The Last Enemy

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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April 2, 2017

Dr. Wittmer; Psalm 90:1-12 The Last Enemy

00:20: You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. Welcome everybody.
00:27: How's everybody doing today? Everybody good? Mark? Yeah, a lot of thumbs up.
00:32: All right, everybody. So we had a little smaller crowd today. We've got spring break going on and everything. I guess the
00:40: A crew is gone. You know, a lot of people are in Uganda. And so, for whatever reason, they asked me to do the introduction.
00:49: So I'd like to just blanket this entire Sunday with an apology for all of the time that you're going to have to deal with me up here saying things that are supposed to be coherent.
01:00: Yeah, no problem, man. I just, you know, just wanted to do that. So, but no, okay, so on a serious note, so I'm Dave, Dave Bunt, and I run the worship and the music, if you haven't met me before.
01:12: So I want to just welcome you guys to Recast Church. It's good to have you guys all here. We have got a guest speaker today in Don's absence, and it's
01:21: Dr. Michael Whitmer, and he is from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. He actually taught
01:27: Don when Don was in seminary and was Don's favorite professor. Don speaks extremely highly of him.
01:34: I was able to hear Don talk him up about six years ago, six, seven years ago,
01:40: I think. And then he actually came and spoke on a series that I think was called Heaven is a
01:46: Place on Earth, and it was about, it was a series based on a book that he actually wrote.
01:51: And I thought it was phenomenal, and he's actually written a couple books. One of them is Heaven is a
01:57: Place on Earth, and I think it's a phenomenal, phenomenal book. It blew me away. I loved it, and I want to just actually recommend it a little bit to you guys.
02:04: And then he actually has a book that has come out since that he's written that's kind of a next step, really kind of reconciling the concepts of that book with the rest of how to really kind of put your life together from the ideas of the life to come with how to live your life now, and that is called
02:22: Becoming Worldly Saints. Is that correct? Awesome. And so I actually want to just suggest that to you guys just kind of casually because it's amazing, and I think you'll get a chance to connect with him more because I'm sure he'll be back at some point.
02:33: He's got a wife and three kids, and he wanted to let me know, which I'm excited about art.
02:39: You're gonna be excited about this. He was born in Ohio. He's lived in Ohio, right? And I was too, so he's living from Ohio, so I think that kind of got that right anyway.
02:46: Anyway, so I want to welcome up Dr. Whitmer to give his introduction on his sermon today.
02:54: I'm glad to be here this morning. I've been fighting sinus drainage for the last week, so my voice,
03:00: I hope it holds out. We got mics, so we're fine. Ben Franklin said there are two things that are certain about life, right?
03:08: Remember what they are? Two things? Death and taxes. Your taxes are coming up in two weeks, right?
03:14: Today we're going to talk about death. I hate this topic. This is awful.
03:21: There's nothing about this I like, but we have, here's our goal for today. We want to follow scripture's lead, and we want to be honest about death, right?
03:30: Praise God that when someone who knows Jesus dies, praise
03:35: God their soul goes to heaven. You can't put a price on that comfort, right? Praise God for that.
03:42: But the death itself still stinks, right? When we say we wouldn't wish them back, yeah we would, right?
03:52: We cry, we weep, we mourn, we miss them. So death is not actually their graduation into glory.
04:02: Death actually is the reason Jesus came. So we want to be honest about death so we can make much of Christ, but then we want to talk about the hope we have in Christ.
04:12: So we're going for honesty this morning and hope. And the goal is that when we leave here, you realize this is why
04:18: I'm a Christian. This is why I've given my life to Christ. And you can live now because you know the one who's conquered death.
04:27: So I want to read Psalm 90 to show you how honest scripture is about this problem.
04:35: Psalm 90, a Psalm of Moses from a long time ago. We'll read the first 12 verses.
04:44: Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world.
04:54: From everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You turn people back to dust saying, return to dust you mortals.
05:04: A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by or like a watch in the night.
