Clay Anderson | To Die is Gain

Sunday Evening, April 19, 2026

Given by Clay Anderson | Pastor of Youth Ministry, Christ Covenant Church

To Die is Gain
Genesis 22

Heidelberg Catechism—Lord’s Day 16

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Church, would you pray with me? 

Merciful God, in you is all truth and light and life. Open our eyes to the glories of your truth. Open our eyes to the wonders of your Word, Lord, and build us up. Make us more like your Son through the preaching this evening. We ask that you'd be glorified. It's in Christ's name we pray all of these things. Amen. 

There will be a heavy moment, I trust, in many, if not most, of your lives at one point when it becomes your responsibility to explain to someone else the significance or the reason behind a death. Some of you have probably known this moment already, breaking the news of a loved one's passing, perhaps having to answer for your own kids, why so-and-so that we loved so much had to die. Some of you are doctors or social workers or grief counselors, and you day-to-day make a living by wading into those scenes and seasons in people's lives that are invaded by the curse of death. Death is, I won't even have to say arguably, but death is the darkest feature of our cursed world. And even in the gentlest of cases, or the least surprising of cases, it is ugly, and it is unwanted. And so, it's no surprise that our very-interested-in-comfort catechism, the Heidelberg Catechism, would broach the daunting topic of the death of our Lord and Savior and, hand in hand with it, our own deaths. We will continue our study on the Heidelberg Catechism tonight with Lord's Day 16. You can see and follow along in the bulletin these questions. I’d also like it if you would open up your copy of God's word with me to the book of Genesis chapter 22. We will look at this probably familiar text as it illustrates for us the great truths that the Heidelberg Catechism is discussing. Follow along in your own copy of God's Word as I read Genesis chapter 22: 

“After these things, God tested Abraham and he said to him, ‘Abraham,’ and he said, ‘Here I am.’ He said, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.’ So, Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son, Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place which God had told him. 

On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey. I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.’ And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and he laid it on Isaac his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So, they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, ‘My father.’ And he said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ He said, ‘Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’ Abraham said, ‘God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.’ So, they went both of them together. 

When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac, his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham.’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.’ And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So, Abraham called the name of the place ‘The Lord will provide,” as it is said to this day, ‘On the mount of the Lord, it shall be provided.’

And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, ‘By myself I have sworn,’ declares the Lord, ‘because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gates of his enemies. And in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.’ So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beersheba.”

The first truth that this chapter of Scripture illustrates, and the first truth that the Heidelberg Catechism brings us to this evening, is that death pays for your sin. It's an old truth. It is an essential truth to remember as God's people, that there is a massive chasm between the God of the universe and us, his creatures, by nature. Abraham and his family understand this. At this point in time, Abraham has spoken to the Lord. He has offered sacrifices before. He has seen sacrifices offered before. And so, Abraham and his house are unsurprised when the time comes again for the need to offer the Lord a sacrifice. Even before the system is set up in the book of Leviticus, even before there is a tabernacle or a great and glorious temple to worship and offer sacrifices in, it is the truth of the life of God's people that there needs to be a sacrifice offered so that we can meet with God, so that we can walk with God. This was the purpose that God called Abraham, that Abraham would come out of a land of idolatry and walk with the Lord, but he needs to atone for his sin. He needs sacrifices to bridge the gap between a holy God and an unholy man. 

In fact, the only puzzling part of this scene we see in verse 7, when Isaac asks the question – that who knows how long it had been on his mind – but at some moment it becomes clear to him that what is missing is what they are going to sacrifice. At this point in time, we have seen several different animals sacrificed to the Lord at his request, and there isn't one brought up with Abraham and Isaac to the top of the mountain, but there is a clear need for one. We can ask all kinds of questions about death. Why does death have to come at this time? Why does death have to come at this way? But one thing that we do know for sure is that death has to come, because you and I and our father Adam brought death into this world the moment that we were enticed by the prospect of being, ourselves, like God. This coming judgment for our rebellion is the looming tax deadline over the life of all men, as we have heard explained from the first chapter of Romans in the mornings on the last few Sundays. We were made to walk with God in the garden. And yet, instead, by our sin nature, we trip over ourselves to chase after short-lived pleasures and empty promises of this world and vain glory. We were made to fear and obey God, but we fear man, and we obey ourselves. And the creator of the universe could not suffer this offense. 

