Life is Sacred Right to the End

Pastor Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Isaiah 46:3-4. The main subject of the sermon is that life is sacred from birth to death.

 Well, as Jared mentioned, today is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. Every January, I preach on the third Sunday in January on the sanctity of human life. Usually, I address the topic of abortion because the sanctity of human life date is set to remind us of the Roe vs. Wade decision back in 1973 legalizing abortion. And that issue never leaves my mind. But this morning, I really feel led by God to preach on the topic of euthanasia. I have a number of reasons for doing that, and one of them is that this past November, the state of Colorado passed their Proposition 106 making physician-assisted suicide legal among patients in that state with a terminal illness that have a diagnosis of six months or less to live. That Proposition 106 in Colorado was called by the name the End of Life Options Act. You could just see the satanic deception of that title, options, also sometimes called the Death with Dignity bill. Again, the idea of a certain kind of life that has dignity versus other type of human life that has no dignity.

And so there are issues that we have to address. It passed by a rate of 65% to 35%, so easily passed in the state of Colorado. In taking this dreadful step, Colorado became the sixth state in the union with such a law, joining California, Oregon, Montana, Vermont, and the state of Washington. Now around the world, this has been an issue as well. Other countries in Europe have gone much further down the road on the issue of euthanasia than we have. And I’m going to talk about them, some of those. In some European nations, requests can even be based on physical disability or psychiatric distress, not terminal illness or excessive pain. As I’ll talk about later in the message, the Netherlands and Belgium have recently both extended their laws to cover children as well as adults, children ages 12 to 16. Many people, I think, rightly are worried about a slippery slope: where does this all lead? Most alarming to me as a pastor, as a shepherd of souls, is a poll done by Lifeway Research, which came back with this result: 38% of the people they polled who profess to be evangelical, to believe in Jesus Christ, and the Scriptures as an authority, almost four in ten agreed with this following statement, “When a person is facing a painful terminal disease, it is morally acceptable to ask for a physician’s aid in taking his or her life.” Agreeing with that statement and calling themselves evangelical!

In other words, “physician-assisted suicide is morally okay. At least in some circumstances.” How in the world is that pro-life? How did we get here? How did we get to that point? I think it’s very obvious from my perspective. It’s because people aren’t thinking biblically. They’re not going back to the Scripture and taking everything through the grid of the truth of God’s Word. If I were to push beyond that, I think that there is a kind of a new mushy-headed definition of love or compassion that people have, and it extends also to the issue of homosexuality or gay marriage or transgender issues in which we’re trying to be loving and compassionate in a way that’s not biblical, and upholding personal choice, like the inerrancy of personal choice or the inalienable right to make these kinds of choices, including abortion and other things.

I think we need to turn to God’s Word and root ourselves in what it says. Now, for myself, as I think about this topic and all the more as I went through the sermon this morning, this is an incredibly dreary topic. It’s very sad. It’s hard for me not to cry while preaching it. It’s hard for me as I go through the details, especially when it comes to children when I think about suicide and think about the ministry of the church is called on to have. So let me just lay my cards on the table. What am I about today? Well, a good friend of mine and I had lunch this week. He’s a physician, he said, “Please speak light and hope into this sermon.” And so I yearn to do that.

So what’s the positive light that can come out of this? Well, my desire as a pastor here is to help each one of you love life as God chooses it for you, love your life right to the end, however God chooses for your life to end. That you would embrace life, that you would be energetic about your life right to the end of your life, that you would delight in whatever God chooses for you, no matter how much suffering it entails. And that you’ll run with endurance right to the end, the race that’s marked out before you. And that you will store up treasure by leaving a legacy of hope and energy and love right to the end of your life. That’s my desire. 

When I was running cross country as a high school athlete, my coach told us that we’re all supposed to run to an imaginary point 10 feet beyond the finish line. In other words, finish the race. You don’t know who’s gaining on you, you don’t have time to look around, so just run to ten feet beyond. Now we know that nothing, none of the feet beyond the finish line mean anything in the race, but what it does is it affects how you run the race. And in other sports, it’s the same thing, like in basketball, you have to follow through on your shot. The ball’s gone, what difference does it make what your hand does? It’s because it affects how you shoot.

