Have You Not Read S3:E1 | Suicide

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints.

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Welcome to season three of Have You Not Read. I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Durham, Chris Giesler, Andrew Hudson, and David Kassin.

Yes, we have five people on the mic today. It's gonna be a good one. But I'd like to start out, since we're going on season three here, and we've had our little break,

I'd like to touch on each host, each member, and see what we'd like to thank the

Lord and praise him for that happened this summer, whether area of personal growth or learning or something you saw, you know, in your children or your family life that you'd really like to lift praises to.

Michael, we'll start with you. I'd like to thank the Lord for just a lot of different expressions of faithfulness that I've seen this summer.

I think especially for my family in the church, just thankful to see God's faithfulness, a lot of answered prayers and ways that God provided and guided and helped that we didn't even know that we needed.

But as a good heavenly father, he knows our needs, and I'm very grateful.

There's been a lot of answers to prayer in my home, just a lot of situations that maybe in previous summers, you know, things that could be troubling and difficult and this year, not so much, kind of a reprieve on some things, and still we're learning to not fear, but to trust the

Lord. My kids are getting older, I'm getting older. I don't like either one of those sometimes, but they are blessings.

And I'm thankful for God's provision for health, mostly just health for my wife and my children, health and safety and vibrancy and opportunities for us to be together and to grow together in Christ.

Thankful for the church, what God's doing here at Sunnyside, seeing that God's bringing us through some difficult things and some new things, which

I'm thankful for. And kind of reflecting on the last nine years where God has brought us and just thankful for every part of it.

And then I just personally growing in some areas, you know, learning more about the value of work, learning more about being content.

The Precious Jewel of Christian Contentment, that was a good book. Read some biographies, growing in my appreciation and understanding of prayer.

It's been a good summer. I'm thankfully not the man I was in May. Amen to that.

Chris? I am thankful to God for a restful sustainment.

I think with our kids, we have these like mile markers, everyone's like, oh, they're doing this, they're doing this.

This summer has been, it seemed a little bit different in that it seems like where you can think of things as mundane, let's just get it and out of the way, it's been more of a intentional focusing on the daily, but not in such a way that it's cumbersome.

It's been restful and it's just been, I'm taking these opportunities this summer, this time that I have with my kids, training and teaching and fits and all this, everything.

And it's just been, we're gonna let God use this opportunity, we're gonna let God use us.

I think for me, a verse that keeps coming to mind is the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

And I have a temper, but this summer has been just grace upon grace.

When those opportunities for anger would come up, God has sustained me in it.

And I am grateful for that. And I'm grateful for my wife who just takes everything in stride. And so it's been, there's been things that we would like to have gone other ways, but it's still been

God sustaining us restfully through it. And just very grateful for that.

Amen, Andrew. It's amazing. We all always have different experiences, but we're thankful to the same one who gives us these things.

I retired in 2022 around September from the

United States Air Force. This summer has been the first summer of retirement to be home with my family.

Now I'm also taking, I also took some college courses during the summer, but there was a period of time.

I'm so thankful for the time that I was afforded with my family, doing homeschool with them, taking care of work projects at the house that needed to be done.

It's quite remarkable how a busy life with extracurricular sports and lots of tugs on your time, the things that get put on the back burner that should not be.

So I'm thankful to the Lord to be able to do those things that he gave me that time to do that.

We also got to do the, there's a couple in the congregation that develops a children's portion of a summer reading program.

So I was able to go through that with my children and it was very wonderful this year to be part of doing that present with them instead of it being my wife while I was away.

Being able to read, have them read it, to discuss it. What a wonderful thing to check off the boxes with them and just participate with them is a great blessing.

Sometimes in life, you don't know what you have until it's gone. And then sometimes when something else leaves, you see what you really have.

So we were not doing any, we were doing competitive soccer with those children.

We're not doing that this year. I don't have work outside the home like I used to and now

I just have school. So the things that got cleared away helped me to see what God has given me and I'm thankful for that.

Amen, David. Well, this has been a very busy travel season.

I'm in the travel industry and summer when most people are off and a lot of kids are out of school, business is good.

Business was very good over the summer. But of course that's a double -edged sword. So I was gone all the time.

I worked pretty much every weekend since about May. So I spent a lot of my summer working and I have not been to Sunday service very much at all.

I think I've been able to count on one hand the number of Sunday services I've been able to attend. That has made me so thankful for Wednesday night.

The Wednesday night prayer meeting and we have dinner and fellowship and a short lesson and time of just eating and feeding each other spiritually and then praying for one another.

It's not as apparent in a small church, but in a large church, the people who come on Wednesday nights really wanna be there.

Some people go through the motions and come to church on Sundays, but the people that come on Wednesdays really wanna be there and it's a joy to be surrounded with people like that.

It is, so I love seeing you guys there. It means a lot to me and it is often the only fellowship that I get during the week.

So thankful for a good job and I'm definitely glad that the summer's just about over and a lot of that fast pace is starting to relent just a little bit.

Over the summer, my wife and I really wanted to serve the teens in our church.

We wanted to provide more opportunities for them just to get together. And of course, I'm thinking, this will be awesome.

I'm coming up, gonna go play putt -putt or sit around the fire or come over and eat food or let's watch a movie or anything.

And of course, I had a great time with it. And Amy loved it too. She's here, one of her gifts is hospitality.

So opening up the house for this and just allowing a bunch of kids to come in and come and go as they please.

And even if people couldn't show up like when it started, quote unquote, they were coming towards the end. They come in late and the first words out of their mouth is great, welcome, we're so glad that you're here.

Are you hungry? Food's there. And that's the kind of welcome that they would get in our home.

And that's the environment that she creates. So thankful for her. And our daughter did a bunch of summer stock drama and plays and I've just watched her blossom and grow and come out of her shell and become very expressive, very confident.

