Learning To Deal With Death

There is a normal sorrow that accompanies the passing of a loved one, caused by the pain of separation and loneliness. Death has such finality to it. We don’t know how to deal with it. It is the only certainty we have in life. Everybody experiences death. The rain falls on the just and the unjust. People that Jesus love, they get sick. Tragedy happens to them. How we deal with death as a Christian speaks of our relationship with Christ.

The death of a loved one can really challenge your faith and reveal your heart. Many walk away from God because they do not understand why it happened. Some get angry with God, some argue with God, Some stop talking to God, and others draw closer to God. There is nowhere in the Bible it says we are exempt from pain and suffering. It is an inevitable part of the human experience.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, her seminal work on grief and grieving, she noted and others have noted, that a person during a time of loss goes through five distinct stages of grief. The first one being denial, you hear something that something bad happened. Your loved one died. You go no. Must be a mistake. The second one is anger. People get angry at doctors for not saving their loved ones, angry at a nurse for not being there, angry at themselves. Why did I do this? I could have prevented this. Anger at God. Third stage bargaining. Lord, please, please, please, please. I’ll do anything. Please don’t let this happen. Don’t let this be true. You start going through a bargaining stage. Then, the next stage is depression. A person after it all sets in, they just sink to such a low. So dark they can’t see any light at the other end of that tunnel. It’s just so bad, so bleak. The fifth stage, says Ross and others, is acceptance. You finally come to terms with it. You deal with it. It’s still painful. But you come to accept it, talk about it, work your way through it. When a person is going through grief, at whatever stage, what they say and how they act is completely unpredictable. We all grieve differently. Today, very briefly I want to talk about what the bible teaches about dealing with death.

We enter a funeral service in John 11. It’s the funeral service of Jesus’ close friend, a good friend in life, named Lazarus. He has two sisters Mary and Martha. They were a close-knit set of siblings who lived in a house close to Jerusalem in a town called Bethany.

It was that Mary–” verse 2, “who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped His feet with her hair whose brother Lazarus was sick. Therefore, the sisters sent to Him saying, Lord, behold he whom you love is sick. When Jesus heard that He said this sickness is not into death but for the glory of God that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

Tragedy has pushed its way into this family. We don’t know what it is. We don’t know what the sickness was. But some sickness happened. Here we learn our first lesson. Take notice of the basis of their appeal. Lord, the one whom you love is sick. Hey, that’s a good model for you and me when we pray. If you are sick, say, Lord, the one whom you love is sick. Don’t you love that? That’s how we want to view it. It’s not Lord, we who love you or he who loves you is sick. The basis for their appeal is not well, you know, Lord, whenever you are in Jerusalem, you do stay at our house quite often. And, we do feed you lots of meals. That is a lot of food at our own expense. We never charged you for a room. So we think you owe us one. How many times do we tend to list all the things we do for God and expect God to repay us for our faithfulness? Now I want you to notice this. Because there is a lot of prosperity preachers teaching wrong theology that says if Jesus loves me and I love Him, I, as a Christian believer should never experience sickness or death. So here we see it’s possible for Jesus to love someone and for that someone that Jesus loves to actually experience physical sickness unto death. We must realize that. Sickness and death happen to all people. Look at verse 6.

“So when He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was.”

That doesn’t make sense to us. We think it ought to read something like since Jesus loved them so much, He immediately did what they asked and went to the aid of Lazarus to make sure he wouldn’t die or get sicker. No. It’s because Jesus loved them, His delay is tied to His love for them.
Here’s what we need to learn God’s delays are not denials. In fact, if we start evaluating a delay from God– first of all that’s a misnomer, there are no delays from God. What you perceive as a delay from God doesn’t say anything about His timing. It says a lot about yours. God is never late. You’re early. He’s always on time. Peter said the Lord is not slow concerning His promise as some men count slowness. He does things with a perfect timetable.

Mary and Martha are going to get angry when they see Jesus, especially Martha. And they teach us a very important lesson. We have a tendency to interpret the love of God through our circumstances rather than interpreting our circumstances through the love of God. Do you see what I’m saying? We look at the loss of a loved one and say If God loved me this would have never happened. But what we fail to realize is we don’t see the whole picture. Two sisters didn’t see the big picture. What they wanted was a resuscitation of Lazarus. Jesus wanted a resurrection of Lazarus. Which do you think is better? Recently there was a death in my family. It was sudden and unexpected. There was no chance to say final goodbyes but we are looking at it from only our perspective. We as a family will never know perhaps God was saving her from tremendous physical pain and emotional agony. He sees the big picture. You and I don’t. That’s why we have to trust.

In closing, I want to draw your attention to Mary and her conversation with Jesus.

Now Jesus had not yet come into the town but was in the place where Martha met Him. The Jews who were with her in the house, and comforting her, when they saw that Mary rose up quickly and went out followed her saying, she’s going to the tomb to weep there. Then when Mary came where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell down at His feet–“

we always see her at the feet of Jesus– “saying to Him, Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” She’s down at the feet of Jesus. It’s where she always is. She’s worshiping. Now listen to this. When life was calm when life was good when there’s a dinner party and Jesus is there, Mary’s at the feet of Jesus, but when life is a calamity, she’s also at the feet of Jesus. Broken-hearted, yes. Same question as Martha, yes. But in worship.

How you face death will be determined by what posture and position you take before Jesus. Will you worship Him and praise Him even though you don’t understand your circumstances? Even though there is a heartbreak? Even though you lost someone and this is pulling your heart out? But I’m at your feet where I belong. And I worship you. That’s the safest place. It’s the place of comfort that I know. Or will you stand and accuse Him. If you would have been here like Martha. But, there’s worship here. We have an ultimate comforter in Jesus in every circumstance and trials of life, we need to be at His feet. The pain we feel from the loss of a loved one might be hard to understand, but as “Born Again” Christians we have a blessed hope in Jesus beyond the grave. How you deal with your grief directly speaks of your relationship with Jesus. Are you hurting? call on Jesus, He is our ever-present help in our need. He is the only one who can comfort you and give you peace that surpasses all understanding. Amen