The Regretless Death
of a Regretful Life

On the 9th of June this year, 2025, a man called Sunjay Kupar—Now, if you don’t know who he is, I don’t blame you. I didn’t know about him either until I read this. Uh, he was a billionaire, multi-billionaire, and very good friend of Prince William. They used to love playing polo together, apparently. And on the 9th of June, he wrote on his X account, “Your time on Earth is limited. Leave the what-ifs to the philosophers, and instead dive into the why-nots.” Later that same day, he went out to play polo with Prince William, and as he was riding his horse, a bee flew into his mouth, and he had an anaphylactic shock and died of a heart attack. “Your time on Earth is limited,” he said. And he wrote far better than he knew, didn’t he?

We don’t know the day of our death. We don’t know the hour of our death, but unless Jesus comes back, we know one day we will die. Whether it’s a week, a year, 10 years or 50 years from now, we will die. The other thing we know is that though we cannot control the day and the manner of our death, we can control the story that our death leaves behind us. We all love, generally speaking, eulogies, don’t we? I went to a funeral down south while I was in the South Island to a man called Ian Lang. I met him once or twice. It was a great opportunity. I love going to funerals even if I barely know the people, but also his brother was a friend of mine. He used to be at Covenant, Willis Lang. And at Ian’s funeral, one testimony constantly was spoken of, and that was his complete delight in God. His devotion to the Lord. He had been in the same church for some 80 years, laboring for the sake of the kingdom, week in, week out, and he had left behind a testimony of faithfulness to Christ.

And the question that I want us to consider tonight is, what testimony will my life leave? What will people say at my funeral, at your funeral? When the minister or the parent or the child or the good friend stands up on the day of your death, what will they say? And I want us to consider that by looking at probably the worst death in the Old Testament, or the most miserable or saddest. That final verse is just very ominous, isn’t it? “His people made no fire in his honor like the fires made for his fathers. He was 32 years old when he began to reign. He reigned 8 years, and he departed”—You have to let these words sink in. “And he departed with no one’s regret.”

So not one person went, “Oh, no, Jehoram died.” Everyone was relieved, hence why I called the sermon, The Regretless Death of a Regretful Life. You see, Jehoram had devoted himself to living regretful things, and that meant that when he died, it was regretless. Not for himself, but for all of the people around him. So what happened? Why was his death so regretless? Let’s consider a few things.

Firstly, Jehoram wasted an incredibly rich inheritance that he had been bestowed with. Consider some of the things he had been given. Verse one, Jehoshaphat slept with his fathers. Jehoshaphat is the father of Jehoram, and we’re told later that Jehoram’s grandfather is Asa. Now, Jehoshaphat was one of the godliest kings. Yes, he had some weakness. Yes, he had some foibles, but he had devoted his life to honoring God, to removing idolatry, to correcting the people of God, and bringing them to faithfulness, and devoting the Kingdom of God in his life. And so, spiritually, this foundation had been laid.

And for 32 years, Jehoram had done what? He had watched his father’s life. He had watched the entirety of his father’s reign, because he was alive for about 7 years, if I remember rightly, before his father, Jehoshaphat, became king. And so he had watched his father rule. He had seen the godliness of his father, and he had received this rich inheritance of circumcision and the grace of God, which is bestowed to covenantal children, and he had received all of the benefits of belonging to a covenantal community. He had been blessed financially, right? We get that verse, in verse 3, where the father gives great gifts of silver and gold, and possessions, and fortified cities to the sons. But to Jehoram, he gets the kingdom. He gets given everything financially he needs to flourish.

He’s 32 years old. He’s in the physical prime of his life, right? It’s when you’re generally most alert, you’ve got a little bit of wisdom behind you, and you’ve got strength and vigor to be able to do things. He had been entrusted with a rich family. We’re told later on in the chapter that when he kills his siblings, God makes the comment that his brothers, in verse 13, were better than you. And so he had had this godly family, and Asa had been a great king up ’til the very end of his life, and his father, and his brothers, and many others. He’d had the example of the good and the bad of his father. His father had the weakness of siding with King Ahab, the wicked king of Israel. And he himself had married a daughter of King Ahab. He had seen these examples and the failures of his grandfather, who sought to act against God’s word, and was chastised and made a leper at the end of his life. And so he had had the negative and the positive examples of his forebearers. So he’d received this amazing inheritance with everything he needed to flourish.

But what did he do with it? He wasted it. He threw it away. Instead of building upon a wonderful foundation that he had received, Jehoram decided to walk in the ways of the world. And so, in verse 6, we’re told, “He walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as the house of Ahab had done, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife, and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” He looked at the broad path and he said, “That’s the path for me. The path of least resistance. I’m swimming downstream,” he said. He delighted in the things that the world delights in, the pride of heart, the lust of the flesh, the success and fame of the world, all of the things which tempt us, day in and day out. He gave himself to them.