Not to mention she's doing kickboxing as well. So as she gets a little older and boys become more interested,

I'm thankful for kickboxing. Yeah, I'll say that out loud. So be aware, any young men, she's got quite the kick.

And then I'm able to spend a lot of time in Dallas with my side of the family, my extended family. And that is a huge struggle.

And I don't just mean like politically or it's, we're on opposite ends of the spectrum there.

Just socially, worldview, everything is very, very, it's polar opposite.

And it is a constant struggle. But I'm able to rebuild some of those relationships with my mom, with my dad, my brother, my sister, their families.

And I'm thankful for that. No matter what happens, they know that I love them and that they love me.

And perhaps I'll have an opportunity to talk with them more about things that really matter, things of eternity.

But it's nice to at least have that interaction with them. So, and that's what I got to do over the summer.

Amen. Well, Heather and I, we've had a soul added to our family between last time and through this break, little

Charles Hugh Hamilton came into our lives safely due to the Lord's intervention and a wise doctor's decision.

And my wife, Heather and I are very, very thankful for that. We are praising the Lord for the

Lord's provision through a couple of wild occurrences and wild weeks in the summer, which is the main portion of my work during the year, because I'm heavily seasonal and he has blessed us nothing short of abundance.

So we're very thankful for that. And we know that he's proving his faithfulness over and over. And that's what he's showing us.

That's what he's telling us. And we are becoming more and more open and understanding of his communication through those means, mostly through the church body, who's been so generous.

And as we're going through Philippians and Sunday school class, there's a lot of parallels between the faithfulness of that church to give and what

I see here at Sunnyside to other church members who are in need and without asking at all.

And it just shows up and I'm very thankful for this body and what they've done for all of us.

But thankfulness has a tie into our subject today and or the lack thereof. And so I'd like David, if you would, to introduce our subject for the day because of your personal contact with this subject.

So disclaimer, if there are younger listeners, this is a very serious topic.

I don't think we're gonna say anything that that can't be dealt with with scripture, but if there are younger listeners and all parents do use discretion.

Also over the summer, we've gotten several questions. We have inputs, even from our own church, even from some of us here, but we did receive a very nice note.

Not every piece of correspondence we get is so amiable. We have some haters and we like you guys.

So if you have piercing questions, we don't shy away from them, but we're very appreciative of this listener who wrote in, it was dealing with the topic of suicide.

Many of us have been touched by this personally. Some of you that are listening have had family members, people that are very close to you, friends who have either contemplated it, attempted or even succeeded.

And this is a very serious topic, it's very sobering, but it is something that the scriptures do address.

So in this case, this listener just appreciated the things that we had said, things we had talked about, the interaction we have with each other, our friendship, our love for one another, even when we disagree on topics.

And this listener had said that they had struggled with this issue and that just listening to us helped.

And it was incredibly encouraging to me in particular. Years ago, back when

I was in the Air Force, I was an aircraft commander on a C -130 and we were overseas in Africa.

And when you're in your early 30s, you're an officer, you fly planes across the ocean, you are bulletproof.

I mean, you can take on the world and you have. And that's how

I felt and that's how everybody else around us felt. We were blind to people that were struggling.

I'm one of the people that I was responsible for, one of my crew members was struggling with some personal issues, deep things with he and his wife.

And it got to the point where he couldn't do his job. We knew that he just could not focus on the mission.

And what we were doing was dangerous. The places where we were going were very dangerous. And you had to have all your stuff sewed up, ready to go.

And he just wasn't, and he knew that. And when we took him off the schedule, he understood. But it was time, we're gonna have to send him home early because he had some things that he needed to deal with.

He could not be in a war zone and we wanted to take care of him. But the night before he left, I sat down with him, talked with him, and this was nearly 20 years ago.

So you could get away with stuff like this. But I asked him if I could pray for him. And he said, yeah, yeah, sure.

And he wasn't really a man of faith, but I think he appreciated it. So his boss, his commander, just prayed with him.

And then he left the next day. We were there for about another week. And then we got the planes back from Africa across Europe and into North America.

And the last night before we got back to Tucson, we were overnighting in Albany, New York.

And our commander, Mike, came to us and said that he had killed himself.

He had been back in town for a couple of days. The problems with him and his wife were not getting better.

I think she was gonna leave him. And then he had taken his own life. And we were in shock.

We knew he had some problems, but it's not like his story was unique. We hear that stuff all the time. People splitting up, people getting back together, people cheating on one another.

It was all over the place. So a marriage breaking up wasn't unusual, but to have somebody that close to us take their own life, it was a shock to us.

It was a very dark day. And all of us came to his funeral. And I carried his funeral bulletin, his little program in my

Bible for 10 years. And I wondered, I struggled with what more could

I have done? What else could I have said? Could I have prayed for something else?

Could I have prayed harder? Could I have pleaded with him? I don't know. And I have struggled with that for nearly two decades.

He was in my charge. He was one of mine. And we lost him.

And for someone to write in and tell us how much it meant to him or her as they were struggling with something similar and that we helped them meant a lot to me personally.

As those who believe in the sovereignty of God, that God is in control, that we have a loving father who knows the number of hairs on our head, a spirit doesn't fall to the ground without him knowing it.

He knows the end from the beginning. No one resists his will. He knows the future because he causes it.

God is sovereign. He is in control. And we can rest in that.

But we still struggle with these issues. And I wanted to bring that topic to you guys today.

I wanted to hear your thoughts. And what can we do to people that, what can we say to people who are dealing with this issue, either themselves or within their families or people that they know?

What does the scripture have to say about this topic? And I put it back to you.

Well, this is a theme that I think, of course, is very weighty.