The same thing I’m told with a golf stroke, though I know nothing about it, but you’re supposed to swing right through it, your follow through matters. It’s the same thing in tennis and baseball. So to bring that over to theology here, how you think about death will affect how you live. How you think about death and suffering will affect how you live every day. And also I believe that we are in training right now for how we’ll die. We’re actually preparing right now for the mentality, the attitude we’ll have right to the end of our life. 

“How you think about death and suffering will affect how you live every day.”

Paul says these amazing words, meditate on this, he says, “I die daily.” I mean, just ponder. What does that mean? I die every day. Well, there’s a death to self to the flesh that’s essential to a healthy Christian life, that carries us right to the end of our days in which we accept whatever suffering God brings in our life in a very healthy, robust way, and I want us all to do that. So that’s the light I’m speaking. That’s the hope I wanna give you. But also horizontally, we have a responsibility to other people, and we are here to shine a light in a dark place. And the ministry we have to offer to others, for the most part, in terms of outsiders, they don’t want. They don’t want what we have to give. We’re persuading spiritually suicidal people to live.

We also should be willing to persuade literally suicidal people to live as well, to give hope to people right to the end. And we need to do that. So this affects not only our vertical attitude toward God every moment, but also our ministry. So that’s what I’m about today. Now, above everything, I wanna preach the Gospel. And Sanctity of Human Life Sunday is a great time to remind ourselves of the only hope that we have, and that hope is the gospel of Jesus Christ. You saw in the two testimonies and in the great job that Philip did explaining the Gospel how the water doesn’t save, but Jesus saves. Jesus has the power to save sinners, and he has the power to give hopeless people hope, eternal hope. So, if you’re in that hopeless condition today and you’re listening to me, I just wanna speak a word of joy and hope to you. All of your sins can be forgiven through simple faith in Christ, not by your works, but by just trusting in Christ, crucified and resurrected. And I just wanna make an appeal to you to cross over from death to life, and to leave death behind and live forever with Christ, and then run your race the rest of your life with endurance to serve Him. That’s the gospel. And that’s why I’m here today. 

I. No Longer Blown and Tossed by False Doctrine

So I wanna zero in on that disturbing poll of 38% of people who self-identify as evangelicals who have drunk the poison, the mental poison of euthanasia, and who think it’s morally acceptable to kill yourself or to help another person kill themself for their certain conditions that you meet. I think that’s absolutely false, it’s absolutely wrong, and I think the only way we’re gonna combat it is to destroy the idea with truth. So I’m here with the weapons of truth and righteousness to blow up false ideas, to blow up false doctrines, like Paul says we do it in 2 Corinthians 10.

I believe that all kind of false doctrine and immaturity is overturned by the ministry of the Word of God. As we learn in Ephesians 4, that he gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers, I’m a pastor-teacher, to prepare God’s people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature. Mature. Well, what does that mean? Then we will no longer be infants blown back and forth and tossed by the ways of false doctrine and the cunning and craftiness of men and their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up in him who is the head, Christ. So I don’t want us blown back and forth by these false ideas that are going on in our society today. I want us rooted and established in life and in truth. So we have to fight.

The Word of God alone can give us lasting roots so that we’re not easily moved like immature infants, blown back and forth on the waves. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” He never changes. Hebrews 13:8. And just as Christ never changes, God’s word never changes. It is eternal. It is the same yesterday and today and forever. God hasn’t changed his mind on euthanasia. And we must not change our minds, though we’re under immense social pressure to give up on some key tenets of our evangelical faith. We must not give in, we must be rooted in an unchanging word on let’s say our views on the exclusivity of Christ and of the Gospel, that individual people all over the world need to believe in Jesus for salvation.

