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Colin Smith: Struck me as so surprising that a woman who had the courage to go on her own up the Khyber Pass—something I would never do—could be so unnerved by the funeral of a relative she had never even met. But death has a way of making us lose our nerve.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. And Colin, this is just a little snippet of a story.

Colin Smith: Yeah, and the rest of it is in today's message. But this was a lady that I met. She had been all over the world. She was in her early 20s and had been fearlessly in some of the most dangerous places of the entire world. She came to a funeral that I was conducting with just a few other people, a relative she had never met, and she grabbed my arm and said, "I'm terrified at this."

Steve Hiller: Why do you think that is, that so many people are terrified of death?

Colin Smith: I guess one thing was that perhaps she had never come anywhere near it. She had never experienced a funeral before. There is something unnatural about it—the separation of the soul and the body. You don't want to think about that, you want to push that to the outside, and yet here is a great reality that affects every one of us, and the Bible speaks to us about it very plainly.

Steve Hiller: And that is actually what we get into not only in today's message but in this series that we are beginning today, "The Inside Story of Your Future Life." We actually look at what happens on the other side of this life.

Colin Smith: There are actually only two ways to die. People die in many different ways: in accidents, old age, illness, and so forth. But ultimately, there are only two ways to die: either you die in your sins or you die in the Lord. We are going to look at both, and they are radically different. Both of them point to our need for Jesus Christ and what He is able to accomplish for us.

Steve Hiller: Well, we look at one of those today. We are beginning a message entitled "Dying in Your Sins." So, if you can, join us in John chapter 8. Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: Some years ago, I came to know a man who had emigrated from England to South Africa. He came from time to time to the church that I served in London when he was visiting his elderly mother who was in a nursing home in the area. The old lady had lost her memory and she hardly knew who her son was. One day, this man phoned me from South Africa. "My mother has died," he said. "I wonder could you take the funeral?"

He said, "I have made so many trips while she was living, I really cannot handle the expense of coming again. If you could do this for me, if the church could serve me in this way, I would be really grateful." He said, "Someone from the nursing home will come, and perhaps you could get a few friends from the church. There probably won't be anyone else there."

He said, "But I should tell you that I have a daughter, and she is on the road. She is working her way on a kind of tour around the world. The last I heard," he said, "she was in Europe. If I can get word to her, it might just be possible for her to come. She is a bit different," he said. "You'll see."

Sure enough, I arrived a few days later at the cemetery to take the service. There were about half a dozen friends who had come from the church. There was indeed a lady from the nursing home and the man's daughter, whom I met at the gate of the cemetery for the first time. She had torn jeans and spiky hair in the style of a punk rocker, which was in vogue in those days.

In this very large cemetery, we had about half a mile to walk together. With her being the only family member, it was for her to walk with me and for me to walk with her, and the few folks from the church and the lady from the nursing home followed along behind as we went to the appropriate spot in the cemetery. Half a mile, the two of us walking together—me in my dark suit—we must have looked quite an odd couple.

I began a conversation. I said, "It is really good you were able to come today." "Well, I didn't have much choice," was the rather short answer. "Did you ever meet your grandmother before?" "Nope." Talking about the family was obviously the wrong direction, and I wasn't getting anywhere. I decided on asking her about her world tour. Here is a woman maybe 23, 24, 25 years old and she is traveling around the world beginning in South Africa. I said to her, "Tell me about it."

Suddenly her eyes brightened. She was interested in this. She told me about how she had been diving on the Barrier Reef, trekking in the Himalayas, and would you believe this, hitchhiking alone up the Khyber Pass. Unbelievable. She had been to places around the world of unusual danger. She had explored them alone, sleeping rough and finding temporary work just long enough to pay for the next ticket to keep her moving on to the next country or the next continent. Fascinating.

"When are you going to get home?" I asked. "I don't know, probably in about next year." "What motivated you to do this?" "I wanted to see life," she said with great conviction. I said, "Well, I guess in a way you are seeing part of it today." I will never forget what happened when we got within sight of the grave. She had never been to a funeral before, and something about it just seemed to make this courageous woman freeze.

She grabbed my arm as if she was confiding in me as an old friend. "I've got to tell you," she said, "this really freaks me out. I have never had to face anything like this before." Struck me as so surprising that a woman who had the courage to go on her own up the Khyber Pass—something I would never do—could be so unnerved by the funeral of a relative she had never even met. But death has a way of making us lose our nerve.

