Where, O Death Is Your Sting?

On a hot, humid August afternoon in southeast Alabama, I was an eight-year old boy riding with my grandfather on his John Deere tractor.  My grandfather was pulling a “bush-hog” (a contraption with a large blade used to cut unwanted grass/bushes—same concept as a lawnmower) to trim the grassy area next to the highway.  We were a little too close to a fence row and the bush-hog hit a fence post which had a hornets’ nest attached to it.  The hornets got extremely upset and a whole swarm of these critters proceeded to land on my head and sting me!  My head felt like it was on fire and I can remember my grandfather taking his hand and raking the hornets off the top of my head.  Miraculously, my grandfather was not stung one single time!  The top of my head became very swollen and I was sick from the venom of the hornet stings.  I spent the next two days in bed recuperating.

  In First Corinthians, Chapter 15, verses 54 and 55, the Apostle Paul says, “When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death is your victory?  Where, O death is your sting?”

  In this wonderful passage, we are promised as Christians that death is swallowed up in victory thanks to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!  After we taste death in this fallen, sinful and wicked world, we will receive a resurrected body, not a resuscitated corpse. We will never die again—Death is defeated by resurrection.  Death is a defeated enemy because of Christ’s work on the cross 2000 years ago.  Death has no power whatsoever over the Person of Jesus Christ.

  For those who are not in Jesus Christ, death still has its sting just like those nasty hornets.  Charles Spurgeon, the “Prince of Preachers”, said, “The sting of death say in this, that we had sinned and were summoned to appear before the God whom we had offended.  This is the sting of death to you, unconverted ones, not that you are dying, but that after death is the judgment, and that you must stand before the Judge of the quick and the dead to receive a sentence for the sins which you have committed in your body against him.”

  Spurgeon goes on to say, “Brethren, the wicked must rise again from the dead.  The lip with which you have drunk the intoxicating drink till you have reeled again, that lip shall be used in drinking down the fiery wrath of God.  Remember, too, ungodly woman, the eyes that are full of lust will one day be full of horror; the ear with which you listen to lascivious conversation must listen to the sullen moans, the hollow groans, and shrieks of tortured ghosts.  Be not deceived; you sinned in your body, you will be damned in your body…It must lie in the fire and burn, and crack, and writhe throughout eternity.”

  Friend, what kind of sting are you dealing with in your life?  Is it the sting of divorce, the sting of drug addiction, or the sting of the past?  Have you felt the sting of lust, the sting of fear, or the sting of pride?  Most importantly, do you still have the barbed “sting of death” imbedded in your soul, with its poisonous venom killing you spiritually day by day?  If you don’t know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, ask Him into your life today.  Don’t wait another minute—You may not have another minute left in this life!  Let the Great Physician and Healer, Jesus Christ, give you the “anti-venom”—eternal life—to destroy the poison from the sting of sin and death that is keeping you out of Heaven and stopping you from living a victorious life in Christ Jesus.  Amen.