We might spend most of our time tonight reflecting on the deadly consequences in our life for sin, but we should remember that the Lord God is the real victim here. The holy God is the offended party in the conversation and the court case of sin. And because God is perfect and holy, only death could satisfy his perfect justice. Only eternal punishment could satisfy the offended character of an infinite and a perfect God. And only condemnation for rebellion and sin could satisfy God's perfect holiness. This isn't because God is irrational. This is not because God is quick to anger or capricious, but it is because he is perfect and holy that there must be death. There must be payment for sin. But God, being rich in mercy, provided the very death that he demanded, that his justice demanded. Look back at verse 5 of Genesis chapter 22. When Abraham is explaining his process, he reveals an immense amount of faith in the Lord's ability to honor his promises. He says to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey. I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you." The book of Hebrews in chapter 12, which we'll look at in just a moment, explains helpfully to us that Abraham's faith was strong enough to trust that the Lord would keep his promises to give Abraham a son and to make of him a great nation, no matter what might occur in the life of Abraham. Should his family fall threat to foreign invaders, should he be too old to have a son of his own, should the Lord ask him to offer up his only son as a sacrifice – none of those things could shake the certainty of God's promise, and Abraham testifies to this when he speaks of the fact that he and Isaac will return. 

Just a few chapters ago, Abraham witnessed that God could provide life through death. Abraham, in a sense, we could say, viewed himself as being dead. He thought his family would die with him, because he and his wife were long past the age where normal people would bear children. But God brought dead loins and a dead womb to life again, and Abraham and Sarah gave birth to a promised son. John Calvin explains this phenomenon, that Abraham was unwilling to judge God's methods by what he as a man could think and imagine possible, because with God all things are possible. Abraham thought that perhaps the Lord would honor his promises even if it meant resurrecting the corpse of his dead son that the Lord had promised to him. 

Now, of course, we know because we have the whole view of Scripture in mind that the sacrifice that Abraham and Isaac do end up offering here is only a temporary one. The sacrifice that the Lord provides, the ram in the thicket, is a temporary one. God's people will need to offer sacrifices again. They will need to make payment to a holy God for their sin again. But if you look in verses 17 and 18, you will see that with the sacrifice that he provides, God promises nothing less than a total victory and a universal blessing. Again, these great words, “I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore, and your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies.” The great enemy in front of us tonight is, of course, death. And that is just the same as all the other enemies of God's people that he promises we will enjoy victory against. Of course, only one offspring of Abraham stood in our place and paid the penalty for sin that would last forever and secured eternal victory for us against our enemies. Isaac could not do it. Jacob could not do it. But the Son of God, the man who was both Abraham's son and Abraham's Lord, would provide a once-for-all sacrifice, would crush our enemy death and bless the whole earth through his name. Again, Hebrews 12:2, after recounting this – Abraham's great faith through this trial – says this of all of these people, the faithful including Abraham, that we saw what they did, and we look to Jesus, “the founder and perfector of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Abraham's faith in this chapter of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, anticipates the provision of the sacrifice that will come in the flesh, the form of the Son of God, and go up to the cross and pay the once-for-all penalty for sacrifices. We would have to spend eternity trying to bear the weight and the just penalty for our sins, but the Lord Jesus Christ could pay for it all in a moment, because he was eternal, because man came to take on the sins of man but paid the divine price for our sins. The catechism says it this way, “God's justice and truth require Christ's death. Nothing else could have paid for our sins except the death of the Son of God.” He was perfect, Jesus Christ – fully God, able to drink the cup of God's wrath, and fully man, able to do it in our place. He was righteous, so he could free us from the reign of sin in our lives, and they laid his body in a cave, and they wrapped it in burial clothes, and they sealed the tomb door shut so that we could know as surely as the body of Christ, after having been given up to death on a cross was covered with dirt, so surely your sins would be covered, and they would be buried, and they would not rise again with Christ our Lord. Just like the grave clothes left behind in the tomb, so your sins and mine, praise the Lord, are left buried in the ground, because the risen Lord is finished with them for the sake of his people, and it has no more power over us. And this payment will last. 