Let’s not give up on that. Let’s not be easily move from that. It’s gonna be under attack. It’s already under attack. Let’s not give up on the Gospel itself, that sinners are saved by grace through faith in Christ, not by works. We’re not giving up on that. We’re not giving up on the biblically taught precept of the sinfulness of homosexuality. Just because it’s popular, we’re not gonna be moved away from that. It is spiritual poison. We want to dissuade our friends and co-workers and neighbors that are drinking spiritual poison to stop drinking it and live and not die. And that’s loving to do. And we’re not going to be confused on gender. We believe what the Bible teaches that God creates people in his image, male and female. All of these things are rooted in the unchanging Word of God. And it says in 1 Peter 1, “All men are like grass and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our Lord stands forever. And this is the word that was preached to you.”

II. Human Life Sacred from Beginning to End

All right, so as we come together on Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, we come together under this banner of this sanctity of human life, and what I’m advocating today is we’re zeroing in on the end of life here, where ordinarily on this Sunday, I would zero in on the beginning of life. But the text that Dave read for us covers the whole thing. This is not an expositional sermon on Isaiah 46. I’ll return to expositional preaching next week in a later chapter of Isaiah, but Isaiah 46:3-4 says this,”Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel,” listen to this, “You whom I have upheld since you were conceived and carried since your birth, even to your old age and gray hairs, I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you, I will carry you, I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” 

So from conception in the mother’s womb, even to the very end of life, God is he who creates and sustains us and rescues us, that’s what… He promises his personal direct involvement in every moment of our lives. From the moment of conception in our mother’s wombs until the very end of our lives, it is he who sustains us and upholds us. So based on this, we’re speaking of the sanctity or sacredness of human life from conception to death, right to the very end. Now, the word sanctity means sacredness, set apart unto God. Like other Scriptures say, “Holy to the Lord”, belongs to God, it’s sacred to him. And we know from Genesis chapter 1, God determined to create the human race, male and female, in the image of God, and in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them, sacred holy humans in the image of God. And we believe, as we said, life, human life, is sacred from the womb. 

As many Scriptures teach, Isaiah 46, you heard, but also Psalm 139:13-14, the Psalmist says, “You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” So God was actively involved in knitting you together inside your mother from conception on. But then a few verses later in Psalm 139:16 it says, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” So God has a plan for every day of your life, right to the very end, all of those days, not some of them, all of them, right to the end of your life. So as the scripture says, “In him, we live and move and have our being.” And God alone has the right to both give life and take life away, and he does both every day. He has that power. He has that right. Job understood that when he heard that all of his children, all of them, ten of them, were killed in one moment with a natural disaster, a hurricane or tornado, or something like that. This is what Job said, “At this Job, [Job 1:20-21] Job got up and tore his rob, shaved his head, fell to the ground, and worshipped and said, The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, may the name of the Lord be praised.” That’s our reaction to both birth and death, the Lord gives, the Lord takes away. That’s his right, his role, his prerogative.

“God has a plan for every day of your life, right to the very end, all of those days, not some of them, all of them, right to the end of your life. “

III. Euthanasia and End of Life Ethics

So when it comes to life and death, the Lord is the one that gives, the Lord takes away, and he alone has the right to do that. Now, let’s talk about euthanasia. What does that mean? It’s a long word. It’s a complex word, not everybody knows what it means. Euthanasia comes from the Greek “eu”, the prefix meaning good and “thanatos” meaning death. Good death. Good death. Sometimes people speak of a “mercy killing”, something like that, etc., but the idea is a death that is good by whatever definition. Commonly, we would say euthanasia is the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve suffering. That’s one definition. It can also be referred to as assisted suicide. Now, ethically, there are different categories of euthanasia. There are two primary categories and two secondary categories in that ethical system giving us a matrix of four possibilities. There is active euthanasia and passive euthanasia. And then the second category is voluntary or involuntary. So the first has to do with how the death actually comes about, and the second has to do with the understanding or the disposition of the person that’s going through it and their choice in the matter. 

