Dying in Faith

Coming up today on Renewing Your Mind what the Scripture means about somebody dying in their sins, is that it describes that person who up until the very last moment of their lives until the cost of the line.

They refuse, they actually refuse to submit to their creator. That is a tragic reality for so many we all know that death is coming.

Many people deny the judgment is coming as well. The fact is that we will either die in our sin or we will die in Christ today on Renewing Your Mind.

Dr. RC's Paul continues his classic series surprised by suffering. It's a cliché in our culture and our language that there are two things that we cannot avoid.

And they are best antioxidants, but I think all of us know certain people who have been clever enough for astute enough or crooked enough to avoid or evade taxes. But none of us is been able to find a method yet to evade death.

That's one thing that we understand as adults we are going to die if the Lord carries and so the question is not if we shall die.

At this point I'm not even going to address the question why we will die.

We've already looked at that a little bit. The two questions I think that haunt all of us are these two the questions when and how. But I noticed when I read the Scriptures when the Scriptures talk about the how question of death is not so much concerned about whether or not I will die through a heart attack or by an accident or throat gunshot wound or by cancer or some other disease, but rather what the Scriptures are most interested in.

In terms of the how question of our death is what will the state of our souls be when we pass from this plan I remember is the last words that my mother ever spoke in this world is one of those ironic things that my mother have the die.

The day that my son was born early in the morning of that day. Our son was born and I pick my mother up her job and we went to the hospital and I showed her this new born grandson of hers and she was thrilled beyond words. I brought her back to her apartment and she said she wanted to retire early that night. She was somewhat tired and so just before she went into her bedroom to go to sleep. She looked at me and she smiled. She said you know what a nice what she said this is the happiest day of my life. As she went into her bedroom and went to sleep and died in her sleep. I mean, would you like to die like that. I would certainly like that I know of a theological professor at Princeton University who had a distinguished career for many many years and the story is that he was out for his afternoon constitutionally walking down the street in Princeton and just quietly slumped over and left this planet was over. Just like that. I wonder if it goes with the profession when it be wonderful if this is the way God has ordained the theologians would die because that's how I would like to duck my mother died peaceably without suffering without struggling saying this is the happiest day of my life.

Those were her last words.

But when the Scriptures talk again. As I said about how best there concerned about what our relationship is to God. At the moment we breathe our last time you tell a little story here about two men for the same last name, last name is Graham few months ago I received a letter from my professor of theology that I had in seminary, and he was reporting.

In that letter about a mutual friend that we had, whose name was Tom Graham. Tom was a clergyman in the northern part of the United States and had been sick for the last couple of years with cancer and I got this note from my professor and he said I just wanted to write to let you know that Tom Graham passed away this week and then he wrote one more sentence in this note he said that Tom died in faith, my theological professor wasn't concerned about whether or not Tom was going to die to heart failure, suffocation to whatever medical cause of death. There may be how question that my professor was concerned about was. Would this man die in faith and to say this was to echo a statement that is made again throughout the Scriptures about heroic persons whose lives are set forth before us in the pages of the Bible when the Scriptures say of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob of David. These all died in faith, that is, they were people of men and women who trusted God, not for a moment or not it was convenient but for the long haul up to the very point of their deaths that the other man named Graham.

I'm sure you've all heard of his name was Billy Graham and this past summer I had to speak in North Carolina and I had had an opportunity. I never thought would happen may to have dinner with Billy Graham and I was impressed.

First of all by how big he is ever seen.

Billy Graham person coming while he's just a huge fellow there and then I'm not all that big, and we were sitting at the dinner table and talking over certain things and I said you know Dr. Graham there something I'll always remember about your ministry something that stuck in my mind, I'd like to ask your buddies what set us up with.

I was in college freshman in college, there were a group of fuss fellows that were gathered in the rec room of our inventory and we been playing ping-pong pool and whatever else college freshman play and the TV was on over the corner and the big deal of that night. The press was making something of a sensation over was the Billy Graham was going to appear on national television on the jack car show.

Imagine it, Jack Parr, Billy Graham never had distancing to fit together. I will not goodness sakes, Jack Parr is is such a master rep participate in witticism and jocularity.

Healings never serious for a second. How the world is Billy Graham going to relate to an interview by Jack Parr.

We washed it in soon as Billy came out was introduced.

Jack Parr started messing around and playing a guide to gazing joking and keeping Billy Graham is a farther arm slightly good about anything serious about religious right in the middle of all the jokes. Billy just stopped and looked him straight in the eye and said Jack you sentencings with God's eye. He started writing. I thought he was gonna say look, Jack, if you came in a bus in a way to say a couple more courses of just as I am, without one play, but I was.