This brings us to the second questions in the second half of this sermon. It would have been a miracle – it would have been an exceptional testimony to the Lord's kindness and mercy – to wipe our debt clean, the eternal debt, the weight of sin that we should have borne. It would have been amazing for him to wipe it away. But it is another thing, grace upon grace, for the Lord to give us each our own access to God's infinite storehouses of grace to sustain us for the rest of our lives. It's interesting that the catechism gets at this question first by considering our own death, because if we are going to talk about the further blessings from the Lord Jesus Christ – yes, his death paid for our sins, but it also frees you from the power of your sins – we have to think first of our own death. It's almost easy to see or imagine in your mind a young student, a catechumen, if you want a $5 word for the evening, learning these for the first time, understanding and appreciating the weight of what Christ accomplished through his death on the cross, and thinking to himself, well, that is amazing. Death must not be a problem anymore for God's people, and it doesn't take him much longer to think, well, I do still see death in this world. People that I know die, and I've been told that someday I will probably die. 

And so, the catechism points us to this question: since Christ died for us, why do we still have to die? Well, there are three blessings attached to Christ's death, and the first is this, that because of his death, your death is now an entrance into eternal life. For God's people, death is not the end of anything, but the beginning. It's a cliche for a good reason. Again, the promises in Genesis 22:15-18 are lasting promises. The book of Hebrews explains this chapter. These saints who received these promises in the Old Testament died in faith, but that did not shake the certainty of God's power to honor his promises for his people. They did not receive the fullness of the blessings that the Lord had in mind for them, but death is not powerful enough to threaten the promises of God. Your eternal life, comfort, and peace – the house that the Lord God is preparing for you to live in with him forever – is not threatened by death, certainly not by your own death. The book of Hebrews says it this way in chapter 2:9, that “Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” Christ went up to that cross to die so that your death would become something new, so that your death would not be like the death of the people of the world, the death of the people who do not know the Lord who gives life. There's one way in movies where, if someone is bitten with a deadly dangerous poison by a snake – you already know where I'm going with this – the first thing that is recommended is oh, does someone need to suck the poison out of the wound? I googled it this week. That is always a bad idea. You should never do that. It's a myth. Hollywood nonsense. But it does make for a dramatic image. You can imagine the grotesqueness and also, perhaps, the risk of someone who is willing to save a friend or a traveling companion's life by taking on the poison themselves so that someone else would go and continue. Jesus gave up his only life to take the force out of our deaths so that, as Thomas Watson writes, "God's people may feel the stroke of death, but not the sting,” not the pain that comes with it. We do die, as is appointed for men, but when we do it, we step over the threshold into a world that is without the sting of death and the stain of sin. Our death becomes our entrance into that eternal life. 

Now, the catechism doesn't stop there. There are still more benefits for God's people to be won for us by Christ through his death that he applies to us. And so, a second blessing is that when you have to face death, or when you have to face deadly, daunting circumstances, the suffering and anguish that is a part of life, you have a sympathetic example in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. One reason why we get these Old Testament narratives, certainly not the only reason, but one important reason is so that we can look to the saints of the past and see how they were faithful through suffering and through testing, as the beginning of Genesis chapter 22 frames this account for us. These Old Testament examples are for us to follow. Abraham so trusted the certainty of God's promises that he believed God would be true to his word, even if it meant God bringing his only son back from death at his own hand. Isaac so trusted the promises that Abraham no doubt passed down to him, he believed God would be true to his word, even if it meant climbing upon the altar himself. We should be struck by the faith of Abraham, and you can be inspired by the faith of Isaac. And praise God, these examples are only a shadow of the example set by Jesus. The testing and the terror endured by our Lord Jesus Christ in his suffering, his crucifixion, his death on the cross is many things, but it is an encouragement and a sympathetic example to us. 

