No Cause of Death – Acts 13:27-30

I’d like you to remember the initial title that we gave to this series of messages over a year ago:

It was, and still is, “A DOCTRINAL Study of the Book of Acts.”

It has been my desire to use the history of the first churches of Christ as an opportunity to examine the Bible doctrines that those churches believed,

Because if they believed these things, then so should we.

I hope that we’ve been relatively thorough in this, but more than likely we haven’t been 100% complete.

I’m afraid that some doctrines are so common or so elemental that I’ve not even thought to consider looking at them once again.

And even though I have wanted to be thorough, I’ve not had any desire to be boring, or to make you hate the idea of Bible doctrine.

But theoretically, in another 200 messages or so we should have covered just about every important doctrine in the Word of God, using the Book of Acts as our outline.

This afternoon I want us to think about a subject that I just about skipped over.

But this is one of those doctrines upon which the rest of Christianity rests.

Some doctrines are dear to us as Baptists, but if other people don’t agree with us, that person might still be a true child of God.

You could say that those doctrines are close to the top of our theological building,

And if they were removed there are plenty of other things which hold the roof up and keep us covered.

But there are some doctrines which are so essential, so critical, that if they were removed, the whole structure of Christianity would crumble in an instant. This is one of those doctrines.

“They found no cause of death in him,”

And yet despite our Saviour’s perfect holiness, the Jews demanded that Pilate put Jesus to death.

If either part of verse 28 was not true none of us could be anything but hell-bound sinners.

But It’s the first part of the verse that I would like to address here briefly this afternoon:

“They found no cause of death in him.”

Let’s start with this question: What are the potential causes of death among human beings?

When I was a child death was something remote, and something from which I was protected by my parents.

The only intrusion into that was news that my father’s mother, whom I hardly knew, had died of cancer.

And then more close to home, at just about the same time, my mother’s father died in our home while visiting us from Canada.

Most children only see death from a distance and in a fog.

But as I get older and reach the mark of 55, I hear and see death more and more frequently.

And in thinking about what I have seen, I believe that I can point to several causes of death.

First, there is OLD AGE.

I suppose that among all the options, this is the one most preferred by everyone, except the very elderly.

Most people don’t want to see their loved ones dying, especially dying young.

Most people prefer Old Age and an Old Age death for their kin folk.

What most people picture as characteristics of Old Age are the results of the curse of sin.

It is the natural outworking of sin which Adam introduced into human life.

The moment that we are born our bodies begin to struggle against this curse,

And once we get past the first hours of birth, we generally have the natural strength to resist the natural decay that sin produces.

But then at some point we reach a peak in our strength and our lives, after which we begin to loose the war against that curse.

And eventually we loose the last battle and die.

For some people that peak and it’s inevitable outcome occur much sooner than for others.

But it is universal – “For as in Adam all die.”

Then there is death from DISEASE.

Would I be mistaken to say that disease is nothing more than the acceleration of Old Age?

Some germ, some virus, some disease comes along and we fight it just as we do Old Age,

But sometimes this is stronger than we are, and we succumb much sooner than we expected, and we die.

Because sinful man is basically atheistic, humanity seems to think that it is our inalienable right to live for ever,

So we fight tooth and nail against every disease that comes along, just as we try to fight against Old Age.

But even though we have pushed the envelope of living back just a little bit,

Years ago the Bible said that man would live to be 70,

And despite all our best efforts against it the average length of life remains very close to 70.

Another cause of death is often classified as an “Act of God.”

This refers to in floods, hurricanes, tornados and causes of death such as that.

These are things over which no human has any control, except in some cases to take personal precaution.

Isn’t it ironic that people who claim to be atheists speak about “Acts of God?”

A third cause of death are those inflicted by MEN UPON MEN.

There is murder, which is the unlawful taking of another person’s life.

A part of murder is self-murder.

A sub-category of murder is called manslaughter

Which means that there wasn’t any previous intent to take that person’s life. It wasn’t premeditated.

I personally think that there ought to be another sub-category to murder by which people who knowingly create the potential for taking another person’s life, ought to be prosecuted.

I mean the owner and tender of that bar, who enables a man to get drunk, waddle out to his car and run through a stop-sign killing another person. . .

I believe that bar-tender ought to be held responsible for his part in that third man’s death.

Unfortunately, that idea has really wide-sweeping ramifications, and I don’t know how or where to draw the line.

Another way in which men take other men’s lives is through acts of war.

But war is not murder and does not come under the prohibition of the Ten Commandments.

Terrorism, on the other hand, is not war, and does fall under the classification of murder.

And another way men take other men’s lives is through lawful execution.

The Bible not only teaches, but it demands, the practice of capital punishment.

Two other things are involved in these four causes of death.

First, ultimately sin is at the heart of all death.

If Adam had not sinned against the Lord, there would have been no need or purpose in death.

I believe that if Adam had not sinned he would still be alive today.

