Tag Archives: death

Missing the Boat at SeaWorld

February 26, 2010 By in Cultural Issues, Personal Reflection Tags: , , , Leave a comment

What are we to make of the tragedy at a local theme park this week?

A seasoned trainer of killer whales got dragged under water by her ponytale by a male Orca known for a history of living up to its name.

The debate in the news remains alarmingly this-worldly in terms of animal rights, conservation, ad nauseum.

As always, the Scripture speaks profoundly on an altogether different level.

In response to Job’s complaints in the face of unspeakable suffering far exceeding that of the family of Dawn Brancheau who dared tether Tilikum to her less-than-containable leash, the God of the universe said this:

“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook
or press down his tongue with a cord?
2 Can you put a rope in his nose
or pierce his jaw with a hook?
3 Will he make many pleas to you?
Will he speak to you soft words?
4 Will he make a covenant with you
to take him for your servant forever?
5 Will you play with him as with a bird,
or will you put him on a leash for your girls?
6 Will traders bargain over him?
Will they divide him up among the merchants?
7 Can you fill his skin with harpoons
or his head with fishing spears?
8 Lay your hands on him;
remember the battle—you will not do it again!
9  Behold, the hope of a man is false;
he is laid low even at the sight of him.
10 No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up.
Who then is he who can stand before me?
11 Who has first given to me, that I should repay him?
Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.

Leviathan is the English translator’s best guess for a difficult-to-translate Hebrew word often rendered as a large sea animal. Orcas fit the bill. They are among the hugest of the dolphin species weighing up to six tons and measuring up to the length of a school bus. Males are particularly large and aggressive. Tilikum serves the SeaWorld community for his stud services and large-splash-making capabilities  – a crowd favorite indeed.

Until this week when he took a 40 year old handler so very easily to her watery grave.

If you seek to see the world through heavenly-minded eyes, the lesson seems plain. Who dares to trifle with a killer whale? No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up. Ms. Brancheau, I am certain, dared not in the slightest to stir up the mighty beast floating in the pool before her. Even so, her proximity to creation’s majesty cost her nothing less than her very life. Word to the wise.

Word to the wiser still. Who then is he/she who can stand before God? Let the question sink in. Who then is he/she who can stand before God? None. I say it again, none. If dear Dawn (and my heart goes out to her grieving family and friends) could not stand poolside by Leviathan and escape with her life, who among us can pretend to put God, who owns the whole of heaven, including Orcas, great white sharks, lumbering hippos, and the rest of His wondrous and fearsome creation, in the dock and claim some legitimate argument with His sovereign administrations in their life for which we might better respond, He gives and takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21).

May we not miss the boat along with the masses debating the pros and cons of killer whales consigned to captivity as if the only things we should consider lie along an animal rights plane and no other. Far more can and should result from this tragedy than that. Let nature and its grandeur speak to us internally rebuking our sinful pride. Let it speak to us vertically recalibrating our hearing and seeing such that we hear and see Him and thus, along with Job, despise ourselves and repent in dust and ashes (Job 42:5-6).

What Happens When Infants Die?

February 16, 2010 By in Theology Tags: , , 4 Comments

Warning: this post is longer than the average blog post. Consider the topic and little more needs to be said.

A few weeks ago Pastor Clay gave a terrific message on family issues. In it he referenced the 1689 Confession of Faith and its statement regarding the difficult question of what happens to infants who die in infancy.

Elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who works when and where and how He pleases. The same is true of all elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called through the preaching of the gospel (Chapter 10, paragraph 3).

After the message I expressed some need for clarification about this particular provision of the document and promised to blog at some point to that end. Here goes.