I think that there are a lot of people who have thought about suicide, have perhaps been on the brink of it, and are likely either too scared or too ashamed to talk about it with the people who are the closest to them and very often, some of the people who are close to them are also the ones who could be most helpful.

But it is a kind of betrayal in the mind to say,

I've been thinking about this or I've been having these thoughts or I've considered this or these thoughts come to me about suicide.

If you say that to people who are close to you, then there is a feeling that you're saying something to them, you're not enough, you failed me somehow.

And somebody who has thought about suicide or is dealing with very self -focused, depressed thoughts will shy away from saying these things because then, oh, this will just make them think even worse of me or I'm gonna cause even more harm than I already have by making them feel bad.

And this is symptomatic of sin. Sin thrives in the darkness.

Sin thrives where there is no light. And I just want to say, if you, listening to this podcast, if you have had thoughts about suicide, then it's not something for you to wallow in or to think about only on your own or to beat yourself up about.

It is something that you need to talk with your elder about, talk with your pastor about, talk about this with somebody who can help you, somebody who can help bear your burden.

Remember that Jesus wants us to bear one another's burdens and we are to love one another as he has loved us.

And there are some burdens that are too big to bear. We are entangled by them.

We are caught in these trespasses, as Galatians chapter six says. Therefore, we are to look for help because sometimes we are entangled in trespasses that are too big for us and we can't get up on our own and others need to help us and God knows that.

So there are many people who are born again, love Jesus, and are ready to love you, to help you.

Now, we need to think about what does the Bible have to say about suicide? It's not a word that you're going to find in the

Bible if you use a concordance and so on. There are passages that talk about it more obviously, such as the story of Judas Iscariot who went out and hung himself or King Saul who fell upon his own sword.

Now, those stories can help us understand a little more about why suicide happens, why people kill themselves.

But there are a lot of other passages in the Bible that also can help us understand what it is.

We ought not to leave the sin of suicide in the dark where we don't talk about it and let it remain mysterious and ill -defined and confusing.

We need to bring that out into the light of God's word and see what it really is because 1

John 1 tells us that if we walk in the light as God is in the light, we have fellowship with him and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sins.

So we need to bring things out into the light. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

So in confession just means saying what God says about it. So if I'm having thoughts about suicide, well, those are sinful thoughts.

That's not to spur me on and say, well, I guess since I'm having sinful thoughts, then

I should just give up. No, it's I need to bring these thoughts into the light of what

God says about them so that I may be forgiven and cleansed and delivered. So that's what we're hoping to do with this podcast is to bring that into the light.

Now, we know that when God spoke to Adam and Eve, he told them that if they sinned in the day that they sinned, they would surely die.

And this tells us that death is not non -existence.

Death is a separation. Because in the day that Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, when they decided to determine good and evil for themselves rather than listen to God, they indeed did die.

They were separated from God. Their relationship was now distant.

There was sin between them and God. Their sin had made a separation between them and God. There was separation between the both of them.

They hid from God, tried to hide from God, and they tried to hide from each other. Adam blaming

Eve. Their relationship to the created order changed. There was separation all over the place.

Now, when we think about sin leading to death, because we sin, therefore comes death.

The very notion of choosing death, embracing death, is very serious.

This is a full embracing of sin. Death came into the world because one man sinned.

All men die because all men sin. But to embrace death, to lay hold on death, and to think of it as some kind of solution is to choose good and evil for yourself and decide

I'm gonna determine what's good and evil rather than God. But truly grabbing both hands onto that which is not only not a solution, it is the exact opposite.

A full embracing of all the consequences of sin. So this is obviously not something that we ought to do. When we look at the

Ten Commandments, the Ten Commandments are structured as a chiasm where you have concentric parallels moving in from the outer commandments all the way to the center.

And at the very heart of God's covenant with Israel, we find this commandment, thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt not murder. That's at the very heart of it. It is the central, most important point of the whole covenant description.

Thou shalt not murder. What is suicide? Well, it is self -murder.

And there are many reasons why people may want to kill themselves, why people do kill themselves.

But at the heart of it, it is a turning away from God. It is a determining for oneself what is good and evil.

And it is a severing of oneself from the world which God made, from the people who

God has put into your life, and an act of defiance against the God who made you. So it is certainly a sin.

What else should we say about it? What else does the Bible have to say about it? How does the Bible help us understand this particular sin, suicide?

Andrew, I see a lot of notes over there. Well, whenever we were, well, when I was contemplating or meditating upon this topic, my first thought was that the suppression of truth and unrighteousness has its consequences.

And that brought me, obviously, to the language found in Romans 1, 18 through 32. I'll read a smaller portion, or maybe

I'll read the whole portion. I think we probably have time for that. I'll try to make it succinct, though.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.

For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even

His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Because although they knew

God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and birds, and four -footed animals, and creeping things.

Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness and the lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves to exchange the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever, amen.

For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions for even the women exchanged the natural use of what is against nature, likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error, which was due.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do things which are not fitting, being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil -mindedness.

They are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventor of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful, who knowing the righteous judgment of God that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do they do the same, but also approve of those who practice them.

So with all of what the Word has said there, in verse 21, because although they knew

God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts.

Futility in thought manifests in different ways. We see one of the conclusions of futility or vanity as being nihilism, where nothing is worth it anyway.

If there's no point, then why bother? But connected to that, you also have the idea of hedonism, which is today we eat and drink, and for tomorrow we die.

So they're really connected, the idea of like, if it doesn't matter, then let's just please ourselves.

But really, are you doing away with that nagging thought?

In Romans 2, it talks about the internal witness, even among the Gentiles, accusing and excusing the things that are against law or of law.

How do you escape the accusing of that internal witness? I think the self has to eclipse

God. There's a nihilism if the self eclipses God because there's no answers in the self.