05:10: Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death. They're like the new grass of the morning.
05:17: In the morning it springs up new, but by evening it's dry and withered. We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation.
05:26: You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. All our days pass away under your wrath.
05:36: We finish our years with a moan. Our days may come to 70 years or 80 if our strength endures.
05:43: Yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass and we fly away.
05:50: If only we knew the power of your anger. Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due.
05:57: Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
06:06: Father, thank you for your honesty. Thank you that you don't sugarcoat the problems in our lives.
06:15: You don't paper over our sin. You don't sugarcoat death or hell. You're honest about who we are, what we've done and where we're headed.
06:25: But thank you for Jesus and the hope we have. If there's anyone here this morning who doesn't know that they know your son, may your spirit using your word today disturb them, rock them, break their will and bring them to yourself.
06:46: And for those of us who do know Jesus, I pray that from having gathered together and worshiping with each other and talking with each other and hearing from your word that we might leave here excited, exhilarated even, that we we know you and we know your son who is life.
07:08: That we have everlasting life and that's already begun. Thank you for the gospel.
07:16: Thank you for Jesus. Please receive our prayers now as we sing them in his name.
07:22: Amen. I'm glad to be back with you again. I think I was,
07:28: I came and spoke soon after recast started in the old like a strip mall.
07:34: So it's been a while. I'm following you on Facebook and seeing the the concrete being poured in January I think which is pretty remarkable.
07:42: So pray with you that it all gets built by the time you have to get out of here. It'd be pretty important.
07:49: Of course I've known Don and Linda for some time and just respect them and know that Don, man of integrity who loves
07:56: Jesus and loves you and and so I'm glad for you that you have a leader like that who can lead you even to reach into Uganda from Matawan.
08:06: I also want to say if you don't have a bible if you raise your hand and want one we'll get you one. You can actually take it home with you.
08:12: You can drop it off or just raise your hand if you need one. All right then we'll begin.
08:20: Several years ago there was a older woman she had been the secretary at the seminary when I was going through school and she was dying of bone cancer and her husband called me one night and said you come over I think
08:32: I think Jan may not make it through the night. So of course I dropped everything and raced to their condominium and Jan was a she was a straight shooter.
08:41: I'll never forget I walked over to the couch where she was lying and she looked at me and she said how do
08:46: I do this? I've never died before. My goodness what do you say?
08:53: Well Martin Luther says someday we're all going to ask that question and we better ask it now before death is in range because if we wait until death is on the move it might be too late.
09:10: So this topic there's nothing I hate more than this topic. There's nothing about death
09:15: I like. The whole thing grosses me out, disgusts me, scares me.
09:21: I have nothing to do with it but I want to make much of death this morning so we can make much of Jesus because if you thought about it every religion tries to solve some problem.
09:33: Islam tries to solve the problem of pride. Buddhism the problem of suffering. Hinduism bad karma.
