22nd March || Dying Wise || Libby Woodward

Morning from me. If you've been here for the last

five weeks then well done. We have got two more Sundays of

our series Living in the Shadows and then it's Easter.

I say two more Sunday, as in this Sunday and next Sunday and

then we celebrate that death does not have the final word.

So if you have missed any of this series and you are

interested or this what I'm going to say this morning has

left lots of questions, then feel free to go back and listen

to the talks on a podcast platform of your choice.

They can be found via our website.

If you that would be easiest. As we finish this series, as we

kind of draw it to a close, my hope and my prayer is that we

don't stop talking about this stuff.

I want to be, I want us to be a church where difficult things

can be talked about, where we don't brush things under the

carpet, where taboo subjects of life and death can be spoken

about honestly, Where when you talk to people, talk to your

friends at work or at school or at college and you they're

having like they've got questions about real life tricky

situations. Our first response is, oh, you

should come to church. We talk about all of that stuff

there. So just because we are coming to

the end of the series doesn't mean we should stop talking

about it because as we've said throughout the last few weeks is

that the more real we are, the closer to God we are.

Church shouldn't be the place where we avoid hard things, It

should be the place where we face them and we find hope.

So as I say over the last five weeks, it might be that you

actually have more questions now than you did at the beginning,

and that's OK. My encouragement is to ask those

questions, to take them to small group and discuss it with the

guys that you sit around with in small group, go for a walk

around Central Park, grab a coffee from Costa and wrestle

with the mysteries of life and death.

You know, and I think one of my most honest answers when I get

asked questions is simply I don't know.

And that's OK, because for me, if I could understand everything

of the mysteries of God in my finite brain, then he really

wouldn't be a God worth worshipping and giving our lives

up for. He wouldn't be the creator of

the universe if I could understand everything.

Throughout this series we have looked at 2 shadows.

The shadow of death that is talked about in Psalm 23 as we

walk through the valley of the shadow of death and the shadow

of God talked about in Psalm 91. The shadow of the Almighty.

And our lives are lived under these two shadows.

Sometimes life feels full of hope and peace, and sometimes

life feels utterly crushing. That's what it means to be

human, to live under these two shadows of death and the shadow

of the Almighty. And so as disciples, as

followers of Jesus, we contend for the Kingdom now, praying for

healing, living with hope, and facing suffering honestly.

And through it all, we trust in the character of God, who is

both perfectly just and endlessly loving.

Through this series, we have been hoping that we would reset

our operating systems, our theology, what we believe, our

imagination, what we think is possible, and our practice, how

we live. Because what we believe shapes

our imagination and what we imagine shapes how we live.

We all have a theology. You might not think that you do.

You might not have ever called it that, but we all have.

We have under underpinning beliefs that affect what we

think is possible, which affect how we live.

You know, if you've grown up in and around church, then you may

well have heard the story. The story that sounds like God

created the world, humans ruined it, and Jesus came so that we

could go to heaven when we die. And that story isn't entirely

wrong, but it is incomplete, because if the gospel was just

about saying a prayer so that we know where we're going to go

when we die, then what are we supposed to do between now and

then? The New Testament is full of a

rich story, a much bigger story of the gospel of the Kingdom.

Jesus didn't simply come to prepare us to die, He came to

bring life. If you know the verse of that

John quotes Jesus as saying in John 10/10 he said this.

I have come that you might have life and life in all of its

fullness. The gospel isn't primarily about

where you go when you die. It's about how you live now that

has eternal implications. And yet Psalm 90 tells us to

teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Why? Because remembering our

mortality helps us to live wisely.

So this morning I'm going to look at 2 questions and I'm

going to ask 2 questions and give some sort of an answer

which might be satisfying, it might not be.

You can make the court judge of that when you've heard what I've

got to say. 2 questions that come up more than anything.

I have been asked them both in the last five weeks, but I've

also been asked them throughout life generally.

