Have You Not Read S3:E1 | Suicide

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Thank you.

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.

Thanksgiving for the Summer Break and God’s Faithfulness

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 I'm just very grateful for that.

Amen. Andrew?

It's amazing. We all obviously 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 the 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, when 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. A 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 want to be there. Some people go through the motions and come to church on Sundays, but the people that come on Wednesdays really want to 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. 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 in 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 would just, 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. And 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 were 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, you know, 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, with he and his wife were not getting better. I think that 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. You know, 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.

Suicide, Sin, and the Need to Bring It Into the Light

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's 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, right? 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 whom 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.

Romans 1, Suppressing Truth, and the Consequences of a Debased Mind

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. So 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, and 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, 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, and 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 know, it's, you say, oh, you know, 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.

Yes, the wrath of God, we see, for those who are suppressing the truth on 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.

Yeah.

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.

Yeah, 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 the thoughts of suicide is 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.

Know your ways to those which destroys kings. It is not for kings, O Lameal. 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? Like, here's 12 more rules for life. More than the original 12, right? Like, we're talking about psychoanalysis. I figured we'd have to throw him in there at some point, but I mean, 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.

Yeah, I thought about Jordan Peterson the other day preaching through Acts. And I got to Peter visiting Lyda, 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, clean your room. But if you've ever heard him, 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.