Bereavement II: Lessons on Grief | Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome to another episode of the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Matthew Robinson, director of Mediagratiae, and I'm here again this week with Dr. John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church New Albany here in New Albany, Mississippi, and the author and teacher of the Behold Your God study series from Mediagratiae.

We've been, the last episode and this one, we've been talking about the issue of bereavement, something that no person will be free from having to deal with and certainly no Christian. And though we are not free from it as believers, we do deal with it in a different way, a way that the world doesn't really understand.

And so we, as we often do on our podcast, have been getting some help from believers from the past, this time with Andrew Benar. And I have to tell you, you can't start at this podcast. You have to go back and listen to the one previous because you're jumping into the middle of a story.

So just as a, by way of a reminder, John, will you bring us up to speed, remind us who Andrew Benar is and what we're talking about?

Andrew Benar is a pastor in Scotland in the 19th century and really his labors, you know, cover more than half that century. He's well known as an author, friend and author of Robert Murray McShane's Memoirs and Remains.

And what we've been looking at is this little book that Banner puts out, The Diary and Life of Andrew Benar. And so we've been looking at journal entries in 1864 when right after the birth of a daughter, a couple of weeks after that, a real blow hits the family.

Unexpectedly, the mom takes a terrible turn for the worse in her health and passes away. And Benar walks us through in his journal, the waves of grief that flow over him as an individual and as a dad looking at the little kids who now don't have an earthly mom.

And these waves are then counteracted by Benar explaining exactly how and what passages God used to comfort him. And so we've been looking at God really in his faithfulness as the comforter of his people.

And in doing so, we've been reading just little excerpts from the book. But we would commend the book to you, as John said, published by the Banner of Truth. And we will link to it in the show notes. But let's jump right back into these journal entries.

God’s Greatness and Tender Care in Grief

This is now five weeks after this unexpected and traumatic death, the death of Andrew Benar's wife. And he writes on Friday, November the 18th, I have been thinking how one riding toward a city passes along through vineyards with all their clusters, few of which he can reach after all, be on one side.

This is the believer's way through earth at its very best, but mine now is through the desert. I have been thinking too of the greatness of God. It is because he is so very great that he can and does attend to each one's smallest care and sorrow.

Each one's soul is to him as much as a world, and he can bend down with the same love and loftiness of sympathy on that one as if that one were all. The very greatness of the ocean enables it to fill to the full every creek and bay.

It is thus that my littleness helps to set forth God's exceeding greatness and his sympathy in my sorrow and his marking every tear all sets forth the immensity of his grace and compassion. Therefore, I can plead for thy name's sake, Lord, deal bountifully with thy servant.

What an extraordinary entry there. You know, if we slow down and look at it, describing life in this world as, you know, heading into a city and you're going through the countryside and there are vineyards you see on each side, but you can't reach them.

You can't stop and you can't pick the fruit. You know, life can feel that way. At best, there seem to be happinesses that elude us. And, you know, this is not heaven for the believer. But then he says that, but his life at this point is not like that.

It's not like seeing happinesses all around you. You can't quite get all them. It's a desert. And yet he describes God at that point. The infinite greatness of God does not prevent him from being aware of the smallest of us and of our problems.

But like the ocean that fills every little ravine and stream with its waters, you know, God's infinite fullness pours over into the smallness of his people. And he can stoop down and care for every aspect of our life.

And yet, as we mentioned in some detail in our last episode, he's not just walking, you know, on these dusty streets two inches above the ground with his head, you know, constantly thinking of the goodness of God.

That is his great and perhaps his only comfort. But he is still hit with these waves, sometimes terrible waves of grief. And he experiences one of those on her birthday that he writes about. Yeah, let me read that.

Saturday, December 10th. Days pass on. Nothing seems to me the same as it was. Not a night, but I either dream of dear Isabella or think of her the moment I awake. This day was her birthday. She has now been two months in glory and has been looking back to the 14th of October as her grand birthday into the better world.

So joy for her, but a continual wound in his own soul. Now, I want us to read another entry before we leave that year, and it's the 31st of December. So the last day of the year, he takes time to just get alone and kind of take stock of the year spiritually.

And of course, being the year that he lost his wife, it's pretty poignant. And he writes this. It's a prayer at the end of his entry. Pardon my neglects, my insensibility to warnings, to kindnesses, to privileges, to exceeding great mercies in the family for 16 years.

Alas, how my ingratitude rises up, how my selfishness, self-enjoyment, self-complacence appear to me. Many, many are my regrets. I did so little for her daily difficulties. I prayed so little for her.

I helped her so little. I see a thousand things to be mourned over. And at this moment, my heart is selfish, unbelieving, unloving, unthankful. We'll just stop right there for a second. Can a believer talk that way?