The Heidelberg Catechism is explaining different features of the Apostles’ Creed. One phrase there, that Jesus descended into hell – this isn't to say that Jesus Christ literally waded into hell. He didn't have to suffer the actual hellish condemnation for sins, but that phrase is a summary statement of the lines that come before it in the Apostles’ Creed, that Jesus suffered, that he died, and that he was buried. The totality of that event, of that climax of Christ's life, is to say that Christ endured the pains and the anguish that is given to hell. How do I know that Christ didn't have to actually go and suffer the torment at the devil's hand in hell? Well, if you look with me at Luke chapter 23 – there are a few passages of Scripture, but I think this scene is especially enlightening. Luke chapter 23 gives us the scene of the crucifixion, and as most of you are familiar with, in verse 39 of chapter 23, Jesus has a conversation with the thieves who are being crucified along with him. It says in verse 39, “One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us.’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due rewards of our deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong.’ And he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ And he said to him, ‘Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.’” The promise that Jesus makes to the thief is that this day you will be with me in paradise, and Jesus claims that same promise for himself in the following verses. Continue verse 34, “It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour while the sun's light failed, and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’ And having said this, he breathed his last.” When Jesus is finally ready to give up his own life, where does he trust it to? Into the hands of his Father. Amazingly, that is the same place that you and I go to the moment that we die. We enter into eternal life and are received by the gracious and comforting hands in our Lord. Of course, there are earthly things to fear and to be nervous about. There's no discounting those, but the ultimate fear for the people of God in death is gone. We are to be received by God in his hands. 

So, as you can read in the catechism, this phrase “descent into hell” is a summary statement of suffering, death, and burial, which is to say – and this is, pretty much anywhere else except this context, crude language – but that Christ went through hell. He endured all of the suffering and the torment that he could. And this is a comfort to us, because when we fear death or when we are thrown by the anguish and the trials of this life, you can remember that you are not alone. The Lord has been there, and he has waded into the depths of suffering so that he could sympathize with you as a great and perfect high priest who understands your pain and your anguish. Your Lord Jesus suffered as much, and infinitely more, so that suffering would not have the last word in your life. The theologian Peter van Maastricht sums up his discussion of Christ suffering in this way, “that Christ's descent into hell, all of his suffering in total, entitles you, God's people, to all the goods which are opposed to the evils which Christ endured. (You get access to the opposite of everything that Christ had to suffer.) Instead of bodily, spiritual, and eternal death, you obtain bodily, spiritual and eternal life. Instead of being delivered into the hands of enemies and torturers, you are freed from torment and delivered into the hand of God. Instead of Christ's condemnation, you are justified. Instead of his scourgings, you find joy. Instead of his dishonor, you receive glory. Instead of his curse, you receive blessing.” That is what the sum of Christ’s suffering applies to his people. 

And those last three virtues – the joy, blessing, and glory – I think bring us to this final virtue, this final benefit, that we receive as God's people from Christ's sacrifice that the catechism mentions. We have seen that Christ makes death for his people a threshold. We've seen that his suffering made him a type, an example, of the suffering in our own lives. And now, Christ's death brings a transformation to our life. Threshold, type, and transformation – not technically alliteration, but I think helpful for a sermon that's not technically exegetical either. Jesus's death qualifies you to serve the living God. Look back with me at Genesis chapter 22 in verse 12, when Abraham is stopped, when he has his hand frozen by the angel of the Lord, he is commended for his great faith. The angel says, "Now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." If you flip back just a few pages, you can see with confidence that Abraham did not somehow win God's affection, pleasure, or trust because he passed God's test. Genesis 15:6 says this earlier, “He believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” So, Abraham comes to this test in his life already having the judgment of God as righteous because of his faith in God's ability to honor his promises, but now, as he undergoes this trial, Abraham gets to experience for himself in his own life the reality of being fit to serve God. If he ever wondered what it would look like for him to trust the promise of God – if you wonder what it would look like to trust the promises of God, to have the benefits of Christ's death applied to you – this is it, that your faith would not be shaken, even in the situations where it feels like there is no way for God's promises to continue to be true. No way for the Lord to continue to love you. No way for eternal life to be on the other side of death. No way for peace to be on the other side of anguish. The same can be said and more about Isaac in our text, that he is made fit to serve the living God because of the death provided. 

