Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Why Is Death So Hard to Deal With? | My Favorite Verses | Ecclesiastes 3.19

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. We are currently exploring some of our favorite Bible verses and how they've changed our lives. Also, if you want to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at TMBT podcast. You can also check out our hashtag, hashtag, AskT, TMBT, where you can ask us anything, and we'd love to connect with you. I will never forget my first funeral. My Aunt Diane, she passed away at a very young age.

Starting point is 00:00:35 At the time, I was in seventh grade, but her kids were even younger than me. And to this day, I still have fond memories of her. She was always warm, kind. She was engaged with me and my sister. And it meant a lot because we didn't have a super tight, extended family. And that was something I always kind of wanted. And I felt like I had that when I was around my aunt Diane. But then she was gone.

Starting point is 00:00:58 I remember going to her funeral because I'd never attended one before. And it's one of those strange parts, actually, of living in the modern West. In the ancient world, death was everywhere. And there were no professionals to take care of your death arrangements. There was no funeral homes or anything like that. And so that meant that most people, from a very young age, they knew the sights, the sounds, the smells, the pain and the grief associated with death. because death was everywhere and everybody had to help. Personally, I basically went 13 years without really experiencing it.

Starting point is 00:01:32 And when I did, I felt terribly uncomfortable. I remember the room was full and people were milling around a church foyer. And so I tried to sneak to an edge of the room to hide and to be quiet until the funeral began. I leaned against a wood ledge and then I noticed someone staring just to my right. So I looked down to my right and suddenly, I realized I wasn't leaning against a ledge. I was leaning against my aunt's casket. And right there, just a foot away from my face was my aunt looking up at me, or not at me, towards the ceiling. But she was dead. She was drained of warmth, drained of life. I had never seen a dead person before.

Starting point is 00:02:12 And so it just knocked me over. I didn't expect it. My heart leapt up into my throat. And I was just trying to get away as fast as I possibly could. But that memory, it's kind of been singed into my mind, a memory of her cold, listless face, suddenly just bursting into reality right next to me. That will never leave me. There was a hard truth I had to learn in that moment. Death is unnatural. It's terrifying. It knocks us over because despite knowing that death comes for all people and never really begins to feel right. And by the way, there's no rational reason for this. Most animals don't seem to be so alarmed by death. We live in a rational age. Why can't we take death with cold, factual equanimity? What's the past evolutionary benefit of being so offended by death? And what's the future benefit of continuing to be bothered by it? Why do we talk about health care and extending life as a right rather than just accepting death as a given that comes to all people at different times? Why does love always rage? against death? Why does it shout down death? Why does love demand reasons when death comes to those that we

Starting point is 00:03:28 love? Why is love so offended when death does the only thing death's ever known how to do? It's a universal human experience, and yet it's completely and utterly inexplicable. The narratives of the secular West can't explain why we receive death as an old friend, why we always resisted as a foreign invader. I think there's an answer. And it comes in the book of Ecclesiastes. In fact, I wish I could just say that the entire book of Ecclesiastes is a favorite verse. But that's not the name of the game on the podcast. So I will pick one verse, Ecclesiastes 319. Surely, the fate of human beings is like that of the animals. The same fate awaits them both. As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath. Humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is vapor. This is a sober assessment of death apart from God.

Starting point is 00:04:25 The author is asking a great question. Why is there all this fanfare around death? Why can't we just move on the same way the animals do? At the end of the day, let's just be honest. There's no difference between us and them. The dog was there. The dog is gone. I am there.

Starting point is 00:04:42 I am gone. The dog was remembered. The dog was forgotten. I was remembered. And one day, not too long from now, I'll be forgotten. Everything we build our lives on, it's all vapor, because in the end, we can't even hold on to it. The ancient Egyptians, they created these palatial habitations for the dead, and they would fill them up with gold and all kinds of comfort so that the dead person could take it into the afterlife.

