The Sting

 "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, concerning those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest, who have no hope." I Thessalonians 4:13....The Christian's sorrow is accompanied by hope." Henry Blackaby

For so many, really, for most, there isn't any time when someone feels more helpless or vulnerable than at a funeral. Something within us, dating back to our human ancestors, Adam and Eve, when sin and death entered the world through their sin, knows that death was never meant for us. Yet it is present, and it is inevitable. We may refuse to think on it, but eventually, we will all die, no matter our denial, or how hard we fight against it. When one among us does die, we grieve, and if we don't have the living hope of Jesus Christ, we have little if anything to offer to those who are grieving. Someone said that we all know we're going to die, but no one really expects that they will. That's why the presence of death is so devastating to us. It was never to have a place in the human race, or in the world itself. But it does.

In the ancient world of Christ and the Jews, when a person died, there was a scene of great mourning. Sorrow was expected to be expressed, and expressed loudly. So much a part of the culture was it that there were actually professional "mourners" who could be hired to be present at a funeral to loudly display sorrow at the person's passing. This was the scene in John 11, when Jesus arrived at the tomb of Lazarus, His friend, now dead for four days. All around Him were people weeping in sorrow at the passing of Lazarus. In this, Henry Blackaby puts forth a powerful truth. He said that Lazarus' friends "had the Resurrection and the Life right in their midst, yet they were grieving." In this Blackaby isn't saying that a believer should not feel sorrow at the death of a loved one. He's saying that the sorrow of a follower of Christ is never final in the presence of death. In Jesus Christ, we have the sure hope of the One who is the Resurrection and the Life. In Christ and His resurrection, death has been conquered. The grave is not final, the sting of death, as the apostle Paul writes, has lost it's victory. Christ and His Life, not death, is the Victor.

Sin and Death have cast their pall over the entire created universe. All the misery, pain, sorrow, and loss that we can experience in this life were never meant to have any place at all. The entrance of sin into creation brought with it all the horror we see in this fallen world. Those who live for the things of this world will always be prey to it, captive to it. Not so for the people of God. For those who have received Him, He is our Living Hope. In the midst of all this fallenness, He is our hope, and He is a sure hope. Death has entered this world in countless forms. Christ has conquered death in every form.

Despite this truth, far too many who are His live like those who surrounded the tomb of Lazarus, mourning his loss, feeling that his death was final. We, like they, fail to see or recognize that the One who is our Living Hope, our Resurrection and Life is right here with us. Yes, we suffer loss in this world, and we grieve in this world, but we do so with a hope that cannot be extinguished. A hope that knows that He has conquered all sin and death, and that He will one day raise us up, wipe away all tears, and usher in a new world and creation where sin and death have no place, and are unknown. Does this sound like a fantasy? To the lost, I'm sure it does. Not so for we who have believed upon Him. We can say, as did Paul, "I know Whom I have believed, and I'm persuaded that He will keep me against that day." We can say, with Paul, "O death, where is your sting, O death, where is your victory?" Where is it indeed?

Blessings,

Pastor O