In verse 2, what do we see about Isaac? Well, he's supposed to be a sacrifice. If you were to go back a few chapters in Genesis, this really is one of the very first things that we know about Isaac. We know his birth is promised, and then the promise is fulfilled. Abraham and Sarah are blessed with a baby named Isaac. And then he is not present in the narrative until this chapter, when he is at some point in his life young enough to still be called a boy but old enough to still carry a bunch of wood up a mountain. And what do we know about him? That the Lord has called Abraham to sacrifice him. Yet at the end of this chapter, what do we know about Isaac? Well, he walks down the mountain with his father Abraham. He receives later in this book the promises given to Abraham. We meet Isaac, and he is effectively a dead man walking. But we leave him, and he is a walking testimony to God's miraculous grace. He becomes a living sacrifice. God providing the sacrifice of his only Son, Jesus Christ, accomplishes the very same thing for me and for you, that because of Christ's death, your own life is made acceptable to the Lord God. Your share in the death of Christ makes your body and your mind and your service into the kind of thing that pleases the Lord. If I can interrupt a series on the Heidelberg Catechism with our own Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 16 explains that because of Christ's death and the benefits of it that are applied to you and to me, God is delighted to accept the life of service that you and I would offer to him with a sincere faith. He is delighted to accept the obedience that we try to offer, even when it is marked out by weaknesses and failings and imperfections, but because of the trust, of the faith, in our hearts that claims the reality of Christ's death and his burial for our own, God sees us as made alive. Hebrews chapter 10:20 says that it's no longer death that makes us acceptable to God every day, but the living way that Christ won for us through his sacrifice. 

Now, how do we apply these great truths that Christ's death for us means that our death becomes an entrance into eternal life? That Christ's own death is an example for us and a comfort to us when we are afraid of dying and the deadly circumstances? And that Christ's death makes us a living sacrifice, pleasing to the Lord God? Well, I don't think I can apply this text any better than the Apostle Paul does in 1 Corinthians 15. We already read it. Flip there to the end of chapter 15, or look back in your bulletins with me. As he is finishing his final conversation about Christ's death and resurrection and our related death and resurrection, the Apostle Paul says this in verse 55, quoting the prophets Isaiah and Hosea: “Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin. The power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” You do not have to walk to the gates of death because Christ possessed them for himself, and he turned them for his people into the gates of heaven, into the entrance into eternal life. Paul continues, "Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” 

What can we do because of the benefits of Christ's death? Well, first, be steadfast. Do not stop bringing your sins to the foot of the cross, the very place where Christ promises to pay for them, to bury them in the ground and deal with them no more. He is ready. He is willing and able. He wants to wipe your record clean. And so, if you are not in Christ, bring your sins to him, and if you are, continue to. Be steadfast. Do not waver, Christian, from the simple gospel message, the truth that we are sinners in need of a savior. Just before the sermon this evening, I was teaching the last of our Communicants’ Class. Next week, we will have dozens of children – children of this church – who have met without their elders and professed this same truth that they are sinners in need of a savior and that they trust in the Lord Jesus Christ to cleanse their sin. They said today that they receive and rest upon Jesus Christ alone for salvation, and they will even go to make promises to continue to believe that faith. What a testament it is to God's grace that the sacrifice he provided for Abraham and Isaac, the sacrifice he provided for the apostles who witnessed the crucifixion, and the sacrifice he provided for you and for your children does not change, and the price he paid once for all stays the same. Finally, abound in the work of the Lord. Know this, church of God, that when you leave tonight and you try in good faith to obey the words of God, he looks at you, and he smiles. Let's pray. 

Gracious Lord, we thank you for this truth. Jesus Christ, it seems as though we could never thank you enough for the anguish that you willingly took on in our place. Lord, we ask that you would apply this faith to our lives. Press these benefits into our souls by the power of your Holy Spirit. Bring more souls to believe in this truth, and strengthen those of us who already do. Would we never waver in this message? Would we be steadfast in repentance? And would we abound in good work and be comfortable and peaceful, knowing that that's your good pleasure? It's in Christ's name we pray all these things. Amen.