yeah, there's like if I if I don't look at it, you know, make my arrangements then I don't have to think about it. And I can push it away like it doesn't exist, but reality says it is coming. 

Pastor Tim Howard 
That's right. Death that comes to everybody. Yes, Ecclesiastes 9:2 says the same destiny ultimately awaits everyone, whether righteous or wicked, good or bad, ceremonial, clean or unclean, religious or irreligious. That's out of the New Living Translation. And that's so true. You know, even just because we stick our head in the ground like an ostrich doesn't mean it's not going to go away. Yeah, you know, but I, I even dare to say by the end of this series that we're going to see people will begin to celebrate their physical death, and would at least be the goal. That's The goal?

Pastor Kris Shepardson
Yeah, yeah, it’s not that we're being morbid in focusing on like, yeah, we're all going to die, but it's taking that fear away, taking that dread, you know that controls and that's exactly what it does. The fear of death controls the actions and completely limits people.

Pastor Tim Howard  
Yep. Genesis 3:19 says by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread to you return to the ground for out of it you were taken for you are dust and to dust you shall return, the English Standard Version. I've got just a ton of scriptures here to talk about that, that death comes to everybody. Hebrews 9:27, just as people are destined to die once and after that to face judgment, you know, destined that, you know, the NIV there uses the word destiny, it's going to happen as soon as you're born, you have a date, your body has a date with death.

Pastor Kris Shepardson  
Yeah. You know, and it's really interesting, you know, in, I guess I can look at my life, my own life. You know, Tim, you know, some of the struggles I've had, you know, fear of death has been, has been a really big battle that I've had to face. And, and so it's exciting to see the possibility of others being freed from that, because it is something we all have to face. And it's kind of surprising to me that more pastors and more leaders do not address this issue. And I think maybe they might be dealing with some of that themselves. And that might be why it doesn't happen.

Pastor Tim Howard 
And I dare say, and we're going to, we're going to bring this all to you; wrap this all together a nice little package by the time we're done here. But I dare say that there are a lot of believers that are just bound by this fear even more than they realize they are. Yeah, and it's preventing them from being used by God, like he wants to use them or, or it's becoming a roadblock for them in their walk with God. And I mean, as a pastor, and I know, you too, we, we've seen this. And they may not come out and say, Well, I'm afraid to die. But a lot of their life is planned around that fear and affected by that fear. And if we have that fear, then Satan has a grip on our lives, and we cannot be free. That might be why some people aren't healed. That might be why some people aren't receiving blessing from God or maybe hearing God like they think they should or, or being in his will, or whatever. And it all may be because they're living in this fear.

Pastor Kris Shepardson  
Yeah, I mean, for me, when I was really battling with this, what I discovered after the fact was that how much that fear limited me. For instance, in driving like, afraid to go places afraid to go too far, afraid to travel in certain types of vehicles, because you know, you could die or any attempt to preserve my life, you know, any to say, quote, unquote, safe from the possibility like holding on to whatever. And the thing that's so bizarre is like, I didn't have any control over that anyway. How crazy is that? Like, what are you holding on to, nothing? It does limit, it's a paralyzing, and you, you hit it right on the head Tim, when you said in the very beginning, it's the final frontier, the final piece that Satan has control over our lives. And as a believer, it is so paralyzing.

Pastor Tim Howard  
Yeah, it is. And, you know, as I said, In the beginning, we, you know, whether we're kids, teenagers or adults, we give our lives to the Lord. That's easy to say, that's easy. Once we come to that realization, it's easy for us to do and to have that faith in him that says, you know, I give you my life. Yeah, but what nobody has really told us or has really gave us the inclination to understand is what that means Can you trust God, with your death with your physical death? Can you trust him with that? In other words, do you trust him? That, you know, you're going to be conveyed as scripture says into eternal life? I mean, that's the pretense of why you got saved. Jesus forgave you for your sins and so on so that you may have eternal life. Well, don't forget, in order to have eternal life, your body has to die first, right? Or you're not going to be carrying a life. But that's not something that we put into equation. I don't ever remember hearing that at any altar call I've ever heard in my life, ever. No. But that's, that's where like, you know, like we said, Satan has that that last grip that last frontier, that last weapon over us as believers, you know, is just because we don't want to face. It doesn't mean Satan's not going to use it against us. And he does in many, many ways.

Pastor Kris Shepardson  
It's one of those things that kind of sneaks up on you. Yeah, it really does, you can avoid it, but eventually, there's going to come a point in your life where it's going to sneak up on you and you realize, hey, I can't move any further until I deal with this.