09:40: What's the problem the Christian faith solves? It's death and if we make too little of death we just minimize
09:51: Jesus right every time you so tomorrow night the well tonight's the women's final four itty bitty and now
09:59: I'm hooked on women's basketball too because that was quite fun game to watch the other night so tonight's final four for women tomorrow night final four for men whoever wins
10:07: I guarantee you in the post -game press conference they're not going to say oh man of course we won these guys are terrible
10:14: I can't believe you had to play them okay we're number one but them really no they're gonna say how great they were and how
10:23: I mean I'm from northeast Ohio I cheer for Cleveland right our teams have stunk forever until LeBron came and now we're stinking again for who knows why but every time they beat the
10:33: Browns we get number one pick in the draft so April is the best month to be a Browns fan every single year but when they beat the
10:41: Browns they always said oh these guys they're they're pros right we didn't take this for granted even though they probably did they they pumped up the
10:48: Browns or your Lions fans right you know how this feels you you always even if you expect to win you you want to make much of your opponent so your victory looks even better but we don't have to pump up death it is as bad as you think it is but here's the point if you ever minimize death if you ever say death is no big deal then neither is
11:12: Jesus so we want to maximize death so we can maximize and make much of Christ now maybe you're thinking what about Philippians 121 doesn't
11:24: Paul say in Philippians 121 to die is gain well read the next chapter chapter 2 verse 27
11:31: Paul says my friend Epaphroditus was ill and almost died but God had mercy on him and spared him so death is gain in Philippians 121 because praise
11:45: God if you're in Christ your soul does go to heaven praise God for that but death itself is a bad thing scripture calls death the last enemy so before we get to that though I want to just do some research on this and I want to show you just if you don't know
12:04: Jesus how you've got nothing to say in the face of death and we don't want to do this to make fun of what the culture is saying but to so our hearts can break and realize if you just stopped and thought about it if you don't know
12:20: Christ and you stopped and thought about death you would realize you've got nothing you're empty so every time anyone in the culture and sometimes even
12:30: Christians who should know better every time the subject of death comes up what do you always hear death is natural death is normal it's just part of the circle of life right so here's a quote from this famous book on death
12:46: Tuesdays with Maury Mitch Albom who lives near Detroit I guess covering
12:51: Detroit sports for a while he realized I'm qualified to talk about death so he interviewed his friend
12:57: Maury Schwartz who was dying of ALS and Oprah made this her book of the month club once and so it was really in the culture a really popular book here's what
13:07: Maury Schwartz says death is as natural as life the fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don't see ourselves as part of nature we think because we're human we're something above nature we're not everything that gets born dies right that's a pretty that's the go -to answer in the culture death is normal it's natural all right even if that was true how much would that really help if you go home today and find that someone has burglarized your home and set it on fire and you call 9 -1 -1 and the advert says yeah we've been getting a lot of calls like this lately from Matawan we think burglary and arson are the new normal normal I don't care how normal it is get somebody out here my house is on fire or if you're in an airplane let's say coming back from Uganda and you hear this noise and something sputters and goes out and another noise sputters and goes out a few minutes later and the pilot comes on and says attention we've just lost all of our engines prepare for impact but by the way this happens all the time in Asia I don't care that doesn't help me at all right if this is true if death is natural then nothing can be done about it it's just natural if death is natural nothing ought to be done about it because it's natural but that's not what the bible says in fact some
14:38: Christians now are trying to there's some forms of science which say that human death is natural because of natural selection you have to die to get ahead and so some
14:47: Christians influenced by that say well how do we make sense of scripture then which says death is the consequence of Adam's sin they say well maybe we can separate natural physical death from spiritual death maybe we were always going to die because we're human but now because of sin it just stings it just hurts let me just tell you if you separate physical and spiritual death like that first of all the bible does not and secondly tell me then how