You know, if you were to read this, I can imagine a church member, if that was the end of the entry, saying, is that guy even a Christian? Which I think is a very silly question because the answer is yes.

Yes, a believer can talk this way. But a believer goes on, and his very next line, he pleads with God. Awake, awake, arm of the Lord. Fill me with desire for souls and delight in thy work and in thy fellowship.

And oh, my soul, bless the comforter for all he has done for me this year. What an ending to that kind of a year. Bless my soul, who? The comforter. God, yes, who has done for me all this this year.

Something that you notice when you do experience great tragedy in your life is though everything has changed for you, and even if there's an initial outpouring of kindness from others, you soon realize that for everyone else, life goes on to be fairly normal.

Benar notices this, and amazingly, instead of being bitter and self-focused, he's grateful. And he writes this on Saturday the 14th. How little impression our sorrow makes upon other men has often struck me so that it is peculiarly our Father's discipline for us personally.

Instead of thinking this sad, let me rather be pleased and glad that my Father takes this special, peculiar interest in me by myself. And he goes on to write, Thy will be done, my Lord and Savior. Blessed, blessed comforter, thy will be done.

Father, sovereign Father, thy holy will be done. Thy time is best.

The Scriptures as the Christian’s Comfort in Bereavement

Yeah, that's a fitting summary of his determination to trust the Lord. One of the wonderful things about the journal is that it just keeps going, you know, for many years. And though he is, you know, now without a wife, he's not without a comforter, and his work as a minister continues.

In March of that year, on the 11th, he mentions being very busy preaching in a neighboring town. And what has happened is that there has been an extraordinary work of God in a local church there, what we would consider a revival, you know, a real restoring of Christianity.

And he is busy now pouring his life into the work there to help out a brother minister. And he says he's reading the book of Job at this time, and he notes that he wants to serve the Lord the rest of his life as readily, as eagerly, even in times of sorrow, as he once did, and just times of uninterrupted joy.

So we've read these journal entries, just a few from the greater work that's included there in the book. And we see things that are common to all of humanity, these great waves of grief that come, and they come in cycles.

And we see some things that only the believer know about. What are some things that we can finish this part of the podcast by thinking about lessons that we as believers can gather from Benar's journal entries?

Well, I think one of them that we pointed out that we want to really hammer home is that it is primarily through the means of the Scriptures that God meets and comforts his children. You know, we can all remember trying to bring comfort to a person who's just lost someone, and you're at the funeral home, and you don't know what to say.

What could you say at a moment like that? And so you want to be genuine, and you want to express love, but you know that no single thing you say is going to fix anything. Or you might be a person who has lost someone, and you remember being on the receiving end and friends laboring to say something, and you feel for them because you know they're wanting to do something, and they feel their inadequacy.

For the believer, the only solid, unshiftable rock, the only constant source of true comfort is the Scriptures, and God taking those and applying those to us time again. Whether it's looking at Benar in his daily Bible readings on the day that his wife dies, and he's reading his Bible that morning and has no idea that this is coming, and God gives him a verse that is peculiarly suited to that coming blow, or whether it's family worship with the children following that, where passage after passage speaks of the hope to come, or whether it's months, years later, we see him still soaking in the Scripture and finding God to be everything that he promised to be.

Yeah, God has not left us ignorant to be surprised by the kinds of trials that come into the life of the believer in this fallen world. He's told us as much in His Word, and He's not left us ignorant of what is to come.

Where is all this going? Is it all just kind of, you know, as the worldly proverb says, hey, it's the circle of life, you know, this is just natural and fine. And that's hogwash. Death was never meant to be part of this world.

And now that it is, there's a reason that we feel, even as believers, that it's wrong and terribly wrong. And is it all just a great chaotic swirling down into the Netherlands? No, it's not. It is all of time and all of the actions that take place in time under God's sovereign hand are all leading to a great point.

And God's not left us ignorant of that. The Holy Spirit inspired 1 Thessalonians 4, and beginning there in verse 13, we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest of those who have no hope.

And He goes on to describe in a fair amount of detail. This is our great hope. And then at the end of that passage, that little section of the passage in verse 18, He says, under the inspiration of the Spirit, therefore comfort one another with these words.

And so we have to go back to the Scriptures time and time again. God in His kindness has given us this great comforting gift.

The Attributes of God and the Hope of Glorification

Yeah, I think another lesson attached immediately to that is that the things in Scripture which seem to comfort Bernard so much, one of them was the descriptions of God Himself. So the attributes of God was a category that he found comfort in, the infinitude of God, the wisdom of God, the love of God.

And it wasn't that that was an effortless thing, because we've read in our previous podcast that there were times where he said, I struggled with hard thoughts toward God that He didn't love me. You know, why would He let this kind of blow come to me if He loved me?