And if, on the other side of it, okay, fine, nihilism,

I'm gonna live with the experiences. Hedonism, all for me. Either way, the self entirely eclipses

God to the point where you're searing your conscious, you're shutting out, you're turning the music up so loud that you can't hear the knock at the window of your car to let you know there's a problem, right?

That's the situation where many times even people who would ascribe to holiness, to spirituality, to meaning in life and so on and so forth, why would they commit suicide?

Because the self is so large in their own mind that they find no escape.

They can't see anything outside of themselves. And Andrew, you read

Romans 1, which is usually something that people would read. This is life, this is community, this is what happens in society without God.

This is the degeneration, and it's filled with violence, immorality, idolatry, and just, it's chaos.

So someone who's contemplating suicide, there's like, I'm not part of this chaos.

I'm just hurting. I'm in darkness, I'm in despair. Why does Romans 1 speak to that person?

Well, so in verse 22, sorry, in verse 21, you also have the phrase, their foolish hearts were darkened.

In Isaiah, a passage that you could point towards is, let me read it for you.

Stand by while I pull it up. One quick question of clarification there. Would we say that this is community or life in a culture without God or under the wrath of God?

Right, like it is. This is a consequence, that's my position. These are the consequences of suppressing the truth.

Because this foolish heart being darkened in Isaiah 5, 20 and 21, this is a woe pronounced.

There's a woe, woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light.

This is, and light for darkness. This is the consequence, this is the woe that's being pronounced upon them.

Yeah, this is definitely still God's world. Yes, and so it's really not life without God.

It's when, Michael, as you had said, from their perspective, their own self eclipses the knowledge of God.

Then you have that lack of thankfulness. You have, you're under the wrath of God. God has given them over to the natural consequences of a debased mind.

And some of us as Christians are like, well, yeah, I mean, that's what happens when you live like that.

And when someone has suicidal tendencies, as Christians, our first instinct is usually, it's compassion.

You say, oh, there's something seriously wrong. And I think what we're trying to communicate is that sin needs to be called out because there is a solution to that.

It's, you find it in the mercy, grace, forgiveness, and cleansing in Christ.

So these kinds of verses should make you flee to the person of Christ and his finished work.

That's where you have, not just salvation in the general sense, you have truly being saved from your self.

Yeah, so we were discussing prior about hardening and mercy. And I think that's a great jumping point to talk about hardening and mercy upon the same vessel, just at different times.

Yeah, so the wrath of God we see for those who are suppressing the truth and unrighteousness and they're exchanging the glory of the creator for idolatry, idolatry of the self included in that idea.

God is expressing his wrath in turning people over to these mindsets.

This does not mean, however, that somebody who is experiencing the wrath of God because of their sins and they're going headlong into all manner of things that are deserving of death.

It does not mean that there is no hope for them. Amen. I mean, the list that we read here in Romans 1, that those who practice them know that they're deserving of death and then approve of others who practice them.

This is very similar to the list that Paul uses in the letter to the Corinthians, such were some of you, such were some of you.

The wrath of God was abiding upon them and yet in the midst of that, we see the mercy of God, the grace of God, reaching down, pulling them out of the fire, transforming them, saving them.

Paul himself was a murderer. Yeah. He was a murderer and yet God saved him, the chief of sinners.

And so we see that there is hope for those who are given over to these mindsets.

And again, the hope is not that we might find the right formula to say to them.

Oh yeah. But that we can appeal to God himself who is free to show mercy where he will have mercy.

Christ is the only hope, right? So outside of the gospel, psychoanalysis and going to see a specialist who's secular, what do they have to offer?

More of the same. That's the particular challenge, isn't it? Because if somebody is focused upon the self, very often the modern psychoanalysis says, well, let's focus more on the self.

Exactly. Right, that's not going to help somebody by becoming more and more obsessed with the self.

That's not gonna help somebody be delivered from these very sinful tendencies. I think there's an idea of, okay, suicide is somebody crying out for help or attempted suicides are people crying out for help.

We hear that language. I understand that. I understand that to a point. They obviously are very desperate.

Obviously they are in a lot of hurt and there's a lot of problems there. However, suicide is not victimhood.

It's villainy. It's a sin against God. It's a sin against the self. It's a grave, grave sin.

And do we see that there is need for help? Oh, absolutely. But what is the help?

The help is that this person needs a savior. I think in our society, when you talk about people calling out for help and how are we defining it, most of the young people that I know are on antidepressants.

They're on some type of medication. And the reason they give is anxiety. Some of them have thoughts of suicide.

It's like, well, I need something to help me. But what are they doing? They're suppressing that internal witness.

And that's the world's answer is, well, we'll help you get rid of that voice. We'll dumb it down for you so you don't feel anything.

Take the edge off. Take the edge off. And we had talked about this before. I had read a verse from Proverbs 31.

And it's a mother talking to her son, who's to be king one day. And it says, do not give your strength to women, nor your ways to those which destroys kings.

It is not for kings over the meal. It is not for kings to drink wine, nor princes intoxicating drink, lest they drink and forget the law and pervert the justice of all the afflicted.

And then they keep going. Give strong drink to him who is perishing and wine to those who are bitter of heart.

Let him drink and forget his poverty and remember his misery no more. But it does nothing to fix the problem.

It's just people have these problems and their answer is, well, give me something for it. Let me take this wine.

Let me do this thing. Let me just eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow we die. So it's all pointless. You've got those two ditches.

You've got, well, let's just end it. Or we've got, well, then I'll live it up. And those are,

I think, the world's solution to getting rid of that internal witness. And it doesn't just come in the form of substances, right?

Here's 12 more rules for life. More than the original 12, right? We're talking about psychoanalysis.

I figured we'd have to throw him in there at some point, but that's a form of secular legalism.