By the way, and I want to be very practical and very pastoral with the Lord's help in what I say today, it is a very good thing to take your children to a funeral, especially a funeral of someone they don't know well or may not even know at all, and then use the opportunity to talk to them about death. Do this while your kids are young. When your children are old enough for you to talk about sex to them, they are old enough for you to talk about death to them, and it is very important that you do. In fact, you should think of the two together.

Your son is suddenly becoming aware of his strength, and he is beginning to want to lift weights because he is interested in developing this body that he is discovering. He very much needs to know that one day all this strength will be gone, and one day this body will lie in a grave. Your daughter becomes aware of her looks. She begins putting on makeup. She learns that way of smiling for a camera. She needs to know that one day these looks will be gone and her body will lie in a grave.

It is the responsibility of a Christian parent to help your children in this world that is obsessed with the body to see that caring for your body is important, but caring for your soul is more important by far. Every person should attend a funeral at least once a year. Going to a wedding reminds you that the marriage bond is sacred. Going to a funeral reminds you that life is very short and one day yours will be gone.

Every time I hear an announcement in church that someone has died, I try, along with thanking God for their life, to remember that one day someone will make that announcement about me. I have to be jolted into living in the light of that reality. Our culture today has all kinds of ways from keeping us from seriously thinking about death.

A generation ago, people would not have said the word "sex." They would find euphemisms. They would say "the birds and the bees." But now the "S" word is everywhere. If I said "the birds and the bees," you would say, "Oh, isn't he quaint?" But in our culture today, nobody wants to say the "D" word. Even among Christians, it is very common in our culture we don't say "he died." We're discombobulated by it. We want to say "he passed away."

There is nothing wrong with that, but I prefer to look this enemy in the face because Christ has triumphed over it. And to say, "My grandma died, and she is with Christ awaiting the day of the resurrection." Now, we have to help the younger generation in regard to this. Those of us who are older, we have to learn to be candid. We have to learn to live in reality.

We are surrounded by Hollywood sentimentalizing death with weepy movies and the card companies following suit with empty slogans and poetic mush. We come to the Word of God, and it brings us into the world of reality that every human person faces. Thank God for what it is to be in a position to face reality together today. Death is the great reality towards which all of us are moving. If your pastor does not once in a while speak with candor from the Bible about this, he is neither faithful to Scripture nor is he helpful to you.

Some time ago, I came across a powerful message preached by Martyn Lloyd-Jones on these verses. The year of this message was 1960 when the whole world was in the grip of fear at the prospect of nuclear holocaust. We are talking about just before the Cuban Missile Crisis that some of you remember. There were marches going on in all the major cities of the world in the early '60s, and they were all around this theme: "Banning the Bomb."

We can't have thousands and perhaps even millions of people dying from such atrocious weapons. Lloyd-Jones made this observation. "Here," he said, "are thousands of people on the streets, and they're protesting about the danger of death coming through a nuclear bomb. They're concerned about the mode of death. We cannot have people dying in their thousands with a bomb." And they're making a very important point.

But here is the question: How many people who are rightly and passionately concerned about the mode of death are really thinking seriously about the unavoidable reality of death itself? Here are people who have something to say about the mode of death. "It cannot come in this way. It cannot come through a bomb. We must be free from the bomb." But what do they have to say, was his question, about the unavoidable reality that it is coming to all of us at some way, in some place, and at some time?

People die in many ways. Some in war, some through an act of violence, some through an illness—a heart attack, a cancer. Others die through old age. People die at different times. Some people die relatively young. Others live long into old age, long beyond what God has promised. These things are important, but friends, they are not the ultimate things.

Whether I were to die soon in an accident or through an illness, or whether I were to live into old age, the moment that I close my eyes in death, I am ushered into the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ and awakened into a world of light and love and joy and peace where Jesus is. The timing of death and the mode of death is important, of course, but it is not the thing of ultimate importance.

What is the thing of ultimate importance? Whatever the mode of death, there are ultimately only two ways in which people die. One is what Jesus refers to here three times. He speaks about people who die in their sins. The other is in Revelation chapter 14 and verse 13, which God willing we'll look at next week, where the Lord speaks about those who die in the Lord.

Ultimately, whether a person dies young or old, whether they die in what we call an accident or through an illness, whatever the mode of death, there are actually ultimately only two ways in which a person dies. A person either dies in their sins or they die in the Lord, and that's the thing that ultimately matters. That's the thing that you should be most concerned about. That is the thing that every person has to give serious consideration to.