Everything within me wants to believe this and more. Who doesn’t? However, I deny or at least want to qualify full subscription to the confession at this point for one very important reason. It says more than the Scripture says. Where the Bible is silent we are wise to remain the same. And the Bible is especially silent on the question of the children of unbelieving parents. We simply can’t say from Scripture with authoritative citation what the Lord does in such cases. Whatever He does we may be certain that He is just and wise in all His ways in determining the fate of little ones who die before the so-called age of accountability – the time they actually understand the truth and can make some choices about what to do with it. We may rest right there on the matter, as far as I am concerned.

As for the children of of believing parents, we stand on safer ground to say more. God certainly can regenerate an infant, even in the womb, as testified by the account of John the Baptist in Luke 1:15. But clearly this is not the normal way He saves. Still, as Wayne Grudem points out:

We should recognize that it is God’s frequent pattern throughout Scripture to save the children of those who believe in him (see Gen. 7:1; cf. Heb. 11:7; Josh. 2:18; Ps. 103:17; John 4:53; Acts 2:39; 11:14(?); 16:31; 18:8; 1 Cor. 1:16; 7:14; Titus 1:6; cf. Matt. 18:10, 14). These passages do not show that God automatically saves the children of all believers (for we all know of children of godly parents who have grown up and rejected the Lord, and Scripture also gives such examples as Esau and Absalom), but they do indicate that God’s ordinary pattern, the “normal” or expected way in which he acts, is to bring the children of believers to himself. With regard to believers’ children who die very young, we have no reason to think that it would be otherwise.

Theologians of significant stature from the past including Charles Hodge, W. G. T. Shedd, and B. B. Warfield have not shied away from proclaiming confidence that God saves the infants of believers who die in their infancy because of arguments like Grudem’s. Many often point to the account of the child of David and Bathsheba who died in infancy due to God’s judgment upon David for his sin in 2 Sam. 12:23. Grudem calls David’s confidence that he would go to the child the language of personal reunion, the only plausible explanation for David’s reversal from a state of enormous grief to business as usual (a change not lost on his servants as the context notes).

One of the most helpful insights on this subject contributing to my tentative yet hopeful view that infants who die in infancy go to be with God in heaven comes from this section from a funeral meditaiton by John Piper at the occasion of an infant’s death.

But what about tiny children who do not yet have the physical ability to even know the basic facts of the gospel or even of any of God’s revelation in nature? Does the Bible teach that God will judge them in the same way that he will judge an adult who consciously rejects the truth of God that he knows?

There are clues that God does not condemn those who are physically unable to know the truth that God has revealed in nature or in the gospel. I’ll mention two clues.

One comes from Deuteronomy chapter one. God is angry because the people would not trust him to help them take the promised land. They rebelled against him. So he says, “Not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers [except Caleb and Joshua, who had trusted him].” Then he adds a word about the children: “And as for your little ones, who you said would become a prey, and your children, who today have no knowledge of good or evil , they shall go in there. And to them I will give it, and they shall possess it” (vv. 35, 39).

Not having the “knowledge of good and evil” takes away the judgment. They were not yet physically able to know what they needed to know, and so God does not sweep them away with the adults who wouldn’t trust God.

The second clue confirms this principle from the New Testament. It’s found in Romans 1:18-21. The text is not about children, but the same principles of justice apply. Listen to the relationship between having available knowledge and having accountability. “What can be known about God is plain to [men], because God has shown it to them. For ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. Therefore they are without excuse; for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.”

The point is this: to be held accountable at the judgment you need two things: 1) available knowledge of the glory of God whom you should have adored and thanked; 2) the physical ability to know it, to perceive it. If this knowledge were really not available, then, Paul implies, there really would be an “excuse” at the judgment. No adult, except perhaps profoundly retarded or mentally ill ones, have this excuse. That’s Paul’s point. We adults are without excuse. But children are in another category. They do have this excuse. They don’t have the physical ability to know what God has revealed. Therefore we believe that God will apply to them the blood and righteousness of Christ in a way we do not know. We adults can have this pardon and righteousness only through faith. That is the clear teaching of Scripture (Ephesians 2:8; Romans 3:28 ). How are infants united to Christ? We don’t know. And speculation would not help us here.