I just couldn't believe that Billy Graham would have the presence of mind on national television in a very polite and yet straightforward way he so soft it's Jack Parr and so on this occasion last summer when I had this opportunity to have dinner with Dr. Graham said that really left an impression on me and I wondered whatever happened to Jack Parr's star had a meteoric rise in any sort of faded from the scene. Johnny Carson came to this place is the track party trick maintain a relationship with him, not why it stuck in my mind because when the Scriptures talk about death. They really are only concerned about two ways of the Scripture says there are those who die in faith and it also refers to those who die in their sins is also the most tragic words that you read in the pages of holy rent to say that somebody died in their semi Weimar sinners. And there's a certain sense in which we all die in our sin, but the distinction here that the Scripture is making is at the time of our death. Have we, or have we not ever settled things with God. What the Scripture means about somebody dying in their sins, is that it describes that person who up until the very last moment of their lives and telecast of the line. They refuse, they actually refuse to submit to their creator. I had an uncle.

I had an uncle who was one of the roughest office guys in all the world. He was a laborer, at least: meat muscles.

He had muscles and he looked like a page on a streetcar named desire. When he would come in our house with the with the old-fashioned sweatshirt and the muscles bulging his fingernails all black and grimy, and when I decided to go in the ministry, Maya, my uncle just about had apoplexy, I might as well I'm I told him I had a sex change operation and he said that never have anybody that one of the ministry had to be a bona fide sissy that had just completely abandon all hopes of manhood and he said all you can wear your collar around backwards and were little dress and all he just he rode me on mercy. He contracted a fatal disease in the last days of his life in the last weeks of his life.

When I would go to see him. He was still laughing, Mark the things of God in my profession but I knew he loved me may never's that always came through all the fooling around someone. I remember the day we I was in his bedroom.

Things are rough foreman. I said to him, are you ready to make a look to me and all the joking stopped and he says now the tears came in. He said I want a dummy that I had when others rear and unspeakably precious experiences with design and he got things settled and I know that my uncle died in faith told that the Billy Graham lesson check part.

He said RC I don't know where Jack Carr is right now the space but were still in touch and we stay in touch as it is my prayer that when Jack Parr's time, it's that he will die in faith but already told you, my mother's last words. This is the happiest day of my life.

It's not the same way with my father's last words when I was 14 years old. My father was stricken with a stroke that was severe and that stroke left him paralyzed in half his body is one side was virtually useless. He could use his army couldn't use his leg and his mouth drooped to speech was impaired and he lost the vision in one eye and with that devastating stroke. It was the end of his career.

The end of his income and the doctors told him and told my mother at that time that there was no cure for the problem that he had and that he would slowly die. Well, it took him three years to die and he had three more strokes in the course of that time he spent the last three years of his life confined to a chair in the den of our home is an overstuffed chair and he had whites there on his legs and had this great big magnifying glass to be used for one good I had only did in those last three years was to sit there and read the Bible, which was somewhat surprising to me because he wasn't a particularly religious fellow and I had no understanding of the Christian faith. At that time I was pagan as a young boy could be in those last three years my father began to think about the ultimate meaning of life. He began to read the book use that magnifying glass when a man is paralyzed and loses his position of earning a livelihood taking care of his family.

That's that's extremely difficult emotionally from man and as a matter of dignity to my father he wanted to be able to sit at the dining room table at the head of the table every night at dinner time now to get him from the den up through the living room into the dining room was a Herculean task when time came for dinner. I went into the den and I got myself in front of his chair sort of hunkered down and I took his two arms and put them around my neck and squeezing together at the wrists and then Sarah got up and serve a semi-fireman's carry got him on my back and dragged him, as it were out of the dining room table and said and sat him down in that chair at the head of the table and he sat there with this useless one side and sat with the family every single night in his seat.

The head of the house for three years.

Well, at the end of this three year period.

After dinner dishes were cleared. I went back to the end of the table and I got them around my neck again and started back towards the den instead of just passing through the living room.

He asked me to stop said he wanted to sit down on the couch, living room, so I settled on the couch so it's a matter/something site. He said son. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith conference.

I had no idea where those words came from. I had no idea what their biblical and theological meaning was about. But as uninitiated in religion as I was at that point in my life. Now I'm 17.

When this is going on and he saying those words to me. I understood exactly what my dad would say my dad was saying to me it's over, I'm going to dine out. As a matter of fact, those were that he uttered that night were the last words he ever spoke in this world because within an hour.

He had his fourth stroke went into a coma and the next day he died, and is almost like he made a decision today. I've had undertake. I'm going home now and telling you. Goodbye son and I want you to learn how to die if he taught me how to live, but I sure hope you come out was in for a couple years after that I became a Christian in my version reading of the New Testament. The long way through the Gospels Matthew Mark Luke and John and Romans in verses are derivatives all those Pauline epistles everything that I came to the second letter of Paul to his beloved disciple, Timothy.

We get to the end where Paul's imprisonment is expected. Now to be executed.