The first question is what happens to people who die who

don't follow Jesus? The second is when do we accept

that sickness is leading to death and when do we contend for

healing? So that's kind of two questions

in one. So the first question, if you've

got a Bible, you might want to grab it.

You might want to make notes. I'm going to refer to a few

different passages this morning. And as Pip said, if you don't

have a Bible, we have some on the information table.

We'd love to give you 1 to give you 1 to give away if you know

someone that would like to read it.

So the first question, what happens to those who die who

don't follow Jesus? Such a big question, a question

that actually is often rooted in pain.

People we love, people we worry about.

You know, it's very easy to give theoretical answers until you're

faced with a specific person or situation.

If you want a longer discussion on this, a guy called Stephen

Bartlett who has the podcast Diary of a CEOI think it's a

very famous podcast, but he recently interviewed a guy

called Wesley Hough just last week, and it's a 2 1/2 hour

interview and they discussed this very topic.

And Wesley Hough, he's an American, I think he's a

historian, theologian, and apologist, and he gives a

beautiful answer. So I'll let you look that up if

you want to, but it's a hard question.

What happens to people who die who don't follow Jesus?

Another way that people ask that question, and I've been asked

this question more times than I can remember, particularly with

by teenagers. How can a loving God send some

send people to hell? A question that is asked often

by people. The first thing to say is that I

don't believe that God sends anybody to hell.

Some of you have sat up and thought, do I need to find a new

church? 2 Peter 39 says this.

The Lord isn't really being slow about His promise as some people

think. No, He's being patient for your

sake. He does not want anyone to be

destroyed, but wants everybody to repent.

Another verse, John 316. You might know this, for God so

loved the world that he gave his Son, so that everyone who

believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

The Bible doesn't reveal a grumpy headmaster waiting to

catch people out. Or if you've read the book or

seen the film Matilda, God is not like the Trunchbull.

He's not waiting, anticipating, relishing the thought of sending

us to the chokey. The Bible reveals the exact

opposite, that God is a loving father running towards us as his

children, as we know from the story in Luke 15 of the prodigal

son. So the real question isn't where

does God send people when we die?

The real question is, who do you want to be with for all

eternity? Eternity with God or without him

in heaven? On the new earth?

Resurrected with God? God who is love, or what we

might choose to call hell? The exact opposite, where love

is not, where God is not. We can see throughout scripture

and from what we know of the character of God that he doesn't

force relationship on anybody. Now if you're old enough to have

watched the film Bruce Almighty, I realise it is quite an old

film now, but the character that Jim Carrey plays, Bruce is given

God's powers and he can do anything except God says you

cannot make people love you. That is their free choice.

God says to us, He says to every human being that has ever lived.

He says to all of us who are all made in his image, I love you, I

want you, I am here for you. But love never removes choice.

We always get to choose. We get to decide whether we want

to be with Him or not. And none of us no the private

conversations that happen between our friends and God, our

family and God, those that we love and God, the secret

whispers of our loved ones and God at that moment of physical

death. We are not Privy to those

conversations. We're not Privy to what is said

in the quietness of our of their hearts.

It's our choice, but it's also important to remember to hold

intention that the Bible does also talk about the reality of

judgement. The Bible tells us that God is

just, and that is also really important because justice

requires judgement. Without judgement, evil is never

addressed. When we look out at the world,

we see the news headlines, war, violence, injustice on a global

scale, on a national scale, on a personal and intimate scale.

We actually want God to deal with evil, don't we?

Well, I do, and I want to encounter the future that

Revelation promises, where there is no more sickness, no more

mourning, no more pain, no more wars, no more death, no more

injustice. And for that world to exist,

evil must be dealt with. God will judge, and that is

really good news. And so we find ourselves living

in this tension yet again of God's love and his desire to be

with us always and the requirement of justice and

judgement. You know, if you look at Matthew

25, there's a moment of Jesus recording, saying, telling a

story and saying, I never knew you.

Justice and judgement will happen.