All right, so active voluntary euthanasia. In that case, a person is willingly choosing to die and acts to carry out this choice. What distinguishes that from just simple suicide is the assistance of others in doing that. So others help them to kill themselves. That’s active voluntary euthanasia. Active involuntary euthanasia, in that case, a person that has not assented, has not expressed willingness to have their life taken from them is deliberately terminated by another. That’s active, involuntary euthanasia. Passive voluntary euthanasia is a dying person voluntarily declining medical assistance, which would prevent them from dying. In other words, there’s nothing active introduced to the case, but just things that could be helpful are withdrawn, and the person wants it that way. And then passive involuntary is where a dying person who could be medically prevented from dying is denied a variety or a range of life-saving treatments, those are the four possibilities. Now, another issue, and that is the question of a difference between involuntary and non-voluntary. In that case, it’s like, I’m not willing, I’m aware of what’s going on and I am not assenting, or a person who literally has no idea what’s going on, literally none. They’re unconscious or they have dementia, Alzheimer’s, and they have no idea what’s going on, so that adds two more opportunities or issues.

All right, so here’s what I’m saying. As I sort through these categories, I believe all active euthanasia is immoral of any type. It’s immoral, it’s wicked. Again, what is that? It’s the introduction of an element to the case that itself, that feature produces the death. So not the terminal illness, that’s not it, it’s something that has been added, usually barbiturates, where the person is just drugged to death, they’re given an overdose of barbiturates and they die. But there are other ways that people die, and I don’t wanna go through the details, it’s just so depressing. But there are just different things that are introduced to the case and that produces death. All of that is immoral and Christians should stand against it.

“I believe all active euthanasia is immoral of any type. “

 Passive, I’d struggle to call it euthanasia, but the more I meditated on it the more I started thinking, maybe we just need a real definition of euthanasia. There are good deaths actually. And we’ll talk about it later, but when God chooses to take one of his children out of the world, it’s a delightful thing to him, and it’s good for us to die and go and be with Christ. So I guess it’s like I don’t wanna call all these euthanasia, but to stick with the ethical categories, passive means at that point, you’re not going the nth degree with the medical community, you’re not going… always, one more step. One more step, one more step. At some point you’re stopping knowing there’s still more the medical science can do, but you’re not going to do that anymore. At that point, I just think people are going to make those kind of ethical choices all the time.

The first person I ever, first human being, I ever saw die, I was on a mission trip in 1987, in the hills, the very rural area of Pakistan. It was a 20-day-old infant that had double pneumonia and a very low blood pressure and a variety of other illnesses etc. They were brought to our I camp, and the medical doctor there from Great Britain did everything he could in that remote area to keep the baby alive. In the last two hours, all it was was CPR, and they were just pushing on the baby’s chest and doing nothing to cure it of any of the things that were killing it. And at some point we prayed and we stopped pushing on the chest and we just left it to God and prayed. And the child died very quickly after that, so that would be a picture of passive. You’re stepping back and you’re saying, we’re not going to do any more medical things here. 

Now you know that ethically you’re going to face lots of those types of situations, many different types of situations. Could be a teenager that gets in a terrible car crash, and they’re non-responsive. Maybe what the medical community might call brain dead, etc. There could be other issues. You might have a terminal illness. Terminal cancer, it’s almost always terminal, but there are experimental procedures that could be done. There’s always perhaps one more thing or not always, but so often there is. It’s not unethical to say at this point, I feel that we have made a reasonable effort to get healed. If God wants to heal this loved one, he can do it by a direct action by miracles, but we’re not going to take those further steps. I don’t think that’s immoral, I don’t think that’s unethical, I think people are going to make those kind of decisions a lot. So those are the distinctions. 

IV. The Terrifying “Slippery Slope”

Now, I believe that when it comes to active euthanasia, this is a terrible slippery slope, that we don’t know where it’s going to lead. We don’t know what effect it’s going to have in our society, these six states think it’s all right for physicians to assist people to kill themselves. It says in Galatians 5:9, “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” Where is this all heading?