Remember those words in Psalm 1? “Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” Well, Jehoram would have none of it. Rather, he would sit in the seat of scoffers. He would delight to walk with evildoers. But if that wasn’t bad enough, Jehoram also worshiped other gods. Have a look at verse 11. “He made high places in the hill country of Judah and led the inhabitants of Jerusalem into whoredom and made Judah go astray.” It’s striking. Jehoshaphat had purged Israel of idolatry. He had purged the false gods. The one thing he hadn’t done is remove the high places. That’s on Jehoshaphat. But whereas Jehoshaphat sought to remove idolatry and honor God alone, and yes, in the wrong way by going to high places, yet honor God alone, Jehoram said, “I’ll have high places, and I’ll have high places for the worship of all the gods of the nations around us.” And so, he gave himself to the Baals and the Ashtoreths. He gave himself to the gods of this world, delighting to worship and serve them. Those 2 words, to worship and serve, they’re like 2 sides of the same coin. They always go together. You worship what you serve, and you serve what you worship. And he wholeheartedly devoted himself to false gods. He rejected the one true God who delights in the praises of His people. So, all those Psalms we sing, “It is good to sing your praises.” And yet, he found it good to sing the praises of this world.

But not only that, Jehoram utterly refused to repent. Though God would send warnings to him, he refused to repent. And so, in verses 8-10, he gets warning signs, doesn’t he? He’s going on his way and all of a sudden, Edom revolts. Now, they had been under the control of Judah since the time of David, and now they revolt and they split ways, and he almost dies, but he escapes miraculously by the providence of God. He’s given another chance, and then Libnah also revolted. But what does he do? Does he stop and say, “Well, let us inquire of God to see why the nations are rebelling against us?” No. No, because he had forsaken the way of the Lord, he commits himself to it and continues.

But then the Lord in his patience sends a very loud warning through his prophet Elijah. He writes a letter to him, and he says, “Thus says the Lord, the God of David, your father.” Now, just pay attention to that phraseology. He doesn’t say, “Jehoshaphat, your father,” but David. Why? What was David so famously well-known for? Repentance. Yes, he failed. Yes, he did a lot of good, but he repented when he was wrong. And so, he says, “Because you have not walked in the ways of Jehoshaphat or in the ways of Asa, but have walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and have enticed Judah into whoredom, as the house of Ahab has, because you killed your brothers, your father’s house, who were better than you, the Lord will bring a plague upon your people and upon your children and wives and your possessions, and you’re gonna have this horrendous sickness where day by day your bowels will come out.” I mean, horrendous, right? But what does he do? Nothing! He does nothing. Does he run to the temple like David? Remember the moment when Nathan says, “Thou art the man!” What does David do? “God, take my sin away.” Or think about Isaiah when he comes face-to-face with God. What does he say? “Woe is me, for I’m a sinner.” And what does the tax collector in the parable do? “Lord, have mercy on me.” But Jehoram? He commits his way to the world, the flesh, and the devil.

And so what happened? Jehoram withered and died in agony. It’s a horrible description, isn’t it? Verse 18, after all of this. So let’s look at what happens. Verse 16, “The Lord stirred up against Jehoram the anger of the Philistines and of the Arabians.” They come up against Judah, they invade, they carry away all of his stuff. They take away his sons. They take away his wives. So that all he has left is one son, and still nothing. And so finally, the Lord strikes him in his bowels with an incurable disease, and in the course of time, at the end of 2 years, his bowels came out because of the disease, and he died in great agony. I mean, I don’t even wanna know what that’s like, but it’s horrible. There’s no morphine, right? There’s no help. 2 years long, and his heart remains dead, stony, and unmoved. He knows full well the words of Elijah, right? He’s heard the word of God, and still he refuses to do anything about it.

But that’s not the worst. You know the worst part is he did not rest in peace. Why? Because Jehoram woke up in hell. He had devoted his life to hatred of God, and he woke up under the wrath of God to an eternity under the judgment of God. And you know, Jehoram probably lived most of his life without regrets, right? “I’m the king. I can do whatever I want. I can live my life as I please. I get to devote myself to however and whatever. I can decide what gods will be our nation’s gods. I can make the laws that please me.” And so it would not surprise me in the stubbornness of his heart if, as he drew his last breaths, he would say, “No regrets. I lived my life as I pleased.” And yet what did he discover? Well, a regretful life led to a regretless death, didn’t it? And that regretless death led to a very regretful eternity. And I don’t know if people in hell have the ability to regret, but if they do, oh, for thousands upon thousands of years already, Jehoram has lived with regret, because he will not die where he is. He will dwell for all eternity regretting a wasted inheritance, worshiping other gods, and walking in the ways of the world.

