Video Transcript: Pondering the Word -- Module 4

I have materials that I received from an organization in Canada, that produces a lot of material that that place online, that is meant to help people who are dying, it's it's called virtual hospice. And when people go into hospice care, here in the Western world, what's happening is, doctors have said, we've gotten as far as we can, with care, the health care for this person. 

And now we know that in the next six months, they're going to be dying. And so when people go into hospice care, they, know that their illness is terminal, and that their life is coming to an end, they don't know exactly what day, they just know that the day isn't very far off. 

And there's a great deal of material that that is available to help us understand how to care from a Christian point of view, for the person who is going to transfer from this life into glory. Because it's a tough thing to leave this world, and to go to that which we don't know other than what God has told us just little bits about in the Scriptures. And so we need to, to prepare ourselves as chaplains to be able to, to help people understand their lives and what is going on in their life. 

And so today, I've chosen a message that I prepared based on Psalm 30 and I have been titled, Why does God let me die? That's one of the deep questions of our hearts. And it's one that we need to attempt to answer. Psalm 30 "I will exalt you a lord. 

For you lifted me out of the depths and did not let my enemies gloat over me. Oh Lord, my God, I called you for help and you healed me. Oh Lord, you brought me up from the grave you spared me from going down into the pit. Sing to the Lord you saints of his praise his holy name, for his anger last only a moment but his favor lasts a lifetime. 

Weeping may remain for a night but rejoicing comes in the morning when I felt secure, I said I will never be shaken. Oh Lord, when you favored me you made my mountain stand firm. But when you hit your face, I was dismayed to you. Oh Lord, I called to the Lord I cried for mercy. What dane is there in my destruction in my going down into the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will procrit claim your faithfulness? 

Here, oh, Lord, it'd be merciful to me, oh, Lord, be my help. You turned my wailing into dancing, you remove my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. Oh Lord, my God, I will give you thanks for ever". Those words from Psalm 30. The scene has repeated itself over and over again. 

Since I first became a pastor, I go to see someone who is dying. And I am asked in one way or another? Why does God let me die? It's a difficult question for which I have no particular answer. I don't know the mind of God. I don't pretend to understand the ways of God. I don't want to try to answer that question. And yet, even though I don't know the mind of God, nor do I understand his ways, I often find myself giving an answer. 

That's much more than actually speculation. And my answer usually includes things like, well, we don't know how God works, but He can be trusted. We don't get it very often. But God tells us in his word that he's working in the midst of all things for our good. 

But I've also observe something else, no matter who we are. There is a fear that gnaws its way into our consciousness, at least every week and it is that life as we know it. It is not what it was meant to be. Little children experience that when their parents get angry with them, the parents suddenly seem so far away, there's a distance which drops down between us and our parents and, and we know deep down inside, this is not what God meant this family to be. 

And then we start going to school, and then what should be a supportive environment, we begin to feel like, we don't fit with these others. And so we will do whatever we can to develop an alliance with, with people who are willing to have us be in alliance with them. And we're against those who leave us out and our teachers know how often they have to deal with us picking on each other. And when you're the picked on kid, you know that life is not what it's supposed to be God didn't mean for life to be like this. 

When we feel like no one's interested in us when we feel like we are set off from others because of something that we cannot help. We say to ourselves, this isn't fair. And by saying that, what we're saying is that God has made the world in such a way that this is not what justice is. Because if it was just it would be fair. And this isn't fair.

Lies at grade school, I wasn't all that good at sports. But neither was I the poorest at it. But as each other guy was chosen for a team, I died a little death of embarrassment. I wanted so badly to be good enough at some game that I could be chosen early on, but it would never come to me. I was going to have that little death each time the teams were chosen. And I knew I knew in my heart, what David spoke of in Psalm 30, when you hit your face, I was dismayed because I just felt if God could just make me good enough to be on that team. 

If God could just make me good enough that somebody else would recognize it, and they would want me instead of begrudgingly take me. It felt like God hid his face when he came to me in sports. And I was dismayed. That's not just a word to express something of disappointment, it's more of a word, which points us down the spectrum toward despair. 

Despair is the ultimate pain of the hurt, a feeling we've been left out and that no matter what it will always be a part of our lives. That's, that's despair that's over there. When a teenager heads off to high school, they run into the problem of being left out. And in the big schools, that that I have seen, it's so easy to get lost in this whole crowd. And there's, there's this group, and there's that group, and there's the next group, and where's this group? For this person and this young person feels left out. 

For every person, you know, there's 50, you don't know. And the anonymity can get to be overbearing for one reason or the other. When when your circle of friends doesn't seem to want to include you for some event. 

When I was in high school, I knew a guy whom I spoke with on occasion, but I never did do anything with him outside of school. But Doug had problem of having epilepsy. Now, he had done nothing to have that brain disorder. But the rest of us knew that it made him different. In one day, if he was riding the bus to school, he had a seizure. It scared the others on the bus. And but rather than rushing to help, what they did is they left him alone sitting there in the seat with his seizure.

And for the rest of his high school career, Doug had to go to school every day, knowing only a few people in the whole school would want to have anything much to do with him, because everybody else was afraid that Doug might have a seizure. And then what do you do and so they ran. Don't tell me he didn't die a little death every morning. As he got ready ready for school. And those feelings never do leave us entirely. Or we may be able to deal with them most of the time, but always lurking in our hearts is this uneasy feeling that when the chips are down, that when the chips are down, we might be left alone, not only by people, but by God.