Pastor Tim Howard  
And the thing about Scripture is, you know, it's so easy for us to fluff it up. Yeah, even without changing words, it's easy for us to, to tell stories around scripture and to fluff it up, you know, and God's love and all this, which is, which is a true thing. But, but sometimes we just have to face scripture for what it says. Yeah, and just because we don't agree with something or want to see something happen, doesn't mean that you know it's not going to happen, or doesn't soften the blow or whatever. And I think as believers, we need to start taking the Bible for what it says. Yeah, I'll give you example, in Job 14:2, it says we blossom like a flower then wither, like a passing shadow, we quickly disappear. That's the NLT version. Just point blank, this is what it is, you know. You're going to blossom like a flower, you're going to be in this life, you're going to touch people's lives, and then like a passing shadow, you're going to disappear. And in a few generations, you'll be forgotten. You know, that's the world’s perspective. That's the fleshly physical perspective. And that is the reality. Psalm 116:15 says, The Lord cares deeply when his loved ones die. You know, now, if God is saying that about death, then it must not be a bad thing. That's what it sounds like, you know, it must not be a bad thing. But we're making it bad in a couple of different ways, and we'll get to some of those ways. But yeah, it's, uh, you know, I hope you're, as you're listening to this, I hope you're really just starting to come to terms with this reality. You know, we all know that we're going to die. We know that. But as a believer, I believe we should be, dare I say, somewhat excited, or at least anticipating that, you know. God has a plan for us now, and that's, and that's wonderful. We're here, we're enjoying this and all that. But he also has an eternal plan. And so I think, you know, we should also, you know, be excited about that, not just what's here on Earth, but be excited about that. That eternal life that that he gives us and that He offers us so yeah. I wanted to hit on this too, man. Like, where's death come from? And, you know, death comes from man's sin, you know, that takes us back to the Garden of Eden when, you know, man disobeyed God. And, you know, he was pretty much cursed. The ground was cursed. Satan was cursed. The woman was cursed. Everybody was cursed. And they would die. I read a scripture from that a little bit ago, Genesis 3:19. So death is really born out of sin, born out of sin. So what does the Bible say about this? What scriptures do we have to back this, that you know what the source of death is? Job 5:7 says yet man is born unto trouble. As the sparks fly upward? Yeah. There is Romans 11:1 in the New King James Version says, I say then has God cast away His people? Certainly not. For I also am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin, talking about casting his people away. 

Pastor Kris Shepardson 
There was a scripture that talks about the end and that we're not going to live forever. That is where he shorten life. 120 years. I'm not contending yet with man forever. He had shorten the life they were living to 900 and something years and then he shortened it to 120.

Pastor Tim Howard   
Yeah, and the New Testament tells us that we all fall short of the glory of God, All have sinned. And, you know, that's the reality of it. We all have sinned. So when we are born into this world, we have a date with death because of sin now, we're talking about Biblical death. What are we talking about? Like spiritual death?

Pastor Kris Shepardson  
Well, I mean, we can go right back to the garden where the serpent was talking to Eve and saying, Well, will you surely die? Will you really die. And Satan knew what was going on. And he deceived her. And, you know, to realize he made her believe that although he was just going to have more knowledge, and in reality, he knew that they would die spiritually. And that would be the end of it. In Satan's mind, the end of them living forever, because God intended us to live forever, he never intended death, right to be part of this equation. But that deception led them down that path.

Pastor Tim Howard   
Yeah, so, you know, God's goal was for us to, you know, when He created Adam, you know, he created us to live eternally with him to have this connection with him; this relationship with him that was, I believe, you know, they used all three parts of our bearing beings, those spirit, our mind, our bodies, and I mean, God communicated with them that way. They heard God in the Garden, they heard His voice, they heard his sound after they had sinned, so I believe they had that connection with him. And when they sinned, they lost that eternal, that eternal promise that you know, replenish the earth and take care of it, and so on. And so they weren't going to live forever at that point. Now that sin is involved in our lives. So that sin carried on through the bloodline, and that sin also brought death with it.

Pastor Kris Shepardson  
You know, the other thing to think about too is, I'm reminded of Jesus when he cursed the fig tree. It didn't die right away. It died overnight by the next morning. So when Adam and Eve were cursed, when God said now you know, dust you'll return. They didn't die the next day, they lived another 900 years, or however long they lived. We don't know the exact time frame of when they fell, but it wasn't immediate. So maybe Satan, they might have thought in their minds. Well, maybe Satan was right. You know, we didn't die. Because Satan said, Well, you're not going to surely die. So physically, immediately, no, they didn't die. They die spiritually. But the death was more slow was slower. 

