Death. A fact of life that nobody likes to talk about. Therein lies much of the problem. Until it comes knocking on our own door, we casually pretend that death is what happens to somebody else. Don’t pay attention to it and it might just go away. Death is a problem for mankind. It pains, it lingers, it causes our souls anguish. It just hurts. But yet there it sits, in the path of each one of us, just waiting.
You might consider this rather morbid talk and I would certainly expect you to, but yet I want to challenge you. Think about one single thing that will befall every single male and female that will ever be born upon this big spinning rock. Think hard. One single thing that everyone MUST do. Marriage. Nope, hundreds of millions of people have never gotten married. Kids, nope, again millions upon millions of people have never had kids. Work, nope some will never be employed. School, nope. Own a car, nope. Travel, nope. Keep it going. It’s hard to think of one thing that every single person must do as they tread this Earth, but death is one. Every single person that has ever lived and will ever live will inevitably face a physical death one day.
So why do we seem so unprepared for it? Good question. Today let’s look at our scripture where we will encounter Abraham losing his precious Sarah. We’ll also go a little deeper and look at what God’s Word says about death and how God’s people deal with death. We’ll even look at how our Lord, Jesus Christ dealt with the sting of death.
Even though some of us might approach death very pragmatically, it still hurts...alot. It’s just how we’re built. We are at our core emotional creatures. God built us to react very emotionally to our surroundings. As a result, we get attached to things. Familiarity brings us comfort and as a result we settle in and we love. We love our parents, we love our siblings, and we of course greatly love our spouse. Basically, anybody or anything that becomes a regular part of our existence, we get emotionally attached to. Even pets. I have seen some people grieve over the loss of their pets more than they did family members. We were built to feel, to bond, to love. Go figure, if God is love (1 John 4:7-8) and we were made in His image (Gen 1:27) then we therefore, were built to love.
So, what happens when that love is lost? We grieve. We mourn. We cry. We weep. We do all of these naturally as we process the loss of love emotionally. In chapter 23 today we see the death of Sarah. She was 127 years old and yet I’m sure Abraham felt that it was way too soon to lose her. In this extreme old age Abraham knew that death was coming. As we age the inevitable comes closer and we must be looking at the facts as they approach. But even knowing that it is coming, what is Abraham’s response?
“Sarah lived 127 years; these were the years of the life of Sarah.2 And Sarah died at Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.” (Gen 23:1-2)
He wept. You might think that “Bible people” were tough, crude, wilderness people, but they were just like you and me emotionally and they suffered loss just like us. Did you know that weeping is recorded in over 63 verses throughout God’s Word? God makes it a point to tell us a lot about loss and the grieving process that entails. Here, Abraham goes to the bedside of his precious wife Sarah and he kneels by her side in a touching scene, and he weeps. The loss was not unexpected, but it is still bitter, nonetheless. He weeps. A deep, soulful crying out. When we suffer a tremendous emotional loss our soul cries out to God and it manifest itself in weeping.
In one of the most well-known passages in God’s Word, we encounter the death of a man named Lazarus. Lazarus was the brother of Mary and Martha and this family was well known by Jesus. When he was in their village, He would stay with them and it is in this home we see many great stories with tremendous meaning. Jesus and this family loved each other greatly. So, when Lazarus gets deathly ill, the sisters send for Jesus immediately as they have faith that He alone can heal their brother. Jesus comes a few days later and Lazarus is dead when he arrives. But in one of the most powerful scenes in scripture, Jesus deals with His human emotions. The Son of God, the King of Kings, our Savior, is a man and He feels. He hurts at seeing the pain of Mary and Martha. He feels the bitter sting of losing someone that He loved greatly. As a result, we have the shortest verse in God’s Word and also one of the most powerful. Stripped of any unnecessary verbiage and prose, it sits in its raw, simple form.
“Jesus wept.” (John 11:35)
Our Lord and Savior, even knowing that He would soon raise Lazarus from the dead and call him forth, wept. The pain of death, the loss of love, affects in a tremendous way.
So how to deal with death? Well, there’s a million books on grief and dealing with loss that can help you better than me, but just know that the process is from God. We are built by God and as a result He built us to react to death and loss in a certain way. He built us to mourn, to grieve, to weep. Let it happen. Embrace it. Jesus wept and at points in our life we will too.
What’s important to realize about death, ties right back to Jesus. Specifically, why Jesus came to this earth. He came here to permanently alter the affects of death. To change the meaning of death to all of us that make a choice. If you make a choice to accept Jesus, your death looks much different. You see the truly sad thing about death is not the physical loss, but the potential of eternal loss. You’ve heard the age old question, “if you died today, do you know where you will spend eternity?” Folks, Jesus came to offer us eternal life. Because of what Jesus did on the cross we can have it. Today we can call upon Jesus and we can have an eternal home in heaven in the presence of God. It’s free, it’s simple and it’s a gift from God. This gift changes the face of death.
So, as I think about death today, I see it differently. Death should not be a reactionary thing to a Christian, but we should see it instead as a call to action. Every single person will be faced with death eventually, so our job is to make sure that everyone God has put in our lives hears about Jesus. Our job is to go and tell the world about the saving power of Jesus Christ. The more that hear, the more can accept. The more that accept, can without a doubt, answer that question in the affirmative. They can answer, “because I have accepted the gift of salvation from Jesus Christ, when I die I will go to Heaven to live with Him for eternity.”
You see, that’s the way we should look at death. Not as an end but as a beginning. Death is truly a great loss for us as we remain behind to tread this worldly path, but for the person that dies and has Jesus, their journey is not over, it’s just beginning. Ensure your loved ones have Jesus, and as a result, your weeping will be just a little bit easier.
God bless all those out there today that are dealing with loss. May God grant you peace as you mourn.
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