It could be the definition of euthanasia might be expanded to include those who are suffering from chronic depression or maybe just tired of living, or maybe those no longer productive in society. Perhaps the government would get to the point where it decides who should get what level of care and when all in the name of the collective good, but what’s to prevent the government from actually eventually stepping in and determining who needs to be terminated, no matter what they think in that. You don’t know that we’re not heading toward that type of dystopia, that type of evil society that could get there and what steps led to it beforehand, but what’s going to stop that?

 Now, as we talk about why people say they want to die, what reasons they’re giving, we have to step in and start to argue against these indicators saying, “this is worthy of death.” A poll was taken on what people consider to be states worse than death, or I would rephrase it, “I’d rather die than go through X.” And so they started listing some of these things like bladder and bowel incontinence, the inability to control your bladder and your bowel. Fifty-five percent said they’d rather die than go through that. Relying on a breathing machine to live, 52% said they’d rather die than be hooked up to a machine that would help them breathe. Cannot get out of bed, 50%, is a state worse than death. Confused all the time, 48% said it was a state worse than death.  Needing care all the time, continual care, 38% said it was a state worse, I’d rather die than need care all the time, on down: relying on a feeding tube, living in a nursing home, one-third of the respondents said they’d rather die than live in a nursing home. At home all day long, can’t get out anymore, moderate pain all the time, confined to a wheelchair was on the list. Now, how much worse if some of these things get stacked up on each other, one after the other, to some people, almost obvious that you should wanna die, I just wanna stand and fight all of this, so you can live an incredibly worthwhile life with all of this going on, all of it.

Now as Proposition 106 was heading toward being voted on back in November, the Denver Gazette came out against it, a secular newspaper, but came out against it in an editorial column, September 26, 2016, and brought up some things that were just straight scary for me. Listen to this, to qualify for assisted suicide, you have to be of sound mind, they say, you have to know what you’re doing to meet the condition of Proposition 106, but nothing in the law requires even a cursory psychological evaluation. There’s nothing legally enforcing to say that you are of sound mind. Some people who choose suicide might simply be suffering a minor bout with depression. Statistics in Oregon, one of the states that allows it, show that 66% of those who choose to end their lives did so because of a loss of will to live, not because of excessive pain. They just don’t wanna live anymore. Also, the law required a terminal diagnosis within six months, but a John Hopkins’ study show that doctor mistakes on that issue are common. How in the world can we know the future, how can we know definitely this person’s gonna die within six months? You’re just looking at statistics based on that disease. You don’t know what will happen.

Dr. William Tofler said it is nearly impossible to predict the course of an illness six months out, and many patients given such prognoses live full rewarding lives long past the six months. A greater concern comes in reference to pushy relatives with serious financial incentives for that person to die. The Colorado bill contains no oversight to protect individuals from coerced or even forced consumption of suicide pills. And listen to this, it grants immunity from prosecution for anyone there at the time of death, and there’s no good reporting system in terms of whether there’s abuses. It’s just “open season” on the elderly at that point. One woman, Kay Chaney, was found competent to take her life despite her own dementia and the involvement of an adult daughter seen by the doctors as “somewhat coercive” in demanding the lethal pills.

 Another man, Michael Freeland, had suffered from suicidal depression for years before he ever became ill, and so people had been around this individual, counseling and urging and speaking hope into his life so he wouldn’t commit suicide. Then he got this diagnosis and he was given the medications to take his own life, despite the fact that his house had been cleansed of all deadly weapons so he wouldn’t kill himself. Do you see the schizophrenia here? So which suicidal people are we gonna minister to and which not? I tell you what, we’ll just minister to the suicidal people who really secretly really do wanna still live. How do we even know? We just have to go in the name of life and hope to everyone and speak Christ into those situations. That’s what we’re called on to do as a church. One of the main reasons that people seek it is they don’t wanna be a burden to their family or a burden to people around them. We have to speak against that. There’s no burden. I’m gonna talk about that at the end of the message, but it’s not a burden to care for another person. 