I treasure our confession. Some exceptions apply as for me and my house. With regard to this statement, some clarification. Whatever the case, God will be found to have no fault in whatever He does with the souls of those who die in infancy or without rational capability.

For another helpful article click here.

How Not To Die in Your Sins

February 14, 2010 By in Exposition Tags: , , 2 Comments

Today’s message came from John 8:21-30. You can listen to the audio here.

Here’s how I summed up the flow of the passage:

The only way to be certain that you don’t die in your sins is to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, God’s Son, the one and only “I am.” The content of that faith to be genuine must include four things: His going to the Father, His coming from the Father, His speaking for the Father (validated in the cross and its consequences) and His closeness with the Father.

At the conclusion of the message I made application from the text for believers in terms of how to avoid becoming hardhearted. The condition of the Jews in John 8 chills the reader to the bone in the fact that some so highly religious could actually be so far from the truth. Here are the six principles I gave for avoiding hardness of heart.

  1. Care about not becoming hardhearted. Hebrews 2:1-3 pleads that we play close attention that we not drift away for how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?
  2. Stay in close proximity to the word of Jesus through reading, study, meditation, and listening to it preached. The Jews’ fault was they couldn’t bear to hear his word (John 8:43).
  3. Don’t just hear the word of Jesus but hear it so as to obey it. Refuse to be a hearer only but also a doer (James 1:22-24).
  4. Be quick to repent when the word of Jesus comes with power and convicts you of sin. As quickly as possible agree with God about the nature of your sin, confess it,  and determine to change. Being slow to repent grieves and quenches the Spirit in your life.
  5. Pray for God to give you continually a soft heart and not allow you to become hardhearted. Jesus exhorted us to watch and pray that we may not enter into temptation (Matt. 26:41).
  6. Daily exhort others as well as receive exhortation from others to avoid sin’s deceitfulness (Heb. 3:12-13). This is particularly true if you live a secret life in any sin area. You must know and be known if you are to avoid becoming hardhearted. Sin loses its power when we bring it out of the darkness and into the light (1 John 1: 5-7).

May the Lord grant us grace to persevere to the end that we might not die in our sins but go to be where He is, with the Father in the kingdom heaven.

Swifter than a Weaver’s Shuttle

January 26, 2010 By in Personal Reflection Tags: , , 4 Comments

With the sudden loss of one of our own today, a flood of thoughts has swept through my mind and heart. One reminded me of the words of him who suffered grievous loss in Job 7:6 – My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. I’ve never seen it in action, but I rather guess an accomplished weaver can fly on his shuttle. For those acquainted with such things the word picture must have drove the truth home with added force.

Turns out Job returns to this theme a lot in the book. Job 7:7 – Remember that my life is but a breath. Job 9:25-26 – Now my days are swifter than a runner; they flee away, they see no good. They slip by like reed boats, like an eagle that swoops on its prey. Job 14:1-2 – Man, who is born of woman, is short-lived and full of turmoil. Like a flower he comes forth and withers. He also flees like a shadow and does not remain. There is nothing like the staggering blow of grief to bring the brevity of life into exacting focus.

How should we live in light of such truth? First, we should avoid presumption about the future and subjugate all our dreams and plans to the sovereign will of God. James 4:13-15 says, Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow, we shall go into such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that.”

Second, we must learn to keep affliction in perspective against the backdrop of eternity’s endless ages. We learned this from 2 Cor. 4:17 – For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

Third, we should pray for grace to make every day count so that whatever the duration of our years we go before the King with more wisdom than folly. Consider Psalm 90:10-12 – The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you? So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Finally, whether our days amount to seventy years or only seven months, we should rest in the decree of God that numbers our days to the precise millisecond. Psalm 139:16 puts it this way: Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written every one of them; the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.

