I Will Die Young — How Do I Fight for Hope?

00:00:00.000 | Today's question comes to us from a listener named Scott.

00:00:07.000 | "Pastor John, based on recent medical diagnoses and due to my life circumstances, the likelihood

00:00:13.640 | that I will reach middle age are very slim.

00:00:16.960 | I'm in my late 20s.

00:00:19.080 | My brother died at age 18.

00:00:22.020 | This prospect has caused me to go through battles of trusting God and fighting off depression.

00:00:27.520 | I understand God is sovereign and I have no right to ask why He's made me this way.

00:00:32.920 | I look forward to being made perfect, but until then, how can I live out the rest of

00:00:37.560 | my life in a courageous manner that is honoring to Him?

00:00:41.680 | How do I prevent the prospect of a premature death from turning me jaded toward our sovereign

00:00:47.360 | Lord?"

00:00:49.400 | My response to Scott's question is a kind of quiet reverence.

00:00:55.240 | Whenever I am in the presence of someone - and as a pastor I've been in the presence of

00:01:00.480 | many - who has been told that their life may be cut short, I feel as though I'm on sacred

00:01:10.400 | ground.

00:01:11.400 | Yes.

00:01:12.400 | As if eternity had penetrated that moment and that place.

00:01:20.240 | So Scott, please know that I want to respond to your questions with a great sense of the

00:01:28.520 | weightiness of the reality that you lost a brother at 18, and that your own life could

00:01:36.680 | well be cut short, not even to reach midlife.

00:01:41.940 | So I don't take it lightly.

00:01:43.760 | However, one of the first things I want to do is gently push back on your statement that

00:01:50.600 | you have no right to ask God why He made you this way.

00:01:55.040 | I realize that's a direct quote from Romans 9:20.

00:01:59.420 | You are a Bible guy.

00:02:00.560 | I can tell that you've read this text.

00:02:04.560 | Here's what it says.

00:02:05.560 | "Who are you, O man, to answer back to God?

00:02:10.040 | So what is molded, say to the molder, 'Why have you made me like this?'"

00:02:19.240 | That's a quote from our friend.

00:02:21.200 | "Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable

00:02:27.440 | use and another for dishonorable?"

00:02:30.280 | So Scott is inferring, "Well, I better keep my mouth shut, because Paul scolds people

00:02:39.920 | who ask, 'Why have you made me thus?'"

00:02:42.440 | However, I think what Paul is rejecting here is not a humble request for understanding

00:02:53.480 | accompanied by a willingness to accept God's answer, but rather a question that is really

00:03:01.800 | an objection—"Why have you made me this way?"—along with a proud unwillingness

00:03:08.440 | to accept God's answer.

00:03:11.080 | So my guess is that in these coming years, for Scott, God is going to give you some very

00:03:21.480 | precious answers to the question, "Why?"

00:03:25.840 | It's not wrong.

00:03:26.840 | It is not wrong to humbly ask God for those answers and accompany that request with a

00:03:36.040 | willingness to say yes to His answer.

00:03:40.120 | Now, you express two beautiful longings in your question.

00:03:45.600 | Number one, you want to live the rest of your life in a way that honors the Lord, you said.

00:03:51.360 | Number two, you don't want to become jaded toward the Lord in His sovereignty in your

00:03:59.360 | life.

00:04:00.600 | It is a wonderful thing that God's Word speaks directly to both of those longings that you

00:04:08.320 | expressed—the issues of honoring the Lord in the face of death and the issue of not

00:04:14.760 | being jaded in the face of death.

00:04:17.800 | And the first way God speaks to the honoring piece is in Philippians 1:20.

00:04:23.880 | I'm sure you know this, but let's all just wonderfully be reminded of how Christ speaks

00:04:32.680 | concerning the honoring of Christ in Paul's mouth here.

00:04:36.400 | "It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not at all be ashamed, but with full

00:04:41.880 | courage now as always, Christ will be honored."

00:04:46.360 | That's your longing.

00:04:47.360 | That was Paul's exact longing in exactly your situation.

00:04:52.840 | "Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death."

00:04:57.960 | Now, how?

00:04:58.960 | How does he pursue that?

00:05:01.560 | "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

00:05:05.440 | If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me.

00:05:08.960 | Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell.

00:05:11.480 | I am hard-pressed between the two.

00:05:13.800 | My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better."

00:05:18.600 | So Paul says that Christ will be honored in his approaching death if he can see and savor

00:05:28.040 | Christ as more precious than life.

00:05:31.600 | It's no accident that some of the greatest Christians, as they approach the end of their

00:05:37.320 | lives, shift all their focus onto seeing and savoring the glories of Christ in his Scriptures.

00:05:46.920 | In fact, John Owen, when he knew he was dying, he'd spent the last days writing on the glories

00:05:53.280 | of Christ.

00:05:54.880 | Secondly, with regard to your longing that you not become jaded at the sovereignty of

00:06:02.040 | God, it is remarkable that the very opposite of becoming jaded toward the Lord is blessing

00:06:10.520 | the Lord, right?

00:06:11.520 | I mean, I think those are the opposite.