And when we're facing death, it seems like this is such a lonely journey. It doesn't feel to us, like God is there with us. And so, in some God who has been our friend and our companion through our life's journey, it doesn't feel to us like he's there. And he's letting us die. And there's nothing we can say. It's difficult to know just what to make of the way God works, then. 

The Psalmist had a sense, that in the middle of his despair, there was still reason to praise God. Psalm 30, after all, is a Psalm of praise. But embedded in it is this expression of despair. What am I going to do? Oh, God, when you let me die? What good does it do for me to go down to the pit? He has, do those who are dust still praise you? Why, oh, God, do you let me die. You are the one who has made death into the grim reaper of all humanity, Lord, why? It brings fear into our lives. 

There's, every year there's this this holiday here in the United States. It's called Halloween. And Halloween has developed into a kind of thing where people try to just frighten other people deep into their hearts by showing them scenes of death and destruction. And a place where I used to live and where my kids went to high school. This, the choirs of the school got together. And in order to raise money they put on what they called their haunted mansion. And, and it every year, it is so unbelievably profitable. And it's so popular people come from miles around to be able to go through and be frightened half to death by scenes of death. It trades on that fear of what might happen if somebody with a chainsaw jumps out at us. What might happen if we were in this room that was inhabited by rats, and is that that wasn't bad enough, after all, you decide to go there. Our dreams then get inhabited by the spirits and in these things, and they haunt us and they spook us the fear of what might happen if and our hearts are authorized to fill in the blank. For our imaginations can always conjure up the fears that refuse to let us go and at their base at the bottom you and I would find a fear of being abandoned by God. 

The figure that says that when we're out of control, and the one to whom we should be able to turn isn't interested. That's when we move down the spectrum of fear toward despair. We move from that nervous feeling that floats around inside of us to worry about how we're going to deal with this issue which is giving us that feeling that that by dying a little bit every day. That someday it's gonna happen that God isn't there with us.

It sets us on a slippery slope toward terror, and finally toward horror. And if we cannot find someone to help us when the world is breaking loose from its moorings, we're so afraid we're going to slip over the edge. For we ask the question within ten! increasing intensity as we go along. If God is all powerful, why does he let me die this way? Why does it make me die this way? What is this purpose here? Is there any purposes the world is playing out of God's control? 

And when we reach that point is when we find ourselves giving away to the fear that grips us, we're frozen in our tracks, the world is out of control we say, even God doesn't seem to be seem to be able to do something about it in the Psalm terror. Psalm terror still is surrounded though, by words of praise. Include them. Because that's what's important, right then, when we are in the midst of terror and horror, songs of praise need to be lifted up.

What we don't realize is that this poem of the Psalmist, the Psalm is written after the terror had passed. It usually doesn't happen overnight. It's a long struggle to come back from the despair we find ourselves swallowed up in. If you've ever found yourself at that point, or if you're halfway down the spectrum toward despair, you will someday find yourself dying that 1000 Little deaths, and that pushes you just too far. And when you find yourself slipping to a place where you don't want to go, what you need to do is praise the Lord. Remember, that Psalms give us a way of dealing with this horror, with this terror, with this fear that makes us tremble.

Let me remind you of something, it happened a couple of 1000 years ago was a Sunday to people who had been filled with hope that Jesus was going to be the one who transformed their experience of life. The one who they had hoped would be the Messiah, the One who would give them life forever, he had died a couple of days before. And the sheer agony of the scene at the cross crown hill was just too much. 

It moved them down the spectrum from nervousness all the way to despair, and they were making their way home again on Sunday morning. They're filled with sadness. Their feet simply shuffled along, as they made their way down the road and a stranger came up to them. And as they spoke together, this stranger opened the scriptures for them so that they could see that the Messiah had to suffer. And then and then to be raised again, the suffering was not a mistake. It was not an evidence that the world was out of God's control, but that it was very much in his control. And the events, which had been which had happened had been predicted, even 1000 years before they had happened. 

The King of Kings was actually in charge. Even though it looked for all intents and purposes that God had let things get horribly out of hand. God will always remain God no matter how history looks to us remember that. When we move down that spectrum of fear, we move from that nervous feeling that floats around inside of us to worry about how we're going to deal with an issue that is giving us that feeling of dying by little bits and when and when we face that last day in our lives, and we we have that question in our hearts. Why does God let me die? 

The scriptures give us this answer. Dying for the Christian is not punishment for our sins. Rather, it is God's way of opening up the gate for us into life everlasting. He needs us to leave behind this world with his little bit of death every day, and instead, to be transformed into the image of his Son in life everlasting. We leave our body behind for time. There's going to come a time we come back and we get this body back we're going to praise the Lord forever.

And then we'll discover that our only comfort in life and in death is that we are not our own but we belong body and soul, both in life and in death. To our faithful savior, Jesus Christ, he is fully paid for all our sins. He set us free from the tyranny of the devil and and he watches over us in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without his permission and now by the power of his Holy Spirit. He makes me ready and willing to live in this life already a taste of the new life for him when you're confronted with a question, why does God let me die? Open up the Scripture and show yourself and show others that it's time to praise the living God.