15:16: Jesus physical death and the physical blood that we sang about this morning gives you spiritual life this is a little a dead end you can't do this we don't separate you can distinguish physical and spiritual death but you cannot separate them and have any hope in Christ so we hear that death is natural then we hear other reasons why maybe death isn't so bad another quote from tuesdays with maury he says as long as we can love each other and remember the feeling of love we had we can die without ever really going away all the love you created is still there all the memories are still there you live on in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were there death ends a life not a relationship now you've heard that before too right you you still you hang on um you you remain you linger in the memories of those who loved you again that's encouraging but how much does that help right when's the last time you actually thought about your great great grandparents i think never right so if this is this is all you got once you die in a generation or two you're out of mind out of sight out of existence we also hear um other things well maybe you have to die to give meaning to life you have to have closure to have value to have meaning like like tonight and tomorrow night the championship basketball games if they never end if the time if the clock never expires you can't tell who won right you go to a a performance if the if the song or the play never ends you don't know when to clap right if this sermon never ends and maybe feeling like that soon but um you don't know when you're actually allowed to go right so you do have to have closure to have meaning but here's the thing you don't have to die to have closure right we believe in closure in the return of christ the bible ends with come lord jesus if you have to die to have meaning then imagine when christ returns and restores all things and we're living with him here on this restored earth without death we're going to walk around with our head down pulling our hair saying what a lot does my unending life even mean no you don't have to die to have closure we also hear that death makes room for others this is from steve jobs famous stanford commencement speech you've probably heard about it on youtube um he said death is very likely the single best invention of life it's life's change agent it clears out the old to make way for the new right now the new is you stanford graduates but someday not too long from now you will gradually become the old and be cleared away how much did that help steve as he was dying of cancer if someone said steve remember what you said to stanford graduates this is life's change agent is clearing out the old to make way for the new someone else is going to get your job they'll be able to provide for their family it's all good that doesn't help at all right now and then lastly um elizabeth kubler -ross who gave us those five stages of grief she said when people die they very simply shed their body much as a butterfly comes out of its cocoon remember the five there's first denial anger bargaining depression acceptance i think she's hung up on denial right you hear that right that death is like it's a relief and you're like a butterfly now so when someone dies remember when you used to have newspapers and someone famous died they have a comic the next day of with clouds and so if someone was a golfer now they're hitting all the celestial fairways if someone is a musician now they're jamming in heaven's band if someone was annoying now they're really a pain in the neck right you die you go to heaven and you whatever you did on earth just better we're just making stuff up now right we got nothing so here's that that's five things you hear from the culture if you stopped and actually thought about it you realize there's nothing there if you don't know jesus you got absolutely nothing that helps a lick in the face of death so let's say what scripture says first of all i like how the bible is honest it does not sugarcoat this it says death is our enemy death is the first enemy death is the first negative thing that appears in the bible in genesis chapter 2 and verse 17 god says to adam and eve if you eat from this tree of the knowledge of good and evil you will surely die that's the first negative thing is you will die and then chapter 3 when the eight of it yes now you are going to die so death is the first enemy in the it's also the last enemy but paul calls it this in first corinthians 15 26 he says death is the last enemy and it literally is if you look at the end of your bible in revelation chapter 20 in verse 10 of revelation 20 the devil is thrown into the lake of fire four verses later death is thrown in death is literally the last enemy to go it lingers even after the devil is gone and death is the enemy in the middle we read in the introduction today psalm 90 verses 5 through 10 where moses wrings his hands over death and says we live here 70 years we have this ranked 80 but that's it we we're like fresh grass in the morning but it goes so fast i turned 50 in january and maybe this is my midlife crisis sermon actually because it's cheaper than getting a camaro or something but wow like 50 i don't feel like i should be that old um but it goes that just you know just that fast and if you're a kid you don't appreciate you can't understand this but trust me it will just the older you get life just picks up speed and it just that that fast where did it go notice in psalm 92 uh moses says at death we fly away fly flying away in scripture is not like we sing it in gospel uh bluegrass quartets it's a bad thing um praise god that when we die our soul goes to jesus but we're christians doggone it we don't pray to go to heaven we pray for heaven to come to earth we pray for the return of christ maranatha means come lord jesus we believe in the three r's right if you're a christian the return of christ the resurrection of the body and the restoration of all things that's what what christians hope for in fact there's there's only one book of the bible that calls death a friend a good thing can you guess which book that is ecclesiastes sounds close you're close job maybe if you're job death is sweet death come just make it stop but again the whole scripture could not be more clear from the start to the finish death is bad scripture also is honest and tells us where death comes from first corinthians 