Not to the levels that we see in the broader society, but it is taking on this either routine or these laws to give to oneself in order to build oneself up.

And again, the center of all those things is self, like you were talking about. Yeah, I thought about Jordan Peterson at the day preaching through Acts.

I got to Peter visiting Lydda and there was a man there, Aeneas, who had been lame for eight years.

And he says to him, Aeneas, Jesus the Christ heals you. Rise and make your bed.

And I thought, I'm thinking Jordan Peterson's favorite verse right here. You have to rise.

Clean your room. But if you've ever heard his blasphemous readings of scripture and his interpretations, he'd look at that and see all kinds of restorative wonders in the man getting up, taking responsibility for himself, making his bed and so on and totally miss the

Savior. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because he's just looking at the Jungian archetype. Right, exactly.

Just characters. So let's think a little bit about suicide, like patricide, like fratricide.

Homicide. Homicide is murder. Now, what does

Jesus say is at the heart of murder? Here's what the

Mosaic Covenant says. Thou shalt not murder. Yes and amen. But Christ comes as one greater than Moses and he comes and he fulfills the law.

So it's more, there's something superior in the righteousness of Christ. There's something greater and more at heart, more penetrating in the new covenant than in the old.

So what does he say is at the heart of murder? Hatred. Hatred, that's right.

He gives examples, right, about what you say with your mouth. Why is that?

Because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, right? So let's apply this to suicide.

And Jesus says at the heart of murder is hatred. So what is at the heart of self -murder is what?

Self -hatred, right? How would that manifest based on the way that Jesus handles it? On what you say about yourself and to yourself.

And this is not the psychoanalysis thing about you should only speak positively or the charismatic speak positive things into existence and so on and so forth.

But let's just think about this. What does Jesus say to the

Pharisees in John chapter eight about the nature of the devil? He was a murderer from the beginning.

Murderer from the beginning. You are of your father the devil and the desires of your father you want to do.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth. You see how Jesus instantly connects murder with deceit because there is no truth in him.

When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources for he is a liar and the father of it. Coming back to what is at the heart of murder hatred?

How does it exhibit what we say? Now, please listen to this. Somebody who is dealing with suicide, suicidal thoughts.

What are you saying to yourself? What are you saying to yourself that is affirming this and driving yourself to it?

Remember that Satan is as a lion roaming to and fro seeking whom he may devour and this destruction, the original destruction of the garden came by lies.

Came by lies, what things are being said. What are you saying about yourself?

If it's driving you towards suicide, it's not what God's saying about you.

It's not what God's saying. You are saying something that is false. So would we say that there's no neutrality in the conscience either?

Yes. Because we're talking about Romans one in the context of Romans one, we're suppressing the truth. That doesn't mean that there's nothing else there.

That means we're being filled up by something else. And it says later on that we swallowed the lie. So if we're suppressing the truth, we're swallowing lies.

If we're not suppressing the truth, we're getting rid of lies. We're dispelling those in our minds and preaching to ourselves true things instead of lies.

Right? Correct. And I think, and I've noticed, now we're gonna bring up another topic here, kind of fold it in because I think that very often

I think Christians may understand though they lament and they pray for families who's, there's a father, there's a mother, there's a child who's lost and obviously in rebellion against God and then they commit suicide and we all just grieve.

But then there's grieving when somebody who professes Christ, somebody who is in the church, who is a

Christian brother or sister and then they commit suicide, that person commits suicide.

And now on top of grief, we have all kinds of extra anxious questions, don't we? Oh yeah.

And when we're thinking about that, I just wanna bring in James three, the same thing that we talked about from John chapter eight.

But James chapter three, speaking about the tongue, right? Verse eight says, no man,

James chapter three verse eight, no man can tame the tongue. It is unruly, evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our

God and father and with it we curse men who have been made in the similitude of God, in the image of God.

Verse 10, out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, my brethren, these things ought not to be so.

So we have this situation where somebody who's blessing God and saying things about God's holiness and his righteousness, his immensity.

You know, what a glorious God, what a perfect word. The scriptures, we all know that Jesus Christ is the only savior. Saying all sorts of wonderful things about God.

And then yet, in the case of the self, cursing the self who has been made in the image of God.

Just unleashing all manner of vitriol against the self. And sometimes this is given a spiritual facade, a spiritual sheen to it.

Because after all, shouldn't we exalt God and show him as holy and good and perfect? And that just shows us how sinful we are and how lowly we are and how we can never measure up.

And then the person uses this model to completely curse the self while blessing

God. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. I'm telling you, from experience, when

I've had my bouts with suicidal thoughts, that is what's going on. Can't ever measure up, won't ever be able to succeed, can't do enough.

I mean, based on God's standards, look how holy he is, look how perfect he is. There's just no possible way

I can ever be of any kind of use. I'm always going to get it wrong. I'm always going to lead people astray, never going to measure up.

That's my brethren. So just a thought, I'm going to turn it over to David. But what is this blessing of God?

Are we not to make much of the Savior? Isn't he a good Savior? Isn't he bigger than I am?

There's a deception that I'm living with. There's a mind trap that I'm in. If I think my sin is so big that there's no hope.

It's the weight of being that image bearer, right? Of course, of course. But the resulting conclusion is not the ending of self.

It's the turning to the one who bears that image rightly. Not to think awfully low thoughts about myself, that's not holiness.

Thinking less of myself and more of God, that's holiness.

There's true godliness there. We should say about ourselves what the

Bible says about ourselves. Amen. We should agree with what God has already said about who we are.

That is neither debasing ourselves in a way that God has not done and that is not exalting ourselves in a way that the

Bible also speaks against. When we call ourselves image bearers, that's agreeing with what the

Bible says. There is a nobility there. There's honor there. And that's why sin is so horrible because of what it does to the image of God.