00:06:13.480 | I'm becoming jaded and bitter toward the Lord, or I'm blessing the name of the Lord.

00:06:20.600 | And that's exactly how Job responded in the face of the death of all ten of his children.

00:06:29.600 | Their lives were cut short right in his face, and I know that almost everybody listening

00:06:35.360 | to this would say, "I would rather die than all my ten children die."

00:06:39.200 | Of course we would.

00:06:41.960 | Then Job arose and tore his robe—he tore his robe, this wasn't small—shaved his head,

00:06:50.720 | fell on the ground, and worshipped and said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, naked

00:06:57.000 | shall I return.

00:06:58.880 | The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.

00:07:03.000 | Blessed," not jaded, "Blessed be the name of the Lord," Job 1, 20 and 21.

00:07:11.560 | Now just pause and let that sink in, all of us.

00:07:15.600 | "Blessed, blessed be the name of the Lord," not cursed be the name of the Lord, not jaded

00:07:23.520 | be the name of the Lord, "Blessed, praised, spoken well of, reverenced."

00:07:30.600 | So how do we experience the Lord as blessed, the name of the Lord as blessed, blessed,

00:07:37.000 | well spoken of, reverenced, praised, rather than being jaded in the face of decline and

00:07:43.000 | death, even if it's cut short?

00:07:46.200 | Paul put it like this in 2 Corinthians 4, 16, "So we do not lose heart."

00:07:52.880 | There's another statement about the opposite of being jaded.

00:07:55.720 | We do not lose heart.

00:07:58.480 | And he's just speaking right into Scott's situation.

00:08:01.800 | Paul knows that you can lose heart.

00:08:04.600 | People can lose heart.

00:08:05.600 | "I've just had enough of this.

00:08:06.880 | I've lost it.

00:08:07.880 | I can't get my heart back anymore.

00:08:10.240 | I'm a hard, jaded person."

00:08:13.160 | Paul says, "No, no, no.

00:08:15.440 | Let's not go there.

00:08:16.760 | We do not lose heart.

00:08:19.440 | So our outer self is wasting away.

00:08:22.720 | Our inner self is being renewed day by day.

00:08:26.200 | For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all

00:08:32.000 | comparison as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.

00:08:37.480 | For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."

00:08:42.680 | So perhaps, Scott, a story may help as I end this, help focus your and our minds in a helpful

00:08:54.680 | way.

00:08:55.680 | Marshall Shelley.

00:08:56.680 | I know Marshall Shelley personally from way back.

00:09:00.440 | I haven't talked to him for a long time.

00:09:01.880 | He teaches at Denver Seminary.

00:09:03.120 | He's, I think, about my age, a little older, maybe one or two years older.

00:09:08.040 | He lost a child in 1991, and he wrote about it in an article published in Christianity

00:09:14.840 | Today way back then called "Two Minutes to Eternity."

00:09:18.160 | Here's what he said.

00:09:19.760 | He, his son, he named him Toby, he entered the world of light at 8.20 p.m., November

00:09:29.240 | 22, 1991, and he departed, the doctor said, at 8.22.

00:09:36.520 | Why did God create a child?

00:09:39.080 | This is still Marshall talking.

00:09:41.000 | Why did God create a child to live two minutes?

00:09:44.240 | And he says, "He didn't.

00:09:46.920 | He didn't create Toby to live two minutes or Mandy to live two years.

00:09:53.380 | He didn't create me to live 40 years or whatever number he may choose.

00:09:59.360 | God created Toby for eternity.

00:10:02.880 | He created each of us for eternity, where we may be surprised to find our true calling,

00:10:12.560 | which always seemed just out of reach here on earth."

00:10:16.760 | That's the end of the quote from Marshall.

00:10:18.800 | In fact, listen to the way Paul describes that life to come.

00:10:23.080 | First Timothy 6.19, "Store up for yourselves a good foundation for the future so that you

00:10:28.320 | may take hold of that which is truly life."

00:10:34.720 | In other words, the life to come is not a postscript to this true life.

00:10:41.080 | Rather, this life is prelude to real life.

00:10:46.440 | That's what he's saying in that phrase, "truly life."

00:10:50.680 | Paul describes in the coming ages, when God shows the immeasurable riches of his grace

00:10:56.840 | and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus, that's when we will find true life.

00:11:01.880 | Ephesians 2.7, "It will take age upon age upon age upon age of ages for God to show

00:11:09.140 | all his kindness to us because it is immeasurable," Paul says.

00:11:14.280 | This is the mindset of Christians.

00:11:16.880 | That's what we've got to have, me, Scott, all of us.

00:11:21.240 | I've been so helped by stories like that and by the apostle Paul.

00:11:28.200 | I pray, Scott, you will feel this amazing immeasurableness of the kindness that is about

00:11:35.440 | to be poured out on you forever.

00:11:37.680 | That's an incredible story and a very good word for all of us, Pastor John.

00:11:42.000 | We're so short-sighted in this life.

00:11:44.660 | Thank you for your words.

00:11:46.200 | Thank you for listening to this podcast as well.

00:11:48.400 | Over at our online home, you