15 56 says the sting of death is sin so death is horrible death is terrible but what makes death bad really bad the sting of it is sin because if death is as horrible as i think it is it is tough to confess and admit that somehow i deserve it i don't want to think that i deserve to die and go to hell i like to think i'm a pretty nice guy and god must be so glad that i chose him and i'm on his team but scripture says in myself by myself i actually deserve to die and unless i admit that i can't tell you why the cross think about it if if desperate situations call for extreme measures then an extreme measure is a sign that you might be in a desperate situation so if i'm driving down the highway and a police car flashes its lights behind me my wife will turn to me in her disapproving voice and say what did you do if um a lot of police cars join the chase and they surround us and a tv helicopter is overhead trying to flight right on us she'd get a bit more accusatory what did you do if a fighter jet joins the chase dropping bomb grouping up the pavement at our car she's going to scream like some lady in an action movie what did you do think about what god did to save us god did not hand us a brochure as if we were just uninformed he did not stage an intervention as if we were just a little bit stubborn god answered our need with the cross if the death of god himself was required for you and i to be saved what did we do i hate to admit it's hard to admit but i'm a i'm a human being in god's image i've a value that's priceless but i'm also a rebel i'm a sinner i would kill god if i had the chance and we know that because when he gave us a chance we took it right we sing that song we hear our voice among the mockers crucify him crucify him if i don't admit that i'm i'm that bad i can't tell you why jesus died now as hard as it is to admit it's actually a relief to know the problem right if death in hell is this bad it's a relief to know why just like um when my kids were really little and they would have you know dave you have ear infections yet baby first one when they they stay up all night crying and my wife would take him to the doctor the last thing she wanted to hear the last thing she wanted to hear was we don't know why he's crying just cut it out maybe in six months he'll stop no she was so glad to hear okay that's an ear infection and you gotta be careful with the antibiotics i know but take this and yeah thank you we need to sleep we need him to stop feeling pain so it's a relief to know the problem is me because now we've isolated the problem because if death was natural nothing could be done about it if death was natural nothing ought to be done about it but if death is unnatural if death is the consequence of your and my rebellion against god hey there's hope for that so let's talk about the hope we have in scripture i want to first mention um just the importance of hope in first corinthians 13 13 we're told the three top christian virtues are faith hope and love and the greatest of these is love great but don't forget hope made the cut it's one of the top three if we take this for granted i think because we're just we a lot of us have had pretty comfortable lives and we think things are just we're happy but if you don't have hope i mean think of the poor syrians as their country is just falling apart they don't have hope if you don't think of a downtown inner city detroit over the last 20 some years when you lose hope you can't go on you remember that um story uh maybe 10 years ago now there's these four football players one of them that played for the lions and they were out fishing in the florida keys and they had anchored the boat and after a few hours they started up the boat and gunned the motor and forgot to pull up the anchor and the boat capsized and these four physically fit football players for the next few hours climbed up on the overturned hole the wave would come and wash them off and they climbed back up and the wave would come and wash them off and after about five or six hours one of them just took off his life jacket and sank beneath the waves he just gave up and one by one over the next day or so the two others did as well and they found one alive huddled on the overturned hole with the life preserver on and this fellow wrote a book called not without hope if you don't you can be physically fine but if your spirit loses hope you just quit so think about death again i'd like to think of death as the dominant destroyer it destroys everything in its path and it's dominant there's nothing you can do to to fight it i mean think about how how we treat death death is so awful it's always the go -to analogy for really bad stuff right if you're um public speaking and you trip up and embarrass yourself oh i was so humiliated i what i nearly died or if you're in great pain oh i just wish i was dead or if your team is from detroit or cleveland like oh we're getting killed out there right when things are really ugly you always reach to death for the go -to for this is how bad it is what will you compare death to it's as bad as it gets we cannot beat death right we can't even cheat it for long but here's the gospel we know someone who has jesus has come and he is the god man and he had to be the god man to pay our debt because think of it we rebelled against god we owed him a debt we could not pay because any good thing you would do for god after that fact that's a good thing you already owe him anyway you can't do makeup work you can't earn extra credit with god we're stuck we owe the debt that we couldn't pay only a perfect man only the god man whose life is of infinite value could pay the debt on our behalf and so scripture says in second corinthians 5 21 he