My Friend Honored God and His Parents — Why Did He Die Young?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:00:07.480 | We get a lot of really good questions via email,
00:00:09.760 | and many of them are from international listeners
00:00:12.100 | like this one, a heavy question.
00:00:14.280 | Hello, Pastor John, I am Nate from Manila, Philippines,
00:00:17.600 | and I've struggled with this one question my entire life.
00:00:21.080 | My best friend passed away because of meningitis
00:00:23.400 | when we were 12 years old, and since then,
00:00:25.600 | I've been doubting how much God keeps his promises.
00:00:28.600 | He was a pastor's kid, he grew up in the church,
00:00:31.000 | he loved God, and he honored his parents very much.
00:00:35.440 | If Ephesians 6, verses two and three tells us
00:00:37.840 | of the commandment with the promise of long life,
00:00:41.040 | why does it seem like God didn't keep it for my best friend?
00:00:44.640 | - I really empathize with Nate,
00:00:49.360 | and it's not hard to see how he and his friend
00:00:53.680 | would take from Ephesians 6, two and three,
00:00:57.760 | the meaning that God promises to each individual child
00:01:02.760 | who honors his parents a long life.
00:01:05.520 | On the face of it, seems to say that,
00:01:09.520 | here's what it says, "Honor your father and mother.
00:01:13.280 | "This is the first commandment with promise,"
00:01:15.880 | referring back to Exodus 20, verse 12,
00:01:18.720 | "This is the first commandment with promise
00:01:21.600 | "in the 10 commandments, that it may go well with you,
00:01:25.320 | "and that you may live long in the land."
00:01:29.240 | This is why parents and pastors should teach
00:01:33.000 | a full-blown biblical doctrine of suffering and death,
00:01:37.520 | not just later in life, but to children as well.
00:01:41.600 | When children die or lose a parent or a sibling or a friend,
00:01:46.600 | they need a solid foundation of teaching
00:01:51.960 | in order to understand what's happening to them.
00:01:55.140 | It's so important that we look very carefully here now
00:02:00.140 | at the wording of Ephesians
00:02:01.640 | and at the Old Testament context in Exodus 20, 12,
00:02:06.080 | and at the wider context of Paul
00:02:09.200 | and other things he says about long life
00:02:11.160 | and death and suffering.
00:02:13.480 | It's so important for us.
00:02:15.520 | It's so important for our children.
00:02:17.500 | So here's some observations.
00:02:20.280 | For example, Jesus was the most obedient son
00:02:24.960 | to his earthly parents and his heavenly Father
00:02:29.140 | that ever existed.
00:02:31.320 | There never has been a more obedient son
00:02:35.780 | or one who honored his Father in heaven and on earth more.
00:02:40.780 | And yet, Jesus died as a young man.
00:02:45.580 | He did not live long on the land,
00:02:48.080 | and he tells his followers
00:02:50.180 | that they're going to experience similar kinds of suffering.
00:02:54.580 | He doesn't say, "Oh, I did this,
00:02:56.460 | "but it will never happen to any of you
00:02:59.040 | "if you're good enough like I was good enough."
00:03:01.420 | He never talks like that.
00:03:03.740 | In fact, throughout the New Testament,
00:03:06.580 | obedience to God, honoring God,
00:03:09.700 | and keeping his commandments is correlated
00:03:13.920 | with risk and danger and death,
00:03:17.980 | not with security and comfort.
00:03:20.700 | So we need to teach our children like Paul did
00:03:23.620 | in his Discipleship 101 in Acts 14.
00:03:28.020 | "Through many tribulations,
00:03:29.620 | "you must enter the kingdom,
00:03:30.720 | "and some of those tribulations involve some of you
00:03:34.520 | "they will kill," Jesus said.
00:03:37.940 | And then one thinks of the great promise
00:03:40.500 | in Romans 8:28 and 32,
00:03:43.820 | that all things will work together for your good,
00:03:47.740 | and all things will be provided for you,
00:03:50.580 | only to be followed in verse 36, four verses later,
00:03:54.580 | by, "For your sake we are being killed all day long."
00:03:58.940 | And it doesn't mean only 70-year-olds.
00:04:01.700 | We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
00:04:04.900 | So when we read Ephesians 6:3,
00:04:08.300 | "That it may go well with you,"
00:04:11.260 | it sounds very much like Romans 8:28,
00:04:13.980 | "For those who love God."
00:04:16.780 | So Romans 8:28 says, "If you love God,
00:04:20.000 | "everything will work together for your good."
00:04:22.260 | Ephesians 6:3 says, "If you honor your parents,
00:04:24.620 | "it will go well with you."