But it's really important to think about who who the God is

that you love and you worship and you follow.

Do we trust his character? Because God's judgement is

firmly rooted in his character and he is love.

John tells us God is love and he is also just.

So I suppose ultimately, especially for those of us

grieving loved ones, the real question becomes what do we

believe God is like? Who do we believe God is?

Do we trust the character of God?

Do we trust that he is love and he is just?

Dallas Willard, who's a theologian and pastor, said

this. If God can find any excuse to be

with you forever, he will. And I love that because it

because it puts eternity, it puts the final outcome into the

hands of our gracious and loving God.

Yes, sin is real. Yes, judgement is real.

Yes, our choices matter. But the final word rests in

God's heart, not ours, in his character, which is perfect

justice, perfect love, and perfect grace.

So if this question weighs heavy on you, if you have asked it or

you are asking it, then I want to encourage you to plant your

feet firmly in the character of God.

We live under the shadow of death and the shadow of the

Almighty, and through it all we trust the character of God, who

is both perfectly just and endlessly loving.

The second question, when do we accept that sickness is leading

to death and when do we contend for healing?

This question can so often pull us into two extreme camps.

On one hand, you've got the camp of low expectation.

We reduce our expectations of God so that we never have to

feel disappointed. So we pray for very little.

We expect nothing, and so we aren't disappointed.

But that isn't faith. That's also not the example that

Jesus gives us and he is our model.

The opposite extreme is the hype.

Hype Christianity, you know, maybe the Word of Faith

movement. The exact opposite that says

healing always happens. You know, even if you're walking

around with a broken leg, you're still healed.

And if you're not, it's because of someone's lack of faith.

But this is also not reality. We know that, don't we?

We have prayed for many, many people.

Some people have been healed and other people have not been

healed. Some of us have prayed

desperately for the healing of people that we love, and it

hasn't happened. One of my friends, John, he was

dying and he had complete faith that God was going to heal him

to the point that he had asked some of our friends that if he

died, he wanted them to go round and pray for his body to be

resurrected, which they did. And he died and he wasn't

resurrected in that moment. That wasn't because of his lack

of faith, because he had so much faith.

We live in the tension of the now and the not yet of the

Kingdom. Both these extremes ignore real

life. And what have we been saying?

That the more real we are, the closer to God we are.

We pray for healing because of the Kingdom of God.

You know when Jesus walked the earth, he said the Kingdom of

God is near. The Kingdom is of God is at

hand. If it's at hand, it means we can

grasp it and we can pull it towards us.

The Kingdom means the place where what God wants happens,

happens where God wants, where God where what God wants

happens. And what does God want?

Well, we know from Revelation 21 he wants no more sickness, no

more death, no more pain. We want that future Kingdom.

We want it here now in full, don't we?

But it's not yet here in full. However, Easter tells us that it

is here. It has already begun.

Jesus resurrection means that the Kingdom has begun.

It is here. In part, the resurrection of

Jesus means the Kingdom has been inaugurated.

And so it's another tension, the now and the not yet of his

Kingdom. So when we encounter sickness,

what do we do? How do we approach it?

Yes, we contend for healing. Jesus says go and heal the sick,

cast out demons and raise the dead.

He's our model. That's what we do.

We contend for healing, to contend to fight for, to to

exert effort, to pray, to not be passive, but to contend for

healing. Not because we believe in magic,

but because we believe that the Kingdom is inaugurated.

Jesus's resurrection means the Kingdom is near, it's at hand,

and some of us will can tell stories of miracles that we've

seen happen, of people that have been healed.

But don't ever lose sight of real life IRL.

We have also, many of us in this room, seen heartbreaking losses.

Both are real and so it's important to contend for healing

and ask for wisdom. Sometimes we pray and contend.

Sometimes we recognise that somebody's body is failing.

They are nearing the end of their life on earth in this

moment and that is a wisdom call.

We don't always get it right. Sometimes it requires us

recognising that we have been formed by comfort.