Why would He take a wife away from me or a mother from the children if He loved us? So he struggled with that but came out on the right side. No, you know, God is love. So the attributes of God. But another thing that he repeatedly talks about, and which you've kind of pointed to there, is that God has made it clear the glorification of the believer, the faithfulness in that God will complete the salvation He's begun and the ending will be better than the beginning.

And even though it's beyond description, it doesn't mean that He doesn't give us enough to live on now. And many of you probably don't know that Matt and Megan lost a son years ago while we were working on the first Behold Your God.

And such a terrible blow. And all the believers around Matt and Megan in the church, you know, wanting to comfort them and watching how God worked in their life. And I remember, Matt, that at that time, we, a group of guys, we were just doing a guy's Bible study kind of thing, working through John Murray's book, Redemption Accomplished and Applied.

And I remember you really grabbing hold of and teaching a couple times in the church in a small group kind of a thing, teaching on the doctrine of glorification. Because really, most of us I think at that time thought of glorification as a theological category, like, oh, yeah, so in time stuff, you know, so it's all going to be finished.

Don't worry. And that was the end of it. But you really, you know, in that dark valley, we watched you grab hold of those passages and live on them yourself and then turn and, you know, share with your brothers.

So like Benar, we have to really grab hold of the truths of Scripture. But it is the truth of what's coming that is one of the particularly solid comforting facts.

Grief, Self-Examination, and Not Wasting Sorrow

Yeah, I think that we have to take away from this to some comfort that grief is real, that the Christian, as you've already said, feels it maybe more deeply than even others. That's not to take away from the non-Christian who feels grief at their bereavement, their loss.

It is, as you said, partially because the Christian has a tender heart, but there's a particular barb on the hook that the enemy wants to thrust into our hearts. And that is that when the character and the goodness of our God is in question, and it will come in question, there's no way for you to not ask these questions.

I mean, if you can put two and two together, God is sovereign, right? And God causes all things, and so God caused this. And so how can God be good and allow bad things to happen? And those are things that you have to wrestle with.

And those are things that will perhaps be brought to you by people who you love, who don't know the Lord. And there's a special barb in that hook because you love God, and you love His character. And to have His character called into question by your own heart, and by those that don't know Him, there's a particular grief in that.

You long to see the Lord's name glorified and to be known and loved. And so those are things that will come, and those are things that will take a life of grace and a life of effort to lay hold of what's real.

And that's particular to the believer who goes through these things.

You know, we've had a number of folks in the church here who have lost spouses in the last years. And many of them, particularly thinking of the ladies, feel that perhaps they haven't honored the Lord when they pass through those dark times.

And we who watch them feel very differently. And it's hard to convince a person, you know. When you're the person that wakes up and looks in the mirror and sees all the imperfections of your devotion, all the doubts that rise up and seem like mountains, and your faith looks like the little anthill, you know, you still say good things about God, like the truth, like, no, He's perfect.

But I've done such a terrible job. I passed through this valley in such a faltering way. I've stumbled so often. I've just broke down and wanted to quit and, you know, and barely gotten back up. And so how can I be a picture of Christ?

Oftentimes, we see people that the believer, because they love the Lord, and they go through this difficult time, they often say to themselves, well, the only good that I can see in this on the earthly level is that I can bring honor to God in the way that I trust Him, which is a good thing.

But then they look at the way they perform, and they feel it's so imperfect that they blew it. And that's a pretty hard way to put on yourself. You know, it's kind of like this. The only good in all of this is I can honor God.

I failed to honor God. This terrible loss has been for nothing. I've wasted it all. And I think that that is the lie of the enemy. What we've seen is, and what we try to encourage those that go through these times, what we've seen is this, that believers do stumble.

As Bernard's diary shows, doubting God, not sleeping at night. I mean, you know, you could just fill it in. He's British, so he understates everything. You know, if we were Americans, it would be a lot longer.

But what we're looking for in a person that suffers loss is not some robotic super person that lives above every sorrow. We're looking to see a real person almost drowned at times, almost crushed against the rocks of sorrow and doubts and lies that they're hearing.

And yet, in spite of all their human weakness, they keep clinging to God because they are being held. So they're holding, but they're held holding. And what we're looking at is the work of God, and it's being viewed through a very frail life.

We're not wanting to see Superman. We're wanting to see a real person. And that is such a picture of God's faithfulness. And it really is a thing that honors Him. One other thing that I think that we don't want to miss here is that Bernard does take this opportunity of sorrow to do some self-examination.

He doesn't want to waste his sorrow. And that's easy to say when we're not in the midst of it. You know, I think if I were in the midst of it, I would just say, I don't want to waste it, but I would like to live through it.

You know, I don't know that I'm going to make it. But not wasting our sorrow. How can a Christian face not just bereavement, but anything? I remember when reading an article, John Piper, when he found out he had cancer.

