OH DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?

So there we were, Sophomore seatmates in chapel at Mount Carmel Christian High School.  As we sang congregational hymns and gospel songs, Dave asked, “How do you do that?”

“Do what?” I asked.

“Sing bass.” He responded.

“Here.”  I pointed to the bass line on the music staff in the hymnal.  

“Teach me to do that.”

“Follow these notes up and down with me.”  Dave had a good ear, and soon he was singing the bass line with his eyes on the music, and his ear listening to me.  

In our Junior year at Mount Carmel High School, 4 sixteen year-old music lovers banded together to form a gospel quartet.  Lonnie was tenor, I was lead, Todd sang baritone, and David anchored the bass.  For the next two years we practiced with Daniel playing piano.  We fell in love with gospel music.  Keep on the Firing Line , Just a Little Talk with Jesus , Standing on the Solid Rock,  and, oh yes, Tumbling Tumbleweeds .  We became fast, inseparable friends.

In the Summer of 1979 after graduation from Mount Carmel High School, Dave invited me to Owensboro for a visit. I stayed in his home. I walked to the field with him in the morning when he milked the cow. I ate at the family table. I participated in family prayers. I was impressed with David’s family. Every activity of their life was ordered around God and Owensboro Southside Wesleyan Church.  

Dave secured tickets for a Southern Gospel concert. It was an evening with the Kingsmen Quartet and Wendy Bagwell and the Sunlighters. Little Jan made eyes at two 18 year old  boys on the front row all night long. We loved it. Wendy told his rattlesnake story. The big Cherokee Indian Kingsmen sang, It Made News in Heaven When I Got Saved! I bought a four eight track tape set of the Kingsmen!  

After high school, Dave and I, Renee and Beth, enrolled in Bible college. David and Renee fell in love.  Beth and I fell in love. Our lives were becoming intertwined.

Dr. Dale Yocum preached one of our Bible College revivals. He preached on Jesus’ Seven Final Sayings on the Cross. He walked us through “Father, forgive them” to the moment when Jesus succumbed to death. He then called us to holiness through full surrender unto sanctification through the fulness of the Holy Spirit. Dave went forward. He was gloriously sanctified wholly as he prayed the final words of the crucified Jesus. He rose to testify victoriously of a clean sanctified heart, that became the engine that drove his 30 years of effective pastoral ministry.   

1500 people mourned David’s passing. The funeral service lasted 3 hours. It was the longest funeral I have ever attended.

You see, we expressed our anger and disbelief at our common enemy–death. God is not our enemy. Death is. We celebrated love. We celebrated the hope of heaven! We laughed. We grieved. We wept. We showed compassion and empathy. And when I left, I knew it was time for me to act. Dave’s death was a clarifying moment for my life! Now, I have to fight my enemy, and God’s–death, sin, and their author–Satan. 

How am I supposed to respond to tragedy? How am I supposed to respond to disaster?  How am I supposed to respond to death?  How am I to respond when “bad things happen to good people”?

I hear a lot of different responses.  

The fatalist says, “What will be, will be!”  The fatalist says, “Everything happens for a reason!”  The Christian fatalist says, “What will be, will be.  God causes all things to happen.”

I cannot believe that. I am not a fatalist!  I am not a secular fatalist.  I am not a Christian fatalist.  I am a believer in Jesus!  I follow of Jesus!  I recognize that SIN IS.  Sin is NOT God’s idea.  Sin is rebellion against God.  Sin curses our world.  Sin causes death.  Sin is irrational.  Sin is chaos.  God is rational.  God is order.  God is love.  

So how must I respond to the sting of death, our mutual and final enemy? I must look to Jesus’ example.  Jesus responded to death with anger, love, grief, empathy, and action.

Jesus responded to death with anger. “Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled” (John 11:33). Jesus was angry against sin and death and their destructive effect on our lives. The word for “groaned” connotes Jesus’ anger. He was violently agitated, indignant with grief and struggled to control His emotions.