You know, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the guy Chuck Colson. Chuck Colson was one of the men who was part of the Watergate scandal in America. If you don’t know or haven’t heard of it, you can look it up later. But Chuck Colson was an unbeliever, and he was arrested as part of the Watergate scandal, and after being arrested and suffering and dealing with all of his problems, he got converted. And he wrote a book, and the title of the book is How Now Shall We Live. And what he does in this book is he lays out the fact that Christianity is not just a means for you to get eternal life, but Christianity is the entirety of the all-persuasive and pervasive worldview that impacts every single aspect of our life. And he came to realize that everything that was his worldview before had been replaced by Christ and Christendom. And so, how now shall I live? Well with everything, with all of my life, all of my might, to the glory of God.

And brothers and sisters, we too need to realize, like Colson, that these things are laid before us for our good, these examples. That in them we find encouragement as Romans says. It says whatever was written in former times was given for your encouragement, so that through them you may have endurance, which produces hope. And in 1 Corinthians, Paul would say, “All of the former things were written so that you may not serve evil.” You see, we are to look at this abominable life and sad outcome of Jehoram and learn something from him. You see, he had lived a regretful life, and the outcome of that was a death that no one regretted. How do we live a life that will lead to a regretful death? Not for ourselves. I rejoice in the day of my death ’cause I’m gonna go and be with the Lord. But how do I live a regretless life so that my death would be regretful for the people of God? Because that’s the life we want to live, like Ian Lang, right, down South.

Well, firstly, let me make 4 points, 4 ways that we can live a life that we will not regret but everybody else will. Firstly, we must begin with repentance. If you’re an unbeliever, life transformation must begin with a new heart. Think of Paul. “As for zeal,” he says in Philippians, “a persecutor of the Church.” I mean, was there anyone more devoted than the Apostle Paul to a cause? I mean, talk about devotion, right? He’s given up his life, and he’s going from city to city. He’s arresting people. He’s giving everything to his worldview. And what happens? Christ appears and says to him, “Why are you persecuting me?” And what happens? Everything changes, right? Paul repents, and as an unbeliever, he turns to Christ, and he lives. And what does he do? The same zeal he pours out for the sake of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Or maybe you are a believer. Maybe you’re a backslider who’s falling away, or maybe you’ve just gotten off track, and you’ve become comfortable in the world. Well, then, like Peter, repentance still applies. I mean, what did Peter do? He denied his Lord. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t saved. It doesn’t mean Christ wasn’t finished with him. He was definitely backsliding, and yet what does Christ do in His mercy? He comes to him, and He says, “Peter, do you love—Peter, do you love—Peter, do you love—” Peter says, “Yes. Yes. Lord, You know I love You. You know everything.” And Jesus sends him forth to live a life worth living. And brothers and sisters, maybe that’s what tonight is for you, just a wake-up call of God saying to us, “Don’t waste your life.” We only have one life to live until eternity, so repent and redo. This is the wonderful thing about the Gospel. Every day you get up, you can start again. All it takes is repentance. So firstly, start with repentance.

Secondly, acknowledge God is your chief end. There’s this wonderful little verse in Romans 11. You don’t need to turn there, let me just read it. Romans 11, Paul says, “From Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.” To Him, from Him, through Him, all things. Everything exists for the glory of God, even sinners, right? Paul’s whole point leading up to that verse is that even Pharaoh, Pharaoh’s hardening, and the death and destruction of evildoers is for the praise and glory of the name of God. Now, that’s hard for us to get our mind around, but what we must get down is that everything from Him, to Him, through Him, everything exists for the glory and the honor and the hallowing of the name of our God. Now, since that’s true, how much more the lives of His people? We have been set aside as a holy people, have we not? A people of His choosing, a holy priesthood. Why? Not to devote ourselves to our own things, but to devote ourselves to the glory of God. See, a life lived to the praise of God will never be a life regretted. Do you want a lovely eulogy? Live to the glory of God, and believers will celebrate your life and bemoan your death.

Thirdly, live for heavenly places. Remember those wonderful words in Colossians 3? “Set your minds on things above, not on things on the earth.” Why? Well, because in complete contrast with what the world, and many Christians say, maybe you’ve heard this before, “Ah, that person, he’s too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good.” Brothers and sisters, it’s all wrong, because the most heavenly minded individuals always achieve the most earthly good. Isn’t that true in history? Who labored more than anyone else for the freedom of slaves in the United Kingdom? A man that loved the Lord with all of his soul. William Wilberforce. Look at widow burning in India. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, when a man died, they would just burn his wife on top of the body of the husband, because in Hindu religion, you were bound together to your husband, and so if your husband’s dead, you go with him. And so they would just put the wife on the pyre and burn them. So what did William Carey do? He went there as a missionary and he labored, and he fought, and he fought for what? The outlawing of widow burning. Why? Because he loved the Lord, and he loved the glory of God, and he knew that every widow was made in the image and glory of God and worthy to live a full life. The most heavenly minded individuals do the most good upon this world.

