Death Shall Be Their Shepherd

"All we like sheep have gone astray" (Isaiah 53:6) is a familiar verse to most of us. Isaiah compares people to an animal that has hardly enough sense to care for itself. Not a flattering comparison.

 The rest of that verse says that we have scattered in every direction away from God. Because of His mercy, He calls us to Himself and sends the Chief Shepherd - Jesus Christ - to care for His flocks. Sometimes the under-shepherds act more like hired hands so that wolves get among the flocks. In the face of such a crisis, we bring Psalm 23 to our minds: "The Lord is my shepherd…" The Good Shepherd protects us from our enemies and God loses none of His sheep.

 That accounts for the sheep that come back to God, for those who accept salvation through Jesus. What happens to the rest of these two-legged sheep? Who is their shepherd? According to the book of Matthew (9:36), Jesus recognized a harassed and hopeless crowd to be like sheep without a shepherd.

 Many people wander aimlessly through much of their lives. They follow wherever their eyes lead them to the juiciest grass, never seeing the edge of the cliff beneath their feet. They fail to heed the grasp of the thorns as they push to reach the next tender morsel. According to the English Standard Version (ESV) of Psalm 49, "This is the path of those who have foolish confidence…"

 When the land falls away from their feet, no watchful shepherd will pull them back at the last minute. As the brambles hold them so tightly that they can find neither food nor water, no kind shepherd – heedless of his own scratches – will pull the sheep to safety. These sheep with foolish confidence will find a different kind of shepherd comes for them. They discover that death will be their shepherd.

 Death cares nothing about the comfort of the sheep. He will leave them alone. They may wander as they wish. In their foolishness, they think they are free. Yet when they fall off the cliff, death comes for them, pulling them with his staff to destruction. The sheep starving in the brambles finds death gleefully gathering them to devastation.

Death will not gently gather them to his chest for comfort. Instead, he gives them what they claimed they always wanted – eternal separation from God. This shepherd gives them what they always feared the most – eternal punishment and pain. In the end, death will be thrown in the lake of fire, a just punishment for one who destroys the sheep.

By the mercy of God, we may choose our shepherd. Remember:
"All we like sheep have gone astray."
"Death shall be their shepherd."
"The Lord is my shepherd."
Who is your shepherd?

The Second Death

Four times in the book of Revelations, John the Apostle writes of the "second death:" Revelations 2:11; 20:6,14; & 21:8. To the post-modern, western-trained mind, the idea of a second death makes no sense. The reason it makes no sense is the automatic definition that comes to our mind when we use the word death: extinction. We are trained to equate "permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism" (a dictionary definition of death) with extinction, when, by the Bible's definition, that is simply not the case.

God introduced the concept of death to Adam in the Garden of Eden. When He told Adam that his diet would be fruit and green things, He excluded one tree: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. According to Genesis 2:17 (ESV), God said to Adam, "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." (emphasis added).

Genesis chapter three gives us an account of the effect on Adam, Eve, and the serpent when Adam and Eve disobeyed that rule, but not one verse speaks of their extinction. On the day they ate the fruit, God separated them from Himself, from the Garden of Eden and from harmony with each other and the world. Even the serpent was punished, not destroyed. From the first instance of death, we see that death means separation, not extinction.

"OK," you say, "how does that apply when a person dies? Adam and Eve died physically, too."

That's a good question, but the Bible's answer might surprise you. When a person dies, the body "ceases all vital functions" and decays. However, Jesus told us in John 5:26-29 that the decay is a temporary condition. He said, "For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment."

Regardless of your spiritual condition, your body and soul reunites when Jesus calls you. That means that the death of a person is the temporary cessation of all the vital functions (of the body) and the temporary separation of the body and the soul. Extinction does not apply.

Let's go back to the second death, now. The second death of Revelations is a place – a lake of fire. This lake of fire eternally separates the unrepentant sinner from Holy God with no hope of relief. Eternal separation from God. That is a horror too unspeakable to comprehend.

In the Bible Exposition Commentary, Warren Wiersbe expresses the situation clearly: "If you have been born only once, you can die twice; but if you have been born twice - born again through faith in Christ - you can die only once."

Mortal death = separation of the body and soul in time; second death = eternal separation from God. Do not delay being born again. It's not worth the risk.