And we can say, we can agree with what the Bible says about how we are redeemed, about how we have the old heart taken away and a new heart has been put in its place, how we are a new creation.

And we can rejoice that, yes, this is what I once was, but thanks be to God, I am not.

So when we, you had said before that too much focus on the self eclipses

God and takes those thoughts that are already there that we all have had, and there are some that are more susceptible to it.

We talked about some of those people in history earlier, Charles Spurgeon, William Cooper.

There are some people that are a little more susceptible to that and too much focus on the self can exacerbate that and make those even more powerful.

But what is the solution? It's the same for all of us. It is to agree with what the

Bible says about who you are, your need for Christ, and then you agree with what the

Bible says, this is who I am now in Christ. And there is a triumph there.

There's a joy, there's a strength there. Walking by faith, not by sight.

I'm thinking back to your, what you were talking about, elevating of self. If we're thinking that our unrighteousness can outdo the righteousness of God, are we not elevating the creatureliness to a place that ought not to be as in, like in Romans one, in a different way.

It's kind of a backdoor way of doing it, but it pushes me back to segments of the podcast,

Cultish, who've gone over Crowley and the brag was the most wicked man on earth, right?

And to a certain degree, when you're having those thoughts, you're thinking you can out -wicked God's righteousness and kind of replace that and bring the creaturely up to where it ought not to be.

Yeah, where you're, and it can be, you're so in the throes of sin, there's just no way out.

The consequences and the circumstances because of my sin are things that I can't possibly live through or continue on.

There can be other thoughts of, this is just too overwhelming. I'm just never going to be able to make it through and so on.

But all of these things are an exaltation of the self over and against the glory of God who spoke everything into existence, gave us breath to breathe, said to the oceans, thus far no further, said to the mountains, here's where you are, how high you're going to be.

When we don't think enough of God, we tend to think way too much of our own sin and suffering.

You think of, I have two thoughts. One is we haven't seen the end yet. What are you doing turning off the movie in the middle?

Why would you do that? We've read the reviews. We've been promised a wonderful ending. See the whole thing through.

But the, you think about, see 1 John 3 talks about Cain murdering

Abel. This is an example of someone who does not love. Murder is an expression of hatred. In Hebrews 12, it speaks of the blood of Abel crying out from the ground.

We read about that also in Genesis chapter four, the blood of Abel crying out from the ground. What is the blood crying?

The blood is crying, is there any justice? Right, and how can these things be?

How can this possibly be allowed to continue? That's what the blood is crying from the ground.

This is very often the cry of the person who is contemplating suicide. How can this be?

How can this be right? How can this be allowed to continue on? There's a great cry of injustice coming from the heart, a sense that things are not right and they need to be set right, but I don't know how they possibly could be set right.

That is the same cry as the blood of Abel. But when we come to Hebrews chapter 12, if we come to Christ, what does it say?

Verse 22 says, but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly

Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God, the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.

It's a genuine cry. Abel's blood was a genuine cry. Justice, how can these things be?

How can this be settled and solved? A great cry from Abel, but the blood of Jesus speaks better things.

He says, here is justice. Here is satisfaction. Here are things made right when we look at the cross.

When we look at the cross of Jesus Christ, the lamb of God, who bore on the cross not only our transgressions, but also our sicknesses and also our sorrows.

Well, it makes me think of, you talked about what we say to ourselves, that true things are false things, right?

If you're speaking false to yourself. And then you amplify that in a culture that speaks nothing but false things.

And we read some statistics about suicide and it being mostly male or different things like that, but it's in both sexes.

And it's not a surprise because our culture says, woman, you're not worth anything unless you're climbing a corporate ladder.

Man, we have no use for you. You're toxic. You're not good in the workplace. You're not good at home. So there's no place for you.

Like it's just constant lies from anywhere you go. And then you have your conscience accusing you of sin.

And so for me, one of the encouragements is Philippians 4, 8, just like what you were saying about where does our hope lie?

What are we thinking? What are we saying? And if Philippians says this, finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

And that encompasses so much. There are beautiful things in the world that we could meditate on.

There are true things in the world. There are good things. And then on top of that, God's word and the blessing of salvation and the true things that he has said and that he has done and the bigness of his death on the cross to pay for our sins that we're struggling with, it's so much bigger than the sins that we're struggling with.

But we have to say them. We have to preach them to ourselves. Chris, you had talked about that this culture is filled with lies.

And you had talked about how they tell women one thing, that they're only worthwhile if you fill the masculine role.

And then you're not really worthwhile at home or anywhere. And I thought immediately, unless they're becoming women, then they're very valuable.

Still killing yourself, yeah. It is. It is. The major push that I hear for what they call gender -affirming care for young transgender kids is if you don't give them the care, this medical care, this transition, this surgery and hormones that they need, they'll kill themselves.

So we have to keep telling them the lies so that they don't kill themselves. Their self -identity is so fragile that if they don't have the constant reinforcement from all of you and all society and all of media and government and everyone in their school and everyone on the book of face or whatever social media is current now, then they're gonna kill themselves.

If your self -identity is that fragile, the problem isn't with everybody else. But they tell us we have to keep giving them the lie that we all know is a lie.

But if we don't, if we don't keep lying to them, then they will kill themselves. And what we've just said is that, no, you call it out.

You call sin, sin. You call it what it is. And then you feast on truth, who you are as a creation of God, who you are as an image -bearer, and who you are in Christ and who

Christ makes you when you are united to him. There's your solution.

Not more surgery or hormones or whatever other lie you wanna feed into them.

Because I can think of someone right now who was the face of the transgender movement in a particular airline.

And they had not just everybody telling them how great they were, but they had the entire company telling them how great they were.

They still killed themselves. It's tragic. It's horrible. Because they fed them lies.