What’s happening in Europe is even worse. It’s just much further down the road. The Dutch government has decided to expand their euthanasia law to include people who are not even physically or psychologically sick at all, not even in the least. They just believe that their life is completed. The Dutch health minister read a letter to Dutch Parliament in October, defending this measure. Edith Schippers, said, “It is needed to address the needs of older people who do not have the possibility to continue life in a meaningful way, who are struggling with the loss of independence and reduced mobility, and who have a sense of loneliness partly because of the loss of loved ones and who are burdened by a general fatigue, deterioration, listen to this, and loss of personal dignity.”

Can I just tell you? We have dignity always, if we’re human. It doesn’t matter if we’re having trouble with our bladder or trouble with other physical functions, etc. We always have dignity. That’s what today is all about. The sanctity of human life, just a lesser word is dignity, the dignity of human life, always. But as I mentioned, even worse, the Dutch government has expanded the scope of protected physician killing to include children. With their parents’ permission, a child between the ages of 12 and 16 years old may request and receive assisted suicide. Now, listen to this. Initially, the law allowed children to receive it even if their parents objected, but after domestic and international criticism the law was changed to require parental consent. My mind blew up on either side of the equation. Like on the parental consent, what parent would consent? Ever? But then imagine where it’s not even needed, they’re not even consulted. Just suffering from life. Tired of living. It’s a slippery slope. And where is it all heading? How shall we Christians think about this? What shall we do? And I wanna finish the message by just zeroing in on three themes: waiting on God, living and suffering well, and caring for parents, those three themes, and we’ll finish with that.

V. Waiting on God, Suffering Well, and Honoring Parents

First, waiting on God. The fundamental problem I have with all of this is the human arrogance of taking something from God that belongs only to God. That’s the biggest problem I have with this, period. This is not our right. We don’t have the right to do this. That includes suicide. In Bunyan’s classic, Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian and Hopeful are in Doubting Castle, and they’re in this dungeon and they’re getting beaten up every day by the Giant Despair, and the Giant Despair comes and hands them instruments whereby, as Hopeful said, “Why should we become our self-murderers? But he hands them a blade, he hands them a poisoned arrow. That’s euthanasia, and he’s persuading them to die, to kill themselves. That’s despair, that’s depression. They finally break out with the Word of God, the “key of promise,” and they get out. It’s an allegory, but it’s just saying that it’s all about depression, dark thoughts that come over us. But first and foremost, it’s just a sin for us not to wait on God and let God be God and wait under his hand, be under him, and let him decide what will happen in our lives.

“The fundamental problem I have with all of this is the human arrogance of taking something from God that belongs only to God. “

Now, an example of somebody who committed this sin was King Saul in the Old Testament, remember that? Remember in 1 Samuel 13, when he’s under dire straits concerning a battle, an impending battle with the Philistines, and Samuel hadn’t come, it seemed, at the appointed time, and he finally just couldn’t wait anymore. Remember, he just wouldn’t wait anymore, and he took matters in his own hands and offered an illicit sacrifice to God that God had not told him to do, confusing the kingship and the priesthood, which he was not permitted to do. As soon as he was done offering the sacrifice, Samuel showed up. Should have waited a little bit longer. But these dire words, Samuel spoke to Saul, [1 Samuel 13:13-14 ]“You have acted foolishly, you have not kept the command of the Lord your God that he gave you. If you had, he would have established your kingdom for all time, but now your kingdom will not endure. The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him to be leader of his people, because you have not kept the Lord’s command.” In other words, Saul, because you couldn’t wait on God, but took matters in your own hands, your kingdom is forfeit to you going forward after. Your descendants will not become king. 

