Buried Alive

Have any of you been buried alive?

Well, in the days of yesteryear, a prosperous businessman in Mexico was wrongly pronounced dead and in due course of time he was buried. They did not have the knowledge that he was still alive. The night watchman of the cemetery went to the police to report hearing knocks coming from the new grave. An order finally came to exhume the grave and they discovered that the glass top of his coffin had been broken. He had been buried alive, and later regained consciousness, and after a frantic struggle, and he had died of suffocation.

It is important to make sure that there is death before burial. Would you agree? I think that is fairly important. In a few moments you will see that this is one of the greatest reasons for failure in the Christian life.

In John 19:30, you will see the record of the last moments of Jesus' life. Jesus was hanging on the cross, and in verse 30 it says, that He gave up the ghost, he died. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." And with that, he bowed His head and gave up His spirit. Do you think he actually died? If he didn't die, then we won't live, right? He did actually die. He was buried just before sundown on that Good Friday (We call it good because that's the day that our salvation was paid for), and He rested in the tomb all during the holy Sabbath hours. And then very early on Sunday morning an angel came and rolled back that monstrous stone, opening up the tomb, and Jesus came forth our resurrected Savior. His victory over the tomb was not just for Himself but for every human being in the entire world Anyone who would accept Jesus as their personal Savior, and invite Him into their heart and trust Him forever more, that victory is for them. And just as sure as Jesus is alive today, Jesus was truly dead before His burial that Friday afternoon. I believe that. He died.

We all agree that there should be death before burial.

This is especially true in a spiritual sense the old sinful man must die you can have a new life, before baptism. Many who assume the name of Christ have been baptized, but they were buried alive! Because self did not die. The old man did not die. The old man went down into there alive and came up alive. Do you see what the problem is in the Spiritual life? People are buried alive in the church. Because self did not die, they do not rise with a new life in Christ. Therefore they experience a languishing life, even in the church. Their spirituality is not the same because when they were baptized, the old-man did not die. You don't want that old man. You don't want that struggle with the ways of life. You want a new life, so the old life has to die.

To be properly baptized first you die to the old ways of sin. Then you are buried under the waters of baptism, and you come up a brand new person in Jesus Christ. That's the only way it can happen. But when and if you slip, which you will, in the weeks after your baptism, do you need to be re-baptized all over again? Do you need to die again and be buried and come up again? Yes you do. If every time we told a lie or did something dishonest, if we had to be buried and re-baptized in a baptistry pastors would be waterlogged from being baptized themselves and baptizing others. Fortunately Jesus holds the patent on a service that basically replaces baptism after you've been baptized. It's a miniature baptism. It's called The Foot-washing Service! Here in John 13 you can see the evidence that Jesus took out a new invention: The Foot-washing Service. He washed His disciple's feet. I don't have any record of this happening before this time. In the spiritual that He did it, it was something very new and very important. This miniature baptism is to gain the full rich blessing from this service in a continuing way. Now, you would think that during the communion service this would be the most widely attended meeting of any meeting we ever have in the church. People ought to be here because this is very important. This is where we renew our wedding vows, our spiritual covenant with Jesus Christ.

So we must die to our old ways of life before we can experience a new life here today at this communion service. Would you agree with that? We don't want people to come and experience this service and go away unchanged. And to do that, the first thing you need to do is to pray that God will slay, mortify, kill, the old way of life and extract it from your life and give you a new life. And so, when you place your feet under the water at the foot washing service here today, you are in effect burying your old life. That is what that means. That is a symbol of baptism. Make sure that you are not buried alive! Make sure that before you ever enter this service, that you ask the Lord to bless you. That you ask the Lord to take away the sins of the old nature. Have you been struggling with sin lately? Are there some sins in your life that you are a terrible time with? Maybe that needs to die. Maybe you need to just turn that over to the Lord and let Him be an executioner of that old way of life, and then you can be raised to a brand new life. You can do that.

Could it be that the reason some do not experience new life from this service is because they were buried alive? And they never do die to the old way of life? The old ways of sin must die. Self must be certified dead and buried and only then can we come up in the newness of life.

"Dear Father, please get rid of the bad things in our life. Kill the old man of sin, the old woman of sin inside of us. Give us the new spiritual nature of Christ. Help us to experience something dramatic, something different today, the strength, the spiritual strength that only You can give. We surrender the old life to You, asking You to slay it and bury it, and asking that we might come up today in a newness of life that maybe we have never experienced this before. For we ask this in the precious name of Jesus Christ our Savior, Amen."