Secondly, every form of death, every cause of death, and every individual death is overseen by the sovereignty of God.

The Bible teaches that the keys of death and hell are under the control of the Son of God.

The Bible teaches that there is a sense in which death is an appointment that men keep.

It is an appointment as far as the omniscience and sovereignty of the Lord are concerned.

Now, having said all of that, when it came to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ …

“They found no cause of death in him.”

Have you ever asked yourself this question:

“If the Lord Jesus had not been crucified, would he have eventually died of Old Age?”

If you have not yet asked that question, let’s ask it right now.

Could Jesus have died of Old Age?

As I’ve already said, I believe that the ailments, problems and death of Old Age are really the results of the curse of sin.

If Adam had not sinned, he would never have died, and I don’t think that his living body would have ever deteriorated as mine seems to be doing.

I don’t have any scripture to prove that statement; it’s just a gut feeling that I have.

Now, here is another question that isn’t so difficult:

Did the Lord Jesus have a mother? Well, duh!!!

Christ Jesus received genuine human-hood through his mother, Mary of Nazareth.

But because he had no human father, Christ’s blood and body was not tainted by sin.

It appears to me that the curse of sin is passed from fathers to their children, THROUGH, but not FROM their mothers.

Since the Lord Jesus did not have a sinful human father,

I think that if Jesus had not been murdered, even without the miraculous or the divine,

He could have lived forever in His human body.

That body might have continued to change as it had from the time of his birth,

But I don’t think that he would have needed glasses, glucosamine, a girdle or gymnastics to stay in shape.

Well, what about the likelihood of Christ ever dying of tuberculosis or cancer?

Even apart from the divine protection of the beloved Son, I doubt that it could have ever happened.

Did the toddler Jesus ever get chickenpox, mumps or measles?

Did Christ ever suffer from a cold or catch the flu?

The Bible doesn’t say a word about such things.

But at this moment in time, in the course of this sermon and its preparation,

I don’t believe that disease ever touched or could have ever touched the body of the Lord Jesus,

Because it seems to me that disease preys upon the corruption that sin causes within us.

The third cause of death among human beings is that which we call “Acts of God.”

Since the control of all “Acts of God” belongs to God, I must assume that Christ could never have died in an Act of God.

That would be the equivalent to divine suicide or self-deicide.

The thought is preposterous, except in the light of the actual way in which He died.

But now, we begin to come to the meat of my message:

Could any man, any human being, have murdered or executed Christ, if it was not permitted by the Lord?

When the mob came to the Garden of Gethsemane to arrest the Saviour, what happened when he said, “Whom seek ye?”

“They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he. And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them.

As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground.”

Not only is that very funny in itself, it was a divine declaration.

The Lord was saying, “You may think that you are in control here, but you are not; I am.”

Every aspect of the crucifixion from the arrest to the resurrection was completely orchestrated by the Lord.

Theoretically, He could have cancelled the crucifixion at any point, but He didn’t.

The life of Christ wasn’t taken by those men, it was given by the Saviour Himself0.

The fact that He died so quickly, greatly surprised the Roman Centurion who was in charge, as well as Pilate, the governor.

Jesus gave His life, it wasn’t taken from Him.

Both as Paul says in this sermon and as John says in his Gospel, only after everything which had been prophesied was fulfilled, did Jesus give up the ghost.

Christ Jesus gave his life a ransom for many; it wasn’t taken from Him against His will.

Without in the slightest way taking away the responsibility of either the Romans or the Jews,

It was the decree of the Lord to purchase our salvation through the death of the Son of God.

Was it murder? In a sense it was.

But this was a special situation with an extra special purpose and cause.

When Paul said, “They found no CAUSE of death in him” he used an interesting term.

The word “cause” throughout the New Testament is the translation of about a dozen different Greek words.

But the word that Paul employed here is almost always used in a legal sort of way.

It is translated as “accusation” when describe the inscription placed about Jesus’ head on the cross.

It is translated as “fault” when Pilate said that “he found no fault in him.”

It is also translated “crime.”

Paul was merely repeating what Pilate had said: “No one found Jesus worthy of execution.”

He had committed no crime; He had hurt no one’s person or property.

He was not worthy of even incarceration, let alone execution.

Earlier I said that underlying all human death is the rotten root of sin.

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”

It is one of the planks of our doctrinal structure – a part of the foundation upon which we stand – that Jesus Christ was absolutely and completely sinless.

“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”

“He did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth.”

He was the lamb of God completely without blemish and without spot.

He is our special high priest “who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.”

It is clear from the scriptures that if there had been any flaw, or any sin in Christ then He would have failed to be our Saviour.

The sinlessness of Christ is foundational to our faith.

No there was found no cause of death in him.

But why then did he die?

He was delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God to die as a vicarious substitute for sinners like us.

He gave His life a ransom for many.

And through His death, burial and resurrection He provided the means to save my unworthy soul.