Jesus was angry against death, a consequence of the curse of the Fall. Jesus was angry against pain and suffering that impacted His friends–Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. Jesus was angry against Satan.  He saw the panoply of human experience from Creation to the Fall, to the Law, and to the Incarnation, and He was angered by the far reaching effects of the sin.

Jesus responded to death with grief. “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).

Very God and very man, Jesus felt grief as you and I do.  But His memory spanned the spectrum of time to the very beginning of humanity and the problem of sin.  Out of His anger, He grieved.  He grieved the curse of sin.  He grieved the consequences of the Fall.  He grieved Lucifer’s rebellion against the Holy Trinity. He grieved Lazarus’ death.  He grieved for and alongside His grieving friends.

Jesus embraces us in our grief, and grieves with us.

Jesus responded to death with love. He loved Lazarus. He loved Martha. He loved Mary (John 11:5). “Then the Jews said, ‘See how He loved him!’ And some of them said, ‘Could not this Man, who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying?’ Then Jesus, again groaning in Himself, came to the tomb...” (John 11:36-38).

When we face the sting of death, we, too, can experience His embrace of love.

Jesus responded to death with empathy. “Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled. And He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to Him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus wept.” (John 11:33-35).

Jesus is no stranger to our anger, love, and grief.  He empathizes with all who grieve.  He reminds us, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).

Jesus responded to death with action. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.

“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?’” (John 11: 25-26)

“Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to Him, ‘Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?’ Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying. And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, ‘Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. And I know that You always hear Me, but because of the people who are standing by I said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.’ Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come forth!’ And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Loose him, and let him go.’” (John 11:39-44)

How must we respond to death?

·      

      We sorrow with hope of resurrection.

o   “But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.” (I Thessalonians 4:13).

·      We do not believe that everything that happens in this world is caused by God.

o   “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (I Corinthians 15:22).

o   “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead” (I Corinthians 15:21).

·      We must quit spouting well-intended, yet foolish and unscriptural, platitudes.

o   “He’s in better place.”  Heaven is not “a better place.”  Heaven is ultimate reality.  Heaven is the best of the best!  Heaven is to be with Jesus!  And that is supreme!  

o   “It was his time” denotes that God kills His saints!  Preposterous.  Not the God of the Bible!  Not the God I know!  In our grief, people often defer to a distorted view of the Sovereignty of God which says that everything that happens, good and bad, is caused by God and we must trust Him even if we don’t understand Him.  This view makes God the Author of sin in the Garden of Eden!

o   “Everything happens for a reason.”  What this crowd really means is that God causes everything, good and bad.  He is Sovereign, so we can never understand how He can create evil.  Really?  The shooting of 20 children in Newtown CT in 2012?  Happens for a reason?  No way!  Ridiculous!  There is no reason in it!  Not the God I know.

o   “God needed another angel.” The Biblical doctrine of angels has been distorted by the secular world until it is unrecognizable.  People don’t become angels when they die!  When believers die and go to heaven, they maintain personality in some altered form called a glorified body.  Babies and children are innocent if they have not yet reached the knowledge of the difference between right and wrong.  When that child dies, that child is safe with Jesus in heaven in a glorified body.

·      We must respond to death with the attitude of Jesus Christ.

o   II Timothy 1:10b Paul describes Jesus, “Who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

o   Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

o   When 18 innocent people died in the fall of the tower of Siloam, Jesus responded by calling people to repentance.  “Repent, lest ye likewise perish.”  Grief must drive us to repentance with a consciousness of the brevity of life and the need to prepare for eternity.

o   We have the hope of heaven and resurrection from the dead. “Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?’ The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Corinthians 15:51-57).

“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (I Corinthians 15:26).  Death is our enemy.  But waiting on the other side, there is Jesus!  Death is not time to blame God. It’s time to blame sin and Satan. But most of all, it is time to act!