00:04:26.820 | And going well with you in Romans 8:35
00:04:30.820 | means you might be killed for Jesus' sake.
00:04:33.740 | That's what going well with you may include.
00:04:37.980 | So if we have been trained to see these patterns,
00:04:42.980 | if children have been shown this,
00:04:46.300 | we won't be as likely to give Ephesians 6:3 a meaning
00:04:50.660 | Paul surely did not intend for it to have.
00:04:55.660 | In the Old Testament, this promise
00:04:59.420 | was made to the people of Israel as a whole
00:05:05.220 | that they would endure from generation to generation
00:05:09.460 | in the land of promise if they were the kind of people
00:05:13.460 | who kept the law and honored their parents.
00:05:16.660 | It's not a promise to each individual Israelite
00:05:19.960 | who honors his parents
00:05:21.060 | that he'll live out his full three score in 10.
00:05:24.060 | Can read it, "You will remain in the land,"
00:05:26.820 | meaning you, the people of Israel,
00:05:28.500 | won't be swept away into Babylon
00:05:30.860 | if you're law-keeping people.
00:05:33.140 | And they weren't, and so they were swept away.
00:05:36.260 | And so my sense is that when Paul quoted
00:05:38.620 | this Old Testament promise,
00:05:40.900 | he didn't mean for it to promise a certain long life
00:05:44.740 | for every boy and girl who honors his or her parents.
00:05:49.420 | And we should then ask, "Well, what does it mean then?"
00:05:54.420 | When he says, "And that you may live long in the land."
00:05:59.420 | If we do apply that to our children
00:06:02.180 | or if we take it to ourselves as children,
00:06:05.380 | what might it mean?
00:06:06.700 | And here's my suggestion.
00:06:09.440 | If you put the two halves together,
00:06:12.100 | it will go well with you and you will live long.
00:06:16.200 | I would suggest in view of all we've seen
00:06:18.920 | is that it means it will go well with you
00:06:22.780 | and you will live as long as it going well with you implies.
00:06:27.780 | In other words, it will go well with you,
00:06:31.580 | defines you will live long, not the other way around.
00:06:35.620 | Living long doesn't define how it will go well with you.
00:06:40.140 | Going well with you defines how long you will live.
00:06:43.540 | And that is exactly the way I think
00:06:46.740 | we should say it to a child who is dying
00:06:51.740 | or who has lost a friend or a parent
00:06:56.980 | that in fact we don't speak glibly
00:07:01.740 | or say it without tears, but we do say,
00:07:04.820 | "You know, in God's mind and God's good heart,
00:07:08.860 | "it is going well.
00:07:10.400 | "It's going to go well with you."
00:07:13.860 | We may choose not to say that at all
00:07:16.180 | in the moment of greatest pain.
00:07:17.900 | I'm not saying that we should be pastorally insensitive
00:07:21.220 | at all, I'm saying people sooner or later
00:07:24.580 | and better sooner before suffering
00:07:27.320 | and later perhaps during suffering.
00:07:30.780 | Sooner or later, something must be said
00:07:34.820 | to the parents who've lost a child
00:07:37.180 | or the sibling who lost the brother or sister
00:07:40.940 | or like we have here, a friend who was snatched away.
00:07:45.940 | If God takes a child, He gives and He takes,
00:07:50.180 | He gives and He takes, blessed be the name of the Lord.
00:07:53.540 | If God takes a child, in the most ultimate sense,
00:07:57.420 | it has gone well with them and that's what He promised.
00:08:02.420 | It will go well for you and you will live long
00:08:07.140 | as long as it's good for you on this earth
00:08:10.460 | and then forever in heaven.
00:08:12.040 | - Amen, thank you for those sobering realities, Pastor John,
00:08:16.060 | to a very heavy question and thank you, Nate,
00:08:18.500 | for sending that in.
00:08:19.780 | We appreciate international questions.
00:08:22.420 | We appreciate questions that come in
00:08:24.180 | that are heavy like this one.
00:08:26.160 | We're now gonna break for the weekend
00:08:27.500 | but feel free to look back on the episodes from the week
00:08:29.660 | and search our archive of hundreds of episodes,
00:08:31.540 | download the app, subscribe to the podcast
00:08:33.380 | or send us a question of your own.
00:08:35.540 | Go to desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:08:39.860 | On Monday, I will ask John Piper,
00:08:41.580 | how can I feed my soul on the hard books
00:08:44.020 | of the Old Testament, specifically the book of Numbers?
00:08:47.220 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:48.180 | I'll see you on Monday.
00:08:49.340 | (upbeat music)
00:08:51.920 | (upbeat music)
00:08:54.500 | [BLANK_AUDIO]