Brothers and sisters, you cannot think about Heaven too much. You cannot think about Christ in Heaven too much. The more Jesus absorbs every aspect of your brain, the more you will achieve on this world of lasting value. Don’t sink into the trap of thinking, “I don’t have enough time for this. I’ve got children to feed. I’ve got work to do. I’ve got life to live. There are things that need to be done.” We’re so tempted to think this way, but brothers and sisters, the more time you spend on Christ, the far more profitable you’re gonna be in every other area of your life. I think it was George Muller who would say, “I cannot afford to do anything until I have made myself happy in the Lord.” You wake up late? I make myself happy in the Lord. I devote myself to thinking Christ’s thoughts after him. When I’m at work and when I’m in the home, when I’m out and about doing my hobbies, do it with a constant mind for heaven. When you see the glory of creation, don’t go, “Wow! Look at the stars!” Say, “Wow! What a glorious creator.” When you see the death of a saint, think, “Oh, what a delight it must be to be face-to-face with the King.” Think heavenly thoughts, brothers and sisters.

Fourth, use the rich inheritance you’ve received. Some of you have an inheritance that far outstrips mine. But I was blessed with being born into a Christian, reformed family. I went to Sunday school, not that I condone it, but set that aside for a second. I went to Sunday school from about age 3, all the way through to catechism which finished at about age 17 or 16. Thoroughly steeped in Christian education. We did Old Testament survey, we did New Testament survey. We went through the entirety of the Heidelberg Catechism, through the Apostles’ Creed, through the Nicene Creed. We did world religions. We did everything! And I had received this rich inheritance of baptism and God’s abundant provision of a Christian community where people love the Lord, and elders that would care for me, and deacons that would come and serve me. And I threw it all away. Don’t waste your inheritance. Lay hold of what you’ve been given, whether it’s one year long or a lifetime long, use it. Celebrate it. Build upon it, for your forebearers have laid a foundation for you. And if you’re a new convert, you have just as much inheritance to build upon because Ephesians says, “We have received a rich inheritance in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We have everything we need for a life lived of godliness.

Most of you have probably heard of a man called Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards was an amazing pastor, amazing theologian, and when Jonathan Edwards was 17, he was wanting to become a pastor and he decided he needed to get his life in order. And so he decided at age 17 he would sit down and write resolutions that would guide his life, things that would be like controlling factors in his life. And so he wrote 70 resolutions. I highly recommend you to go read them. Look them up tonight, Jonathan Edwards’ 70 Resolutions. They’re not long. It’s like 2 or 3 A4 pages, widespread apart. And in these, one of the recurring themes is, “I want to live a life that when I die, I will be glad.” Another point he says, something like this, “Whenever I see the death of a saint, I resolve that I will live in such a way that I would hope to live at my death.” So in other words, “I’m gonna look at my death in however long it is, however I would want to arrive, I’m gonna give my life to that.” He set his life upon living for God’s glory at age 17, and he did it, devoted himself to the Lord, over and over and over again. And brothers and sisters, we can do the same. Life’s short. Mr. Kupar found that out, didn’t he? Just a rogue bee, by the providence of God, brought him to his deathbed, and we have no idea what will bring us to ours. But we do know how we can live. We can live this day to the glory of God. We can live tomorrow to the glory of God. And if that’s all we’ve got left, praise God we’ve lived it to the glory of God. Take this as a fresh chance to devote yourself to living to Christ.

Let me give you just one more illustration as we close. Maybe you’ve heard of the missionary called C.T. Studd. C.T. Studd was a missionary to China, pioneer missionary to China. C.T. Studd was a world-class cricketer. And C.T. Studd, if you know anything about cricket, he played in the infamous match called The Ashes Test, where they burned the bails at the end of the match. Now a whole test series is based off it. If you’re a cricket nerd, you know what I’m talking about. But C.T. Studd was a world-class cricketer. And one day, he gave his life to Christ, and he said, “China needs the Gospel,” and he quit. Can you imagine the scorn he must’ve received from people? Like, “What is wrong with you? I mean, God’s given you the ability to play cricket! Don’t waste it!” Let me ask you. When C.T. Studd died, at the end of a life of difficulty and frustration, and often no success, when C.T. Studd died, and ascended to the presence of God, what do you think he said? “Oh, I really wish I would’ve played more cricket.” “If only I had known how glorious my God is, I would’ve given all the more.” And is that not going to be every one of our answers? When we truly see Him face-to-face? And so, brothers and sisters, see His majesty, see His glory by faith today, and live a life that’s regretless, so that we, as the people of God, might regret your death.

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