Pastor Tim Howard 
After that the years got shorter and shorter and shorter over time. Yeah. Because of the sin. And so you know, Satan is pretty much the author of this sin of this death that we live. But God was not finished with us. His plan from the very beginning was to be with us in eternity. And even though there was a big snafu with sin and death, he has made a way for us to have that eternal life, and that is through Jesus Christ. And, you know, he allows us to have that eternal life, which, you know, we'll get into a lot more of that. So, one, one thing I kind of wanted to bring up there, it's kind of a sidebar, but it's also has a lot to do with this, in that is, you know, God created us. We're talking about that creation, He created us perfect. Yeah, He created Adam just how he wanted Him. And He created him in his image, not as a god, but like god; similar to God, and, you know, in a couple ways, but he, he wanted him to be his image bearer. You know, for the rest of the world, he wanted his image to be reflected through his people. And so that's created now you and I, all people were created in God's image, you know, but we do see people today that we can probably say are not in God's image. And so I wanted to kind of just bring up this point in Genesis 1:27 says So God created man in His own image and the image of God He created him male and female, He created them. And so the word create means to create or shape or form and we know that God formed Adam from the dust of the ground. Isaiah 44:2 says, Thus saith the Lord that made thee and formed the from the womb, which will help thee. Fear not, Jacob My servant, and thou Jesurun whom I have chosen. So there Isaiah is talking about, you know, that God formed us so man was formed. And when God formed Adam, he was forming us as well. When he formed Adam, our genetic makeup was already in Adam at that point. Yeah, so all of creation was created in Adam. Genesis talks about the seed, you know, God talks about the seed to Adam and God talks about the seed to Abraham. It's all about the seed. And so all of humanity was in Adam, when he was grabbing that dust or that mud ball or whatever forming Adam. We were there. We weren't, you know, completely to life yet. But we were, we were in that seed. And so, you know, we were in that seed through everything. We were in that seed through Noah. Noah's family, the ark, all through Abraham, all the way down, that seed was there, until the time when we were born. And that seed came to life. But the issue is, is that that seed originally was perfect in every way. But because of sin has come into the bloodline down through the generations, as people multiplied, that seed became sinful and corrupt, it's corrupted. And so my point is without belaboring this too long. We were created in Adam, perfect. But as you can see, people aren't born perfect. We're born into sin. So we can say we're created perfect. Now. What I'm saying is, there's a difference between being created and, and being born. We are created perfect, but we're born into sin. And so therefore, being by being born into sin, we can be born with sinful things upon our bodies, or in our bloodlines, or whatever.

Pastor Kris Shepardson   
That's what you see it all the genetics, and yes, that's right. 

Pastor Tim Howard   
You see people born with all kinds of tendencies, you see people born with mental issues. You see people born with physical issues. You see people born with Down’s syndrome, you see all these different things. You see people, little babies born as addicts, because their parents were addicts of drugs. So, if, if God makes everybody perfect, then we wouldn't see those things. Exactly. So God created us perfect. You know, but because of sin, and that seed, we're not born perfect.

Pastor Kris Shepardson  
When He created us once, when He created Adam, right? And he put the seed just like He did with every plant to reproduce and reproduce and multiply. Yeah, he did. He's not recreating us every time a child is born, right? 

Pastor Tim Howard   
When we're actually being born, that seed is blossoming and coming to life. Yeah. And so for those people that say, you know, you weren't born that way, or whatever, we are born into sin. And that means we're susceptible to all kinds of sins when we're born even though it's not our fault. Even though it's not the little baby's fault, we're still born into sin, and we can be born with sin in and on our bodies. And so, you know, that's just needs to be clarified, as we're talking about this, this death thing, that we weren't created to die, we were created to live forever. But because of sin, our seed became contaminated. And therefore we can and therefore are born into sin. But that's where Jesus comes in, you know, and we'll talk more about him on the next part. 

Pastor Kris Shepardson 
It doesn't take long to see an infant and to start to see this in nature. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's not till they're 7,8,9,10 you can see it really, yeah, you just start you can test it and see, and you can see the nature.

Pastor Tim Howard   
How many parents have held a little baby and said, you know, sleeping baby and said, Oh, how beautiful this baby is. This is one of God's children, for sure. And then two years later, they're ready to pull their hair out because of all the bad things that kids doing. You know, and that's just a perfect example. So yeah, it's it's just good, good knowledge to have and understand that people can be born with the defective you know, deficiencies and defects, physical defects, mental defects, you know, all those things. And it happens all the time. God didn't create them that way. You can say sin made them that, you know,

Pastor Kris Shepardson   
I've never heard anyone really talk about it that way. It's always been they were born that way. And the creative part is never part of the conversation. So this is quite an eye opener, and I'm hoping other people can really see the difference. Yeah, maybe get a revelation that maybe free them up. 

Pastor Tim Howard  
Some say, you know, maybe I was born that way because
how many people you know are judging people because they were born with some sort of, you know, elaborate sin or whatever you want to say in their lives, and people are blaming them for that sin, you know, when they had nothing to do with it, you know? So I hope people can better understand Gods’ design.




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