You know, I said at the beginning of this series, we

worship comfort in our culture. We're formed by it.

We run a mile from suffering and pain if at all possible.

We don't want anything to do with it and we will numb our

feelings to get rid of it, but we will all suffer.

Jesus says in this world you will have trouble.

But I have overcome the world, you know, I think praying for

healing is probably more accepted in the church, wider

church now than it was 20-30 years ago.

I wonder if some of that is because we worship comfort.

We want to wave a magic wand that says we don't have to

suffer, we don't have to walk through the valley of the shadow

of death. But yet, some of the most sacred

moments of my life has been sitting with people preparing

for their death, praying, saying goodbye, wondering what paradise

will look like. I had one conversation with a

friend discussing what was going to be available in on the feast

table that we were going to sit at with our Heavenly Father,

entrusting them to God. There is no formula for this.

It's only wisdom through prayer, through the guidance of the Holy

Spirit. But as we approach people, as we

pray, as we work out whether we're contending for healing or

we're preparing to meet our Maker, the key question is, what

are we actually trusting Jesus for?

Jesus didn't promise that every prayer would be answered the way

we wanted it. And I've just said, actually,

Jesus said that we would face trouble in this world.

You will face trouble. But take heart.

I have overcome the world. But Jesus also promised that he

loves us, that he is with us and he will never leave us nor

forsake us, that death will not win and eternity is secure.

If you've read the story of John the Baptist in Luke 7, it really

helps I think understand this slightly.

John the Baptist is is in prison and he sends his followers to

Jesus to ask him the question, are you really the Messiah?

Which might seem strange considering John was his cousin.

They'd grown up together, he'd prepared the way.

Read a bit of the beginning of Mark and it'll make a bit more

sense. But John is facing death.

He's in prison. He's about to be executed.

And he wants to know if Jesus really is who he thought he was.

He wants confirmation, You know, if Jesus really is the Messiah,

then maybe he won't get executed.

Maybe he'll get freed from prison.

And Jesus's response to John's followers simply says the blind

see the lame walk. The good news is being preached.

John's situation didn't change. He wasn't freed from prison.

He was still executed. But the signs that accompanied

Jesus, the power and the proclamation were enough for

John to know that the Kingdom had come, that Jesus was who he

thought he was, and he could be trusted.

It's the tension that the Christian life is lived out in.

When prayers are unanswered, we do well to hang on to the truth

that we worship the crucified God.

Psalm 22 Jesus was dying on the cross, and he cried out, My God,

my God, why have you forsaken me?

There is no suffering that we experience that He does not

understand. But the hope of the gospel is

that suffering is temporary, eternity is forever.

We live under the shadow of death and the shadow of the

Almighty. So we contend for the Kingdom to

come now, praying for healing, living with hope, and facing

suffering honestly. And through it all, we trust the

character of God, who is both perfectly just and endlessly

loving. So I think the invitation to us

is to move from fists to open hands.

Open hands with our questions, with our grief, with our anger,

with our unanswered prayers, and simply to say, Jesus, we trust

you. It's a choice.

He's not forcing it on any of us.

We live under the shadow of death and the shadow of the

Almighty. We contend for the Kingdom now,

praying for healing, living with hope, and facing suffering

honestly. And through it all, we trust

that the character of God is both perfectly just and

endlessly loving. Why don't you stand if you're

able? We're just going to pray.

The Spirit of God is here already and I we want to

createspace for the Holy Spirit to meet with us intimately,

personally answering the questions of our heart.

You might want to close your eyes if you want to.

It might be that you want to physically open your hands as a

posture of saying, I'm moving from clenched fist to open hands

or Lord, will you fill me? And we simply say, come, Holy

Spirit, we bring to you our unanswered questions, our

unanswered prayers, our fears, our hopes.

Would you fill us with faith and love, hope, wisdom?

We say we trust you, Jesus. We're just going to wait in the

silence space for you to have your own conversations with the

Lord.