Starting point is 00:05:07 But they never get to hold on to it. Robbers or excavators will eventually reclaim it. Like Jesus said in a parable, you can spend your whole life growing your wealth, your prestige, but there's no way to carry it past the grave. of course the secular story says that there's nothing after death. In fact, it's just one death after another, one person dying after another, which should make the secular person ask, why do I strive so much in this life? Why do I seek to make any meaning out of it? Why am I seeking to grow all of this value? None of it matters. None of it's going to last. In the end, it's all going to end up in the

Starting point is 00:05:44 garbage heat forgotten. And yet, no matter how rational you claim to be, you cannot take death with equanimity. You don't really know how you will respond to death until you face it yourself. Whatever you say is true about God or the afterlife. Christopher Hitchens, he was a famous atheist author and writer, and he told people not to believe anything he said about God around the time of his death. And it's kind of interesting to me. Why was he so certain that death? death was the one thing that could shake his atheist convictions. Why did he think that death, the fear of the unknown, the fear of disappearing? Why would that be the thing that would shake his convictions that there is no God? It makes no sense. Death comes for everyone. He should be

Starting point is 00:06:34 prepared for this. Being afraid of death and having your whole worldview change because you're in the midst of death, that doesn't make any sense if the secular narrative is true. What exactly is so scary about not existing. You didn't exist before you existed. So why do you feel so much pain about not existing again? It all points to the fact that no one can live consistently with the idea that we are just animals, that everything is just vapor, strip away all our arguments, all of our reason, all of our principles, and we find the same basic, utterly inexplicable truth. Death doesn't feel natural. Death is not natural. Death is not normal. It leaps up. It terrifies you, it knocks you over. Of course, did you know that there is a narrative that makes sense of

Starting point is 00:07:22 death? It has a mythical beauty, which becomes almost overwhelming when we realize that it not only feels true, it is true. When God impressed his image onto the human race, he, to quote Ecclesiastes 311, he set eternity in every human heart. Something happened when God made humans in his own image that we became more than animals. We realized in that moment that life is more than a vapor. We realized in that moment that we were made to do more than just live once for a temporary period of time. Has something happened that told us that eternity is real and it's in our heart. And we have this possibility of existing forever. And that means that now, nothing less than life forever can actually satisfy us. Eternity is in your heart.

Starting point is 00:08:12 eternity was in Christopher Hitchens' heart. And even if we don't want to do it, we know that we might, in those final throes of death, reach out and try to grab that eternity. The cosmic narrative in the Bible explains our inexplicable discomfort with death. God is life. He is eternity. But humanity again and again chose death, chose evil, chose our own path. and that's why death feels so unnatural because we weren't made for it. And so the entire story of the Bible is really the story of God's steadfast, immovable mission to overturn death, to deal with the problem of evil that causes death,

Starting point is 00:08:57 and to give us eternity with him, the eternity that we see in our own hearts that we know we were made for, that we long to experience. Jesus not only dies for us, he rises for us. The New Testament boldly asserts, that what happened to him and his resurrection, that will happen to us. Yes, we may die just like Jesus died, but that's not the end of the story. We will rise. Paul says that right now we have what he calls soullish bodies. These are physical bodies ruled by the human will and human desires. But he says one day we will have spiritual bodies. Those are also physical bodies, but now rather than being

Starting point is 00:09:37 ruled by the human will, they're ruled by God's will. God's desires. The hope that Jesus gives us is that after death, we will be with him. I don't quite know what that means, but what that ultimately promises is resurrection on a renewed planet. And if you think about it, we all long for nothing less. Death is an invader, not just because it ends relationships, but because it ends bodies and all the bodily joy that comes along with our body. Death is a fact of human existence. And every human has to wrestle with this question. Why are we so desperately uncomfortable with death? Why are we so different from the animals?

Starting point is 00:10:18 Why does death feel like an invader? The answer is simple because it is. You are not vapor. You have eternity in your heart. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast

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Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Why Is Death So Hard to Deal With? | My Favorite Verses | Ecclesiastes 3.19

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