Wow, that’s how important it is to wait on God. Psalm 130 says, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits and in His Word, I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than a watchman waits for the morning, more than a watchman waits for the morning.” Well, Saul carried that mentality out the rest of his life right to the end of his life. So Saul’s final moments on earth, where in the middle of a battle with the Philistines, you remember the story, he was severely wounded, and he was with his armor bearers, he’s on the battlefield, and as he perceives his situation, he’s not going to survive and he doesn’t wanna be grabbed by the Philistines. So he says to his young armor bearer, this young man who he is with there, who idolizes him, looks up to him and says, run me through with my sword. In other words, euthanize me. But he wouldn’t do it because he was the Lord’s anointed. He wouldn’t do it. Saul took matters in his own hand, did not wait on the Lord and fell on his own sword, when the young armor bearer saw what his hero had done, he imitated him and killed himself, too.

Providence, the doctrine of providence, the idea that God has worked out everything down to the tiniest detail. That includes the day of our birth, the day of our death. It’s all part of a vast, complex system. If we think that we understand it, we don’t. It’s got big gears and little gears and it’s got electronics and wires and chips, and if some child looks at it and says, this wire is worthless and rips that out, or this chip isn’t needed. What do we know? We’re just born yesterday and know nothing, but even the very hairs of our head are all numbered, Jesus said. And God has ordained sparrows falling to the ground in death as part of his big glorious plan that definitely then would include the death of his people. It says in Psalm 116:15, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” So God has worked out how and when we’re going to die. Now, throughout church history, some of his saints have gone out gloriously as martyrs for the cause of Christ, and God ordained that. That was part of God’s plan. William Tyndale was burned at the stake. Great suffering and died for the glory of God. 

Over a century before that, John Hus, the same thing. Jim Elliot laid down his life for the Waorani people in Ecuador. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. Others just die of natural causes like any other person would, any non-Christian would. David Brainerd was a great missionary in the 18th century, he died about as horribly as anybody I’ve ever read in church history. He died of tuberculosis. And Jonathan Edwards — he died in Jonathan Edwards’ home — he recorded the events of his death. It took, according to the record, four weeks of active dying in order to die of coughing up blood, of spasms so bad that at any moment everyone around David Brainerd’s bed thought that was it, he couldn’t endure and yet he went on for four weeks. If ever you think about extreme suffering, David Brainerd is an example of it. And yet in the midst of those four weeks of absolute agony, there were just rays of heavenly sunshine that would come in and he would speak of his hope in Christ, and how eager he was to be with Christ, and how ready he was to die and how much he wanted to be with Christ. And he gave an incredible testimony. And at the end of his life, one of his last words was this. Actually for me, a little scary, but it’s good to know. This is what David Brainerd said. “It is another thing that men suppose it is to die.”

In other words, it’s gonna be different than you think it is. And I’m saying you’re in training right now for it, get ready for it. Get ready to not choose the flesh, the easy way out, to cling to Christ, to trust in him more than ever before, to cling to him and to be willing to suffer for his glory, to believe that “our light and momentary troubles are as nothing compared to the surpassing glory that far outweighs them all.” Now, other Christians like Walter Martin, the “Bible Answer Man,” he was kneeling in prayer when his wife found him. I’m like, I’ll volunteer for that. When the time comes, oh, Lord Jesus, I want the Walter Martin treatment, not the David Brainerd treatment. I wanna go out with minimal pain and coughing and strangulation in my own blood, I don’t want that. I would like to just be in prayer, and I guess Christi would find me. I guess in this scenario for us, maybe we could go out in prayer together, you know, they found them kneeling in prayer, but we know it’s just not that way, and the thing is we don’t choose. We don’t get to choose that. That’s the very idea I’m trying to destroy. That’s not up to us. That’s something only God can choose.

So how then shall we live? How shall we suffer? How shall we die? We have to embrace suffering in the Christian life, this life is hard, do not be surprised when you suffer. It’s a hard life. Let’s imitate Jesus who in Gethsemane said, “Father, if it is possible for this cup to be removed, may it be so. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Not my will but yours be done. As Christians, we must imitate that right to the very last breath of our lives, not my will but yours be done. The Apostle Paul, was said over him, “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.” His life from that moment of his conversion until the day he died was a life of continual suffering day after day after day for Christ. And what he said is, “I want to know Christ, and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead.“ I want to find Jesus in my sufferings.