Don't waste your cancer. That sounds flippant. But it was a man that had cancer that wrote it. And some really helpful things there. How do we not waste our sorrow? Well, a couple of things that Bernard did.

One was self-examination. He took the time to look at his own life. Now, he didn't do it this way. I've lost a loved one because I haven't been a very good Christian and God's punishing me. So that's one thing.

If you believe that lie, then it's like it's having the wound is there for everyone. But it's like letting dirt get in and it's an infected wound and it won't heal. So we cannot let the poison of the liar get in the wound.

The wound is right and normal because we love and we're woundable. But we want to guard against the lie. So that's not what we're talking about. But when there is a loss and we're faced with the shortness of this life, it's a good time to stop and take stock of our own life.

Am I living in light of eternity? Or have I just gotten caught up with the busyness, the tyranny of the urgent and the things that, you know, the many kindnesses and small pleasures that God gives us here.

Have these things become captivating to me? Have I forgotten the great realities because of other things? So looking at the immortality of the soul and the shortness of life is a good time to take stock.

Another thing I think we could look at is devotion. He prays more than once that the blow that he has suffered would not allow his heart to drift from God, but actually draw him nearer to God. And so certainly we can see that God being the one unchanging treasure of the Christian, the one thing that can never be taken from us.

We want to invest all our soul's desires in Him. And then one more thing I've noted as we've been reading through this in the podcast, is a determination to turn outward. So very easy to turn inward and think only of myself and my loss.

But as grief is dealt with over time, we do want to turn our thoughts outward. How can we live in such a way, not only to devote ourselves wholeheartedly to Him, but also that we would be determined to do soul's good around us.

And that can be immediately as people come to us, you know, at a funeral. And we with transparency and brokenness, we say, yes, it is a terrible blow. Christ will have to pour in those comforts. Or whether it's in the days and weeks and months to come when the waves are going back and forth, or the years to come when the torrent of sorrow has, like Bernard said, settled into a calm stream, yet still there's that loss.

Will we continue to live for someone, you know, other than us?

Turning Outward in Grief and Holding Fast to Christ

One of the things we love most about going to conferences is interacting with people who have gone through our studies or seen the films and hearing the way that they've influenced their families, their small groups, or their churches.

Eventually, we started asking if they would let us record those stories so that we could share them with you. Scott and Paul took their church through Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically, last year.

And they're currently taking the church through Behold Your God, The Weight of Majesty.

I thought the first one was wonderful from the perspective of all the church history. It was a really neat element that added to that I had not been exposed to in other Bible studies. Hearing about the great kind of fathers of the faith and learning about them and then applying that to the studies of God and how they emphasized who God was.

You just don't hear that. We hadn't heard that in the churches we'd been attending.

It just tells us about and helps us with understanding God biblically. And really got into understanding, have a high view of God and a low view of self, which is usually the reverse of what we have. It talks about really the understanding, well, what does God say about evangelism?

What does God say about worship? How does God want to be worshipped? Is it about us or is it about God? What's the most important? And so there's just so many great things that we learned and really want to share with others.

And this is a great mechanism for doing so. For more information about Behold Your God, The Weight of Majesty, visit TheMeansOfGrace .org. Well, in closing, I'll remind you of what Charles Spurgeon, one of his mottos was.

When we were at Spurgeon College filming for the first Behold Your God study, there's a stained glass window that's put in there of a fist holding a cross. And underneath in a banner is the Latin. And this is probably not how it's pronounced, but because Ian Hamilton isn't here to pronounce it properly for us.

Et teneo et tenor. I hold and I am held. And if you have gone through this, if you're currently going through this, one day if you do go through this, we've spoken a lot about these waves, these terrible waves of grief where you feel that you will surely die.

Not a good time to sort of have your picture made and broadcast out as a picture of one who represents Christ. You feel as though you will die. When that time comes, you must hold. You are one who holds to Christ.

You empty your hands of all pretense and all self-righteousness and all any ideas of you being anything. And you hold to Christ with everything that you have. And there's an old painting. It's actually very popular in traditional sailor tattoo culture of the Rock of Ages where the waves are coming and they're crashing over this stranded woman and she's holding on to this rock.

And it's all that she can do to keep the waves from going. And so in my mind, I think of that image. I hold. But then when that wave recedes and it comes back and you see what you've been actually holding, the rock that you felt you were holding on to with all your strength is really just a finger, if you will, of the Lord Himself.

And all the while, you've been safely there in His hand. I am held. And that is the Christian life. That's the Christian life whether or not you're going through these terrible times of bereavement, but you are certainly aware of it when you are.

So let me encourage you to hold and let me encourage you to remember that you are held. Thanks for listening to the Behold Your God podcast. All the scripture passages and resources we mentioned in the podcast are available in this week's show notes at mediagratia .org slash podcast.

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