who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become god's righteousness here's here's how this worked jesus bore our guilt in our place and so he died i used to think that the cross is what saves us the resurrection is merely god's greatest miracle that proves the cross worked right if jesus had not risen from the dead we'd still be saved we just wouldn't know it we wouldn't have assurance but that's not what the bible says in romans 4 25 paul says jesus was raised for our justification or our acceptance with god 1 corinthians 15 17 paul says if jesus has not been raised then you are still in your sins so if someone ever asks you which is more important the cross or the resurrection trick question you need both or you cannot be saved so jesus bore our sin became guilty and so he died if he had remained dead he would have remained guilty and so would you and so would i but the father raised him from the dead he vindicated him he exonerated him he released him from that guilt so jesus died as our substitute he died in our place but he was raised as our representative to establish our place jesus drug sin and death down with him into the grave and when he arose he left it in the dust when the angel when the women came to the tomb easter morning they found it was death that had died in the night this is why we're christians this is why we've given our life to christ and by the way just a word about about the resurrection it's physical a lot of christians think of the resurrection as spiritual somehow we think that the goal of the christian life is to die and go to heaven and praise god you go to heaven but when you go to heaven that's the first leg of a journey that's round trip we believe in the return of christ and the resurrection and that's for your body this body the body you have right now this body will rise again if your resurrection body is too different from this body right now sitting in chairs then you will not have been redeemed you will have been replaced and that's not the christian hope it's for the redemption of these bodies so there's a real tension when someone dies and goes to heaven we can say they've gone home they've gone home to be with the lord but it's complicated jesus is who we are to live forever with so when you go to be with jesus you are going home but the earth is where we are to live forever with him so think of um a college student who's away at school and while they're away their parents move to a different city different house if you ask this student are you going home for the holidays you're going home for christmas they'll probably say yeah but it's complicated i am going home because it's my parents but you know what it's not my house not my town i don't know anybody there so kind of like that praise god when we die our souls are going home to be with with jesus but the christian hope even better than that we believe based on scripture that jesus will bring back with him and this can happen at any moment he when he returns he will bring back with him the souls of everyone who's died in him put their faith in him he will resurrect their bodies and put them back together and we will live forever with them here so when my kids were young i didn't say ask jesus to forgive your sins so you can go to heaven when you die i said ask jesus to forgive your sin so you can live with jesus here forever with all of your family all of your friends who put their faith in christ that's something a kid can actually relate to and it's actually true the christian hope is for all of creation to be restored so if that's true how do we join christ's victory in scripture death is often referred to as an ocean so in job chapter 38 job 38 16 have you journeyed to the strings of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep have the gates of death been shown to you have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness first samuel 22 verse 5 the waves of death swirled about me the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me and then revelation 21 3 revelation 21 1 says on the new earth there'll be no more sea i think again that's a picture of death doesn't mean there won't be any water like we'll have dolphins on the new world but no more evil no more death so in scripture death is often pictured as an ocean and think about well even today but in that ancient world too the ocean was this dark foreboding place people went out in shifts they didn't always come back it was it felt like a great analogy for death well if you're ever lost at sea how do you survive you're tempted to frantically thrash out and try to get to shore but that's how you wear yourself out and you drown if you're ever lost at sea the only hope you have is to relax practice the prone float wait for hope to come and that's how we defeat death as well we we rest in christ right we can't beat death we can't cheat it but if jesus has we join his victory we put all of our weight in him so when i was a kid my parents taught me to toss this bedtime prayer maybe you did too now i lay me down to sleep pray the lord my soul to keep if i die before i wake pray the lord my soul to take that's a great prayer that really is every night when we lay our body on the mattress that's great practice just as we transfer all of our weight to that mattress so spiritually we transfer all of ourselves to jesus we rely we depend we lie on him just like we lie on that bed we rest in christ and of course we also have to repent because you cannot turn in christ in faith without turning away from the sin if you try to do that you're going to pull a muscle so as we turn to christ and rest in him we also must turn from the enemy we've got to stop thinking about sin as our friend right we want to how racy movies and tv