And he had so much suffering. He was persecuted. He also had sufferings that are inanimate object-type sufferings, like shipwrecks. He had all of it, and was all part of his life of suffering. And specifically, God gave him a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment him, and three times he pleaded with God to be healed. To be delivered from this message, this thorn in the flesh, and the same message came every time. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” That’s an anti-euthanasia statement. My grace is sufficient for you. I will get you through. Keep hoping in me. Keep trusting in me. Be willing to suffer right to the end. Because my strength is made perfect in weakness. So I was asking my kids as we drove in this morning, I said, “Can you imagine what would happen if Christians were not supposed to suffer like…” My son asked me, “Is it good to suffer?” And I said, “Under God, it is.” So why? So, well imagine, let’s just go with an alternate reality universe here. Imagine at the moment that anyone becomes a Christian, they immediately from that point on have nothing but success and no suffering. 

That’s like the prosperity gospel, like times 1,000, right? Immediately blessed with no pain, nothing but success and wealth and all that. Do you realize how amazingly effective… No, effective our evangelism would be. If people knew, you become a Christian, look what happens to you. I want that, yes. But why do you want it? What do you want? What you want is all the worldly stuff you’ve always wanted. But if, on the other hand, you have Paul and Silas singing in the Philippian jail, and they don’t have anything that anybody could want on earth, and they’re filled with joy and confidence and peace, and they’re eager to go and be with Christ, which is better by far. Now, somebody could say, I want what they have, even though I don’t see any earthly benefit. Now that’s a genuine conversion, So it is actually very wise for God to put Christians on display in suffering, and so we need to live. And so if I could commend one verse that would will teach you how to think about life and how to think about your own death, I would commend Philippians 1:21, “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

Or you can put it this way: for to live is Christ and to die is even better. Or another way: for me to live is Christ and to die is even more Christ. So Paul, do you wanna live? Yes, I really wanna live. Why? Because I wanna know Christ and his sufferings and his service, and I wanna bless people. I wanna serve them. I wanna do the life that God… I am excited to live my life, I want to live right to the end of it, as many days as God gives me, I wanna live. Okay, Paul, do you wanna die? Yes, absolutely not in any suicidal way, but I wanna go through that doorway into heaven and see him face-to-face and be free forever from death, mourning, crying and pain. Yes, I want that. And that’s better by far. Okay, you’re healthy then. You’re healthy. It is a healthy way to look at life. And it’s a healthy way to look at death. So that’s what I’m commending. Not a culture of death. 

Finally, we’re called on to honor our parents. What that means is we’re called on to care for the elderly as they get older and weaker, and as they draw near the end. Now that’s gonna mean different things for different people.  But Jesus upheld it against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who said because they had some money that they were devoting to God, they didn’t have to honor their parents with it. And he said, “You hypocrites.” So we have to be committed to caring for our parents, and that’s gonna mean different things for different families, different things for different ones. But Paul says, 1 Timothy 5:8, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, especially for his immediate family, he’s denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

So we are committed to care for the elderly. Now people have different ways of doing that. There are gonna be different ways, but it’s your commitment to say, I care about my parents. And then by extension, our spiritual parents. There may be some elderly widows and widowers that don’t have anyone to care for them, and the church is supposed to be there to care right to the end of life. And we care best, at least first and foremost, by speaking hope into people who are struggling as they reach the end of their lives, not by handing them some drug by which they can kill themselves.

Close with me in prayer. Father, I thank you for the time that we’ve had in your Word. I thank you for the power that you have given us to speak the truth into darkness and to glorify you. And Father, I pray that you’d help us to live for your glory and to embrace life and turn away from death. Thank you for Jesus, for his death on the cross and his resurrection. In his name, we pray. Amen.