Life is short. The days are decreed. The griefs are many. The reality is clear: And the world is passing away along with its desires; but whoever does the will of God abides forever (1 John 2:17). Give your days with reckless abandon to the world to come. It will be here before you know it.

Where Did This Jesus of Christmas Come From & Where Did He Go?

December 13, 2009 By in Exposition Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

In this morning’s message I made much of the fact that the same words of Jesus get repeated verbatim in a very short span of verses in the text of John 7:34-36. 

34 You will seek me and you will not find me. Where I am you cannot come.” 35 The Jews said to one another, “Where does this man intend to go that we will not find him? Does he intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? 36 What does he mean by saying, ‘You will seek me and you will not find me,’ and, ‘Where I am you cannot come’?” 

You will seek me and you will not find me. Where I am you cannot come. 

That’s one of the few places in the gospels where this phenomenon happens and for good reason. He uses such a literary device for emphasis given the importance of his purpose. Not to get this, not to understand the answer to the questions where did He come from – the Father in heaven who sent him, and where did He go – back to the Father in heaven – not to get that, not to embrace it, believe it, that He came to die for you and take the punishment of your sins on His head is to consign you to death and everlasting punishment in hell for those sins. Do not be overly hasty in the conclusions you draw in answer to these all-important questions, was the gist of my exhortation. 

I also drew attention to the way the people speculated about the answer to the second question they raised in v. 35. Does he intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? That’s more of John’s irony. The dispersion was the term for the Jews who didn’t settle in Palestine, but went throughout the empire among the Greeks, the Gentiles, the non-Jews. In one sense that, as we saw, is not what He meant, but in another way it points to the future. They unwittingly prophesied here that Jesus was, to use the words of Luke 2:32 – a light of revelation to the Gentiles. 

Upon His resurrection and commission to His disciples and His ascension to the Father’s right hand He would send His Holy Spirit upon the apostles and they would go into Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and even the uttermost parts of the earth with the answers to the questions where did he come from and where did He go? He came from God and went back to God. Repent, believe these things, and live.

Ten Ways To Think Rightly About Murderous Rampages

November 7, 2009 By in Cultural Issues Tags: , , , 1 Comment

First Fort Hood in Texas, now Gateway Center in Orlando. Back to back. Crazy men lock and load and blow folks away – the last episode striking far too close to home, right in our own back yard.

How are we to think in light of all we feel? I ask the question in light of Jesus’ response to certain horrific tragedies in His day in Luke 13:1-5. When informed about Pilate’s murderous rampage in mingling the blood of Galileans with their sacrifices, Jesus asked, “Do you think.”

It matters greatly what and how we think in the face of such things. Thoughts give way to feelings and feelings give way to actions. And actions either glorify God or they don’t. Jesus raised the question in Luke to engender a certain God-honoring reaction (more on that later). My aim is the same in offering these ten thoughts. No doubt more can be said, but these seemed  to me to be particularly suited for the events of the last few days.