We know that he was executed by Nero in 65 A.D. and at the end of this correspondence that he has his young disciple. He writes these words to Timothy for I am already being poured out like a drink offering, the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith's office was were the words of the last words and now I understand what my dad was trying to tell me on his death, and then I understood. Ladies and gentlemen that my father died in faith that's helping to what doesn't me was assuming the dine faith.

Faith is a word that has become so cheap in our culture. It's almost become a word that conjures up magic and superstition. But the simplest meaning of the word faith in New Testament language is the work trust which brings us full circle doesn't it's one thing to believe in God so thing to believe God for thing to trust that there is a God. It's another thing to trust God for whatever is and for whatever happens and what happens to me and I notice a way that the apostle brings all these words together. He says I thought the good fight, usually Christians think about fighting as something evil, Jesus of Blessed are the peacemakers were called to be people who are DOS all who are meek or humble, not who were belligerent, bellicose people are contentious and ready to fight at the drop that but there are certain struggles to which we are called and when we get serious illness. God is on and when we find it tooth and nail only fight as hard as we possibly can fight it.

We give every shot we can again here at MD Anderson. The going Ashley's positions uptight as they can almost predict who's going to recover and who hasn't their those who when they get some of these diseases. They just going to fight this thing every inch of the way and their spirit becomes contagious and inspirational to other people because the fight that they're engaged in is a good fight, then immediately the possible changes from the imagery in the language of the contest of fighting to that of the race and this is something else I noticed about the Christian faith that anybody can be a Christian for five minutes or for five hours for five days for five years, but again the recurring theme in the Scripture is he who endures to the end is the one who experiences redemption and the race of which the apostle speak is not 100 yard – it's a marathon. It's the kind of race that requires that extra courage to keep going when you don't feel like you have any strength. You know the thing that Judy Griese said to me in Miami was his RC. I can't take anymore and I thought about when I joined Weight Watchers the biggest little hokey little thing that they do when you join this organization only supportive, they give you a soda straw. I hand out to the first nice it was that sick, you take it home and you put on your refrigerator is what is at this. That's the straw that breaks the camel's back. Every time you like that straw you asked yourself what was the major come in here and decide to go on this diet. The last straw is what I thought of the image of the Camelot beast of burden that loaded down with all of this straw that they had to carry. There's a certain point at which the camel just can't take one more piece of straw. One more piece of straw and camel collapse with Joan. I don't know where that last piece is for me and I don't know where it is for you and even Judy Griese didn't know she said I can't take anymore God gave her 30 more than she talked.

She finished the course and she kept the faith. That's how I want to die. One guy trusting God.

I want to die without abandoning in him. New Testament tells us that the just shall live by faith. It also tells us just die is Dr. RC scroll from his series, surprised by suffering and you're listening to Renewing Your Mind. I'm we web did you hear what RC was saying there. He said I want to die without abandoning hope in him in June 2016. I have the privilege of sitting down with RC to talk about how he was applying these truths to his own life to his own suffering. At that time he was dealing with a number of significant health issues and here's what he had to say, the Lord knows what I'm gonna die and honk right. He certainly knows that I'm going and so what I go to bed every night I've prayed.

My prayers and then at the end of my prayers.

I pray the 23rd Psalm.

Every time the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want them and what Serta want.

When the Lord is your ship lays down in green pastures. He leads related by the quiet waters he restores my soul and go on with that, he leads me in the paths of righteousness for his namesake and yay though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil men.

That's that's reality when you when you're not well and you are in the valley of the shadow of death, and you know it and the whole thing.

I asked for is that that I not be afraid. Nothing I won't have to pay nothing. I won't suffer because Rogan have to do that but the worst thing is is the fear and so when when he says I will in the lockbox of the valleys showed that, I will fear no evil.

Why, because thou art with me thy rod and my staff they comfort me on and on with preparing a table before me in the presence of my enemies in the morning my head with oil my cup runs over.

Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. The word of God is the most piece in joining instrument. There is an in the world and so I have been I would have to say that that through this. I've been remarkably free from fear. When he went home to be with the Lord in 2017, surrounded by his family doctor strolls faith was secure in Christ. We don't know when our last day on earth will come but when it does, I hope that you will be able to echo the words of Paul.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. We like to send you this series on an MP3 CD again. It's titled, surprised by suffering doctors. ProSeries helps us put these things into perspective and we will send you all six messages for your donation of any amount to Ligonier ministries. You can call us and make your request at 800-435-4343 or you can go online to Renewing Your Mind.org finding solutions for life problems should send this directly to the pages of Scripture and the pure facing an issue right now and need to know what God is said about it in his word. Let me encourage you to check out ask Ligonier. It's our online biblical and theological chat service. Drawing on legionnaire's vast library of resources were able to answer your theological questions live 24 hours a day, Monday through Saturday. You can ask your question at ask.Ligonier.work in Job chapter 14.

Job asks if a man dies, will he live again. That's the ultimate question scroll address it tomorrow as we continue his series surprised by suffering. On Renewing Your Mind