shows can we watch how many questionable websites like where's the line how what can i see before i'm actually we're asking the wrong question right what can i get away with before i get caught sin is not your friend sin is what will kill you sin will one day take away from you everything you've ever loved and cared for and you will die apart from christ alone so let's stop entertaining ourselves with sin let's stop thinking this is something to enjoy this is the enemy and when you're at a funeral that's when you should really get it like we're here because of death why death because of sin i think i hate sin i will not dabble with it any longer if we've done that if we turned away from our sin and put our faith in christ then we do join his victory in the meantime how should we live well i'm baptist so i've alliterated them uh first of all we we lament first l what's the first verse you ever memorized jesus wept right that's a great verse isn't it jesus at lazarus tomb even though he's knowing even though he knows he's going to fix it he's going to make it all better he still wept so there's this tension that we should feel um paul says in thessalonians we grieve but not as those who do not have hope that's true but we also hope but not as those who do not grief we grieve and we hope we hope in our grief some christians because of the hope part feel they should never ever cry and they go to they lose a loved one and they don't let themselves cry jesus wept you're allowed to cry at my funeral i want tears my wife had better ball all right i don't i i just fake it but act like you're be miserable i've been to one funeral where i didn't see any tears and it was sad because i realized here's someone who died does anybody care don't they miss him again there's no one right way to grieve if you lose a loved one don't feel like i'm not crying enough i'm crying too much just there's no recipe here just realize if i love this person i will i miss them and nobody should feel the weight of sin deep in our bones like christians because we know this is not the way god made the world he made it good and this is not the way it's going to be when christ returns and so we are distraught right now we hate this and so we cry out in lamenting calm lord jesus lamenting is a sign of great faith because when you lament you're saying god you can fix this i believe in you come restore everything stop death if you ever stop lamenting to the lord it's actually a sign of you've lost faith it's a sign you've given up so feel free in christ to lament and to cry and and by the way when you go to viewing hours avoid the temptation to try to say something that's going to fix it right when someone has just lost lost a loved one there's nothing you can say that's going to make it all better i try and say very little and say i i grieve with you but i i stand with you in hoping longing yearning for the return of christ do not ever quote romans 8 28 to them there's one one fellow who lost a loved one wrote a book about it and said you know what when you tell me all things work together for good you're using the bible like a club you're just beating me up he says it is not your job to tell me all things work together for good as a grieving father it is my job to tell you that that's really good in the meantime until christ returns we lament in hope but we we still lament and then we live um steve jobs again that famous commencement speech he said remembering you're going to die is the best way i know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose you're already naked there is no reason not to follow your heart so stanford graduates guess what you're all going to die someday so go for broke you got nothing to lose why because you're going to lose it all anyway well maybe but if i'm going to lose it all anyway yeah i could go for it or i could just sleep in and watch the price is right it makes no difference if you're going to lose all any anyway this is why paul says in first corinthians 15 32 if there is no resurrection just eat drink and be merry for tomorrow you die yeah death could liberate you to go for broke but only the resurrection can move you to cash out right paul writes this whole chapter in first corinthians 15 on the resurrection and look how he ends it first corinthians 15 in verse 58 he says therefore my dear brothers and sisters stand firm let nothing move you always give yourselves fully to the work of the lord because you know that your labor in the lord is not in vain it's only because of the resurrection that you actually realize this counts my life matters even if you feel like your life is small and not enough people care about it do it whatever you're called to do husband wife father mother whatever you do for work neighborhood as a son or daughter these are callings you have from the lord and you do them with all your might and you know that jesus will reward you because your works will rise with you if there is no resurrection just quit but there is a resurrection that we've got hope again if someone doesn't know christ you realize what are you doing you have think about it you've got no reason to go on only jesus gives you any help at all and by the way resurrections only work in cemeteries so when we die the hard part's over now we just wait for jesus to come through so if you believe in the resurrection you can stomp defiantly on the face of death and death yeah it looks like you've won it looks like our loved one we buried that they're they've gone they're never coming back but we're christians and we believe the word of god that we hear that this body will rise again and so we lament and we're we've got reason to live and then thirdly when the time comes we're not afraid to let go um d .a