  1. God is sovereign over every event including murderous rampages. He dwells in the heavens and does whatever pleases Him (Psalm 115:3). He brings BOTH prosperity and adversity (Ecc. 7:14). He makes well-being and calamity (Isa. 45:7). The prophet asks, “Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?” (Amos 3:6b). Chance, coincidence, fate – none of these things govern our lives; God in His providence does. In Christ He is everlastingly FOR US (Rom. 8:31) . He does and will work everything together for our good as lovers of His called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). Do not be afraid.
  2. God Himself numbers our days, knows the length of their duration to the millisecond, and considers the exact moment of our death a terribly weighty, significant thing. Psalm 31:15 says, “My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and my persecutors.” The confidence the writer has in God’s hand governing the length of His days compels him to pray for rescue from the hand (note the repetition of the word hand and the contrast intended between God’s ultimate power and an enemy’s relative strength). After a near escape with death, the Psalmist observes in 116:15, “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.” The Hebrew word for precious comes from a root which means heavy. It means significant or weighty. God takes seriously the death of one of His own. It is no trifling matter as to its timing. It never takes Him by surprise. Rest in His eternal decree and meticulous concern.
  3. Dying is gain and greatly to be preferred by the believer as opposed to remaining in this life. Facing martyrdom Paul writes in Phil. 1:21, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Death is swallowed up in the victory of Christ (1 Cor. 15:55). Give thanks and rejoice for this liberating truth and do not toil under a paralyzing fear of death.
  4. Murderous rampages and all other manner of evil in this world make sense in light of the fall of man into sin and his suppression of the truth of God in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18). For these things, Paul says in the same verse, “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven.” He goes on in the context to describe increasingly greater degrees of evil to which God gives rebellious sinners over as just judgment for their sin. He describes them in vv. 29-30 as “filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, etc.” Don’t be surprised when you see this kind of thing on the news or in the paper. We live in a fallen world FILLED with such things.
  5. Anger must be dealt with completely and thoroughly through the power of the gospel. On the front page of the local paper regarding the Gateway Center catastrophe the suspect’s former mother-in-law is quoted as saying, “He was a very, very angry man.” Jesus called anger toward another murder of the heart (Matt. 5:21-26). Paul warns in Eph. 4:26-27, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” This man apparently saw way too many sundowns without dealing decisively with his rage. It turned to bitterness and resentment knowing no bounds. Let us take heed. Mortify the sins of anger in your life (Col. 3:8) with the strength Christ brings through the gospel (Phil. 4:13). If we do not, we give the devil opportunity.
  6. Sinful people need others to act as brotherly and sisterly keepers. The LORD made clear to Cain after the first murder (his brother, Abel) in the human record that he was indeed his brother’s keeper (Gen. 4:1-10). We must have others in our lives holding us to account, and we must do the same for them, if we are to keep from being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (Heb. 3:12-13), including sins of anger and murder. Don’t go it alone.
  7. Prayers should include petition to God for cultural change. Jesus taught His disciples to pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). Pray for the gospel to penetrate places like Ft. Hood, Orlando, and every other installation, city, and place the news brings to your attention that He might bring the peace only the Prince of Peace can offer (Isa. 9:6-7).
  8. Grief must be felt and processed but not as those who are without hope. One commentator in the local paper made this observation: “We limit our agony and empathy to the 60 seconds that CNN gives the tragedy of the day.” Oh that we might not give way to such shallowness in our humanity. Romans 12:15 exhorts us, “weep with those who weep.” But as we do, we are sorrowful but always rejoicing (2 Cor. 6:10) for the hope that while the whole of creation groans under the weight of sin it awaits a most certain redemption and recreation (Rom. 8:23).
  9. The hope of the gospel must be shared with the lost who grieve over such tragedies as those who have no hope. In directing believers on Crete to live a lifestyle of good works before the watching world Paul reminds through Timothy, “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another” (Titus 3:3). But God saved us by His goodness and kindness, delivering us out of so horrible a condition. Unbelievers need the hope of the Gospel. Make use of the opportunities God brings, even in discussing these recent events with people where you live, work and play.
  10. The people who died at Fort Hood and the man who died in Orlando are no worse sinners for their untimely deaths than anyone else. This is where Jesus was heading in Luke 13:1-5 when He reacted to the reports of the tragedies in His day.

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4 Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Beware the temptation in human arrogance to think that somehow others who suffer some terrible tragedy must have deserved it more than you because of their relative degree of sinfulness. Jesus warns us not to think that way. Twice He says, “Unless you repent, you will likewise perish.” Sin has left us all in the same condition. We deserve judgment. It will come sooner or later to all of us. The only hope, the only right way to think in the face of murderous rampages and collapsing buildings, the first choice that honors God in the face of apparent senseless tragedy, is to repent of our own sinfulness and place our hope and trust in the power of the gospel. He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21). Start here and we will think rightly about this world full of murderous rampages and other consequences of its suicidal rebellion.