Let's look at what Jesus says about the first here. I'm looking at verse 12. Let's begin there. Jesus said, "I am the light of the world." I am the light of the world. In other words, you have Him to thank for everything good in your life and for everything good in the world. Anything that qualifies as light, anything that is good, comes ultimately from Him. Without Him, there is in this world or the next no light, no hope, no love, no joy, no peace. Take Him away, and everything is darkness. He says, "I am the light of the world."

Then notice what He says next. "Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness." Now, imagine this picture with me. Let's imagine that all of us in this congregation here today are in a long dark tunnel. It is several miles long, and you cannot see the end from the beginning. It is just dark. A man comes towards us, and he has a light. As he comes closer to us, the light becomes very bright. He is passing on his way through the tunnel past this place where we are all sitting down.

If we follow him, we will walk in his light. But if we stay where we are and we do not follow him as he comes past us, then his light will get further and further away from us, and eventually we will be in complete and total and utter darkness. That's the picture. "I am the light of the world," Jesus says. "And whoever follows me will not walk in darkness because I'm the light," you see.

That is true in this world, and it becomes even more clearly true in the world to come because beyond this world, there is a place where Christ is. Because there is a place where Christ is, that place is a world of light and of peace and of joy and of love. But the Bible makes it clear that beyond this world, there is also a place where Christ is not.

And because Christ is not in that place, it is a world of darkness and of hate and of turmoil and of misery. Hear what He says again. "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life." Jesus says these things, and as you have the Bible open in front of you, it's immediately obvious when He says this that the audience is not with Him.

They begin to pick holes in what qualifies Him to speak and so forth. "Well, you're bearing witness to yourself," they say. Or as folks would put it today, "That's just your opinion, but how do we know that it's true?" Well, this debate that doesn't go anywhere, as so often is the case, runs on from verse 13 through to verse 20. Then Jesus cuts through all the theoretical talk and He says this. It must have been an electric moment in the conversation.

He says now, "I am going away." Verse 21. "And you will seek me, and you will die in your sin, for where I am going you cannot come." Remember, He is speaking to a group of people who are absolutely certain that they're all going to heaven, just by the way as most Americans are quite certain that they're going to heaven in our culture today—the vast majority.

So they say in effect, this is how they reason: Jesus says where I am going you cannot come. Well, we know we're going to heaven, so if we can't come where He's going, must be He's going to the other place. And so they say, "Oh, maybe he is going to kill himself then." Jesus says, verse 23, "You are from below. I am from above. You are of this world. I am not of this world."

Do you see what He's saying? Look, earth is your home. You all belong in this world. You don't belong in heaven. Heaven is my home. I don't belong on earth. There is all the difference in the world between us and Jesus. Jesus says, verse 24, "I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins," which must have completely shocked them with their absolute certainty that all of them were headed for heaven. There are really ultimately only two ways in which any human being dies: we either die in our sins or we die in the Lord.

Steve Hiller: Well, we do have to pause the message right here, but we'll continue this message, "Dying in Your Sins," and really take a look at what it means to die in your sins next time here on Open the Bible. This message was originally part of a series called "The Inside Story of Your Future Life," but it's been one of the most listened-to messages of this past year. We went back and we took a look at what have been the most downloaded, requested, and streamed messages, and we've bundled them together in a series called "Listener Favorites 2026."

We are airing this series all month long on the radio, but you can get a copy of this series on CD when you call us at 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365, or you'll find ordering information online at openthebible.org. Colin, it's Friday, and the weekend is coming.

Colin Smith: Yeah, and I want to encourage you to get to church on Sunday. Across the country, people who love Jesus will be gathering to praise Him, and if you love Jesus, that's something you'll want to be part of. Find a church where the Bible is opened. If you live in the Chicago area and you don't have a church home, I'd love for you to join us at The Orchard. There are six locations in the northwest suburbs. For more information, go to theorchard.church.

Steve Hiller: Thank you Colin, and thanks for listening. I'm Steve Hiller, and I hope you'll join us next time. This program is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.

Colin Smith: At Open the Bible, we're grateful for like-minded organizations committed to sharing the Gospel around the world. To that end, I'd like to commend the work of Global Fingerprints. In the book of James, God calls us to help orphans in their distress. That's a clear command, but it's not always clear how we should obey it. And this is where Global Fingerprints comes in.

Through Global Fingerprints, you can sponsor a vulnerable child to help meet their physical needs and ensure they hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I want to commend Global Fingerprints to you. They're focused on equipping the local church to care for children, and where there is no church, they help to plant one. If you'd like to help a vulnerable child, you can find more information on Global Fingerprints at our website openthebible.org/gf.