And that whole line of argumentation, it just is a good example of the way in which

Jesus identifies the devil as a murderer slash liar. These things go together because the whole approach of helping people down that path of transitioning, as they call it, is actually helping them step -by -step kill themselves.

When you're cutting parts of yourself off and taking body -destroying substances, those are steps towards suicide.

And it is in concert with a whole brainwashing approach of saying, first of all, the denial of God is just assumed, but the utter rejection of who

God made you to be. So if I'm a man, I'm transitioning to a woman, I'm killing myself by saying,

I'm not a man, I'm gonna become a woman. I'm gonna cut parts off. I'm going to ingest and put horrible drugs into my body.

These are all the steps to suicide. And by helping people down that path and saying, if we don't do this, they're gonna commit suicide.

No, you're actually helping them. You're actually helping them. Yeah, so that makes me think of a couple of things.

We talked at the beginning about people crying out for help or feeling like they can't talk to anybody.

A lot of the people who go through transitioning, when they recount it, so they'll say doctors will tell the parents, would you rather have a dead child or a transition child?

Oh my goodness. So they're pushing the suicide. But then the people who come out of that and detransition, they said,

I needed guidance. I was confused about puberty. My body was changing. I needed guidance and you told me a lie.

So there's that. And then also there's been studies done on this because I've heard this lie. People close to me will say, well, you can't talk about it because they'll commit suicide.

If they're homosexual, they're transitioned or whatever. You can't talk about it because it'll make them suicidal if you don't accept.

They did a study in one of the countries, it was either Sweden or Norway, where one of the most affirming countries that there is in the suicide rate stay the same because it's not that affirmation.

They can't accept themselves because it's a lie. There's a reality you can't escape.

Isn't it interesting too how we've had medically assisted suicide set up conveniently before all this happened.

We shoved them right into a billion dollar business of transitioning and right into another billion dollar business of self -assisted suicide after that.

I mean, the incentive structure there for everybody in the medical, in quotations, medical field on this are to get ever deepening and ever worsening levels of lies.

You see these people. You see the evil of materialism when everything is fungible. Yeah, yeah.

Humans can be fungible and turned into money. You know, that's interesting, the fungibility of gender or the social construct that they like to talk about, but yet we still see people who are not okay with being hypocrites in their mind.

Not that I'm promoting transgender or transitioning, but these people at least are recognizing that there is something external that demonstrates the internal truth that they're trying to escape.

It's not just a social construct. You can't have just a social construct and these people are transitioning in the same realm.

They're mutually exclusive. People are very prone to, in denial of God, misinterpret the systemic oppression against their sinful ways as, oh, it's the state, oh, it's the culture, oh, it's this or that.

No, the reason why you can't sin and sin freely and do whatever you want, however you want it and feel perfectly fine about it is because you're made in God's image.

And if you have any degree of check in your spirit and frustration in your life that you can't just keep on going on and sin, then you gotta get down on both knees and thank

God that he is frustrating you in your self -destruction. Amen.

Well, unless anybody has anything to add, I think we've about wrapped that up and we can move on to what we are going to recommend for content like we usually do, but we're gonna give you guys a preview or at least a warning that at the end of every month, hopefully starting in September, we will have a separate segment and we haven't really nailed down a name yet, but you'll know it when you hear it, where we will be, each person will pick a book and they'll be given a month to themselves where they can present their book or content that they have consumed.

The rest of the round table gets to interrogate or prod and poke or whatever you might wanna call it, cross -examine, if you've already read the book as well, about this book, why it might be edifying, why it might be something to avoid for other readers, because I think there are books out there we can all agree that for some readers, thumbs up, for others, hold on, and we can kind of work through these and recommend them as we go along.

But we'll be doing that once a month and we'll let everybody give a heads up to who's up that week and what the book might be, hopefully ahead of time, that way if you wanna preview it yourself or if you wanna come into it cold, that's up to you too.

But just letting you know that's coming in the next few months. But Michael, what would you like to recommend for content this week?

The Attack of the Hideous Mutant Snowmen by Bill Watterson. Calvin and Hobbes.

No. I hope that's something we'll be reviewing. Yes, that'll be my book for the month.

My recommendation is Spurgeon on the Christian Life, Alive in Christ, is the title by Michael Reeves.

It is not so much a classic biography, it does have a biographical sketch of Spurgeon's life, obviously, but kind of goes through the various topics on the

Christian life, how Spurgeon lived, how he acted, what he said, how he preached and taught.

And it was extremely edifying from beginning to end and was very thought -provoking, especially on matters of prayer.

So it's part of a series of smaller sketches that deal with the theology of Mart Lloyd -Jones or other

Christian leaders in the past, but this one was on Spurgeon. By Michael Reeves, I don't think

I've read a lot from him before, but this was an excellent read. Chris, what about you?

So I recently listened to a lecture series. I was gonna say college, but it's actually a high school class.

George Grant did a lectures on modernity and he was talking about the

French Revolution and I didn't realize how much was tied up and there's things that lead into the

French Revolution and kind of it's a godless revolution compared to what our war for independence was.

It was really interesting to hear him talk about different figures from history and how much of that philosophy has carried over into our country, how we started and what we kind of look like now, how that philosophy still seems to be continuing.

So that's George Grant lectures on modernity, the French Revolution. All right,

Andrew? Throughout the summer when I had time to think about some things, I started watching a series by some well -known

Church of Christ podcast on YouTube that they were having a debate with a gentleman who was a

Baptist about what is baptism, which you know what, you wanna dig deep into what you believe, encounter something that goes against it that they also claim to be biblical.

So it was a very important time this summer that I got to meet with my elder and discuss some questions

I had about the ramifications of what it means to be someone who's

Church of Christ, how it differs from Baptistic understandings of what believer's baptism is.

