In the Bible in II Kings is the story of a great King Hezekiah. God sent the prophet Isaiah to give the King an important message .
“This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.”
This is a Scripture to which we should all heed. We are all going to die. For you and me is the question I ask, “Is your house in order?” In the church I attend the choir in which participate sings for funeral services. Therefore, I’ve attended many funerals and celebrations of life services. I’ve read dozens of obituaries of people I have known and I have not known. I’ve heard the tributes to the recently departed. My question as I listen to these tributes or read the obituaries is, “Was their spiritual house in order?”
I don’t mean did they leave a will or have a paid up insurance policy. Although those things are good and in many cases necessary. I am looking for any thing written or said that demonstrates their eternal soul was in right relationship to God. One obituary I read recently talked about how the person loved their family, the Philadelphia Eagles, fishing, and loved good food. All of those things are nice and there’s nothing wrong with that. King Solomon says that we should be glad that we can eat and enjoy the fruit of our labors. However the one thing for what I was reading I did not see.
Nowhere did it say that the person loved God. No where did it say that the person had even taken time to darken the door of a church. The closest it got to anything remotely religious was that he was friends with a particular pastor and his wife.
It made me wonder if the person was prepared for eternity and to ask myself did he have his spiritual, eternal house in order? Only God knows the answer to that question. Some people think that they will get a second chance like King Hezekiah. Some believe that in those last hours on their sickbeds that they will be able to get things quote, "Right with God," unquote. Although we have all heard of cases of instant death.
For example I had the unfortunate case of my next-door neighbor. One evening I received a knock on my front door. I opened it and it was one of my neighbors to tell me that they feared something happened to my next-door neighbor with whom I shared walls. I live on a street with attached row houses. I went over to the my next door neighbor's door. I looked through the door. There laying face up prone on her back was my neighbor. In my neighbor’s hand was mail and mail strewn on the floor. Death had sneaked up on my neighbor without warning and the she was gone. It didn’t look like the she had an opportunity to bargain with the grim reaper to give her a few more minutes.
No King Hezekiah’s experience was not my neighbor’s experience and it probably won’t be yours or mine either.
That’s why I am here to tell you how to get your house in spiritual order. First, recognize your mortality. There is no one alive who was here two hundred years ago. Death is a fact of life. We are leaving this earth sooner or later, but we are all going to die. We are all sinners and we are going to meet God the Maker of us all. The Maker of us all is a Holy God. In our natural as sinners we can’t stand before a Holy God. We can’t make ourselves acceptable to God no matter how nice we are.
God has made a way that we can meet Him and live with Him. We can prepare to meet God through Jesus Christ who died on the cross and opened a way for us to meet God and for our sins to be forgiven. The only thing we have to do to be prepared to meet God is to acknowledge and accept the wonderful gift God has given us. This will get your house in order. John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Now if you decide well I don’t believe a word you are saying, then I cannot help you. Unfortunately, you will not be able to live with the God whose gift you reject. There is an alternative, and this is the truth. There is a place called Hell . We don’t like to talk about it or think about it. However the great God who loves you is not going to force you to live with him. God does not send you there. You volunteer to go there when you say I don’t accept God’s condition to live with Him. So you get to live without God in that awful place. However, you have to make a choice now. So again I ask is Your house in order? As I said at the beginning we are all going to die. It’s just where do you want to live after the inevitable happens? I made my choice. May you make the right choice.
Just as people are destined to die once and after that to face the judgement
Hebrews 9:27 New International Version of the Bible