So we got to talk about that, but he also supplied me with a great book called Believer's Baptism. It's by Schreiner and Wright.

I would recommend that. Now, it's not about Baptist theology versus Church of Christ theology.

It's about believer's baptism, which is exactly how you should approach it. It's not just about one topic.

It's the totality of what believer's baptism is, and so been very appreciative to be reading that.

That's a collection of essays, isn't it? It is. There's an essay in there by Stephen Wellam, which is worth the price of the whole book.

David, how about you? I had already decided that this was the book that I was going to be bringing tonight.

So, well, this is it. It's by Kevin DeYoung, Do Not Be True to Yourself.

And I was thinking about that title as we were going through our discussion.

This book is basically a series of speeches initially given to high school students as they were graduating.

It is incredibly important to prepare your teens as they become young adults and go out into the world, especially as they go off to college if that's where they're going.

It is to give them a Christ -centered worldview, a focus on Him, not

Frozen, Follow Your Heart, not Disney. It is a short read, but it's one that I think that you should take a little bit of time with.

Read it yourself, and if it's right for you and your family, maybe some of you can hand to your teen as they exit your home.

And if I can say one more thing about the topic that we just discussed, yeah, you don't focus on yourself, you focus on Christ.

Agree with what the Bible says about who you are, who you were, and who you are now. And if anyone is struggling, if anybody knows anyone who's struggling, our church, our elders, our deacons, really,

I think anybody in our congregation would be willing to talk to you. But I promise you, they're gonna be pointing you towards Christ.

They're not gonna be asking you to be more true to yourself. Amen. Well, again, on sort of the same topic,

JC Ryle wrote Thoughts for Young Men, and some of the statistics that we looked at before we started, we noticed suicide was particularly high in young men, and we also know that destructive behavior is particularly high in young men in our current era.

And a lot of that can sometimes be due to joining the wrong gang. I like to think that men are born gang members.

It's just whether you're with the righteous or the wicked gang, because right here, right now, I consider you all gang members.

I don't know who the leader is yet, we'll have to fight that out, but we are all a part of the same gang here. And Ryle actually goes in deep with that, putting yourself underneath spiritual authorities in your life and joining the right gang, because in Liverpool, where he was at, there was rampant gang activity, especially it being a highly immigrant city from all three

Gaelic countries. They would gang up and be problems throughout the city, and he took a lot of young men under his wing, and it is a very pastoral book.

It's very short, very to the point, and he tells you where you are to find your gang, beginning with Jesus and those who follow him.

And I recommend that for any young men struggling with purpose, struggling with direction, not that you are going to be given your path, but he gives you principles to follow so that you may find them in your walk with Christ.

I know we were thankful earlier in the episode, but I don't think we can get enough thankfulness, so what are we thankful for this week,

Michael? I'm thankful for the book of Philippians. Studying the stuffing out of Philippians right now for our zoning school, and I came across a quote from Matthew Henry.

He says, whatever we have the comfort of, God must have the glory of. And that's been rattling around in my brain, so thankful for that.

Amen, Chris? I am thankful for God's clarity.

When you ask for it, when you ask for wisdom, you ask for guidance, and he gives it.

It's a wonderful thing. Grateful for the job that I have and clarity there, you know, day in and day out, working, providing for family.

Sometimes you're like, what am I doing, you know? And you're like, well, I've got children and grandchildren.

I want to give an inheritance too. I got to make some money, but money's not everything. So grateful for God's wisdom from his word.

And not everything in an inheritance is money. That's true. Godliness with contentment is great gain.

It's great gain. I'm thankful to God for some series of events. My mother passed away in September of 2020.

My daughter was born in September of 2021.

In 2022 in September, I was diagnosed with appendicitis and spent a couple days in the hospital, not having contact with many people.

My daughter's turning two. That time, I missed her birthday. I am thankful to God that he has preserved me to this point to be able to celebrate with my family the birth of my daughter.

My seven year gap between my middle, what we thought was going to be our last child, and now the blessing that God has given us another, seven years in between that.

So life is beautiful, it's precious, and thank God for it. Amen, David.

I am thankful for my high school crew. One of them texted me on Sunday and said,

Dave, oh, we're sorry, we missed your birthday. And it's like, it's okay, you guys are busy.

It's all right, thanks for the text, no problem. We have this group text that goes on, and these are some of these guys

I've known since first grade, and all of them are godly husbands and fathers, and they are examples to me.

They wanted to go out, and these guys are executives. I mean, they're very important people.

I'm the blue collar one of the bunch, but it's fun to be with these guys because you would never know how successful they are, and they're just good men.

And I am thankful for their friendship, I'm thankful for their example. And we went out and had a meal, and it was just the five of us around.

And I'm thankful to God that they were good examples to me in junior high and high school, and they planted some seeds that took a while to grow to fruition.

But I am thankful that God used them in my life, and I'm thankful that despite the distance, and time, and years, and changes in family and jobs, that we have a friendship that's built on something that is eternal, and we'll always have it.

Amen. Again, I'm thankful for the generosity of the church. Heather and I have gone through a weird situation over the past couple of weeks, and the church has been extremely generous to us in every way you could imagine.

And it just shows me their loving heart for the brethren, and we're overwhelmed by that because we have not known it in such a way before.

And so when you get that, it's different. The world seems different now. Where's this unity in all the churches before?

I mean, you kind of have that mindset, but it's like, that's not how you need to think about it. But just being thankful for when you have it now is where we've come to, and just an amazement of God's mercy upon us, and protection, and provision, in situations where it's completely out of our control, and we don't know how to even yet process it, how to take it in.

So we're thankful for His generosity through His saints, and we hope that all the fruit is born here, and it is abundant, and it is something we can look back on and point at, and be joyous with one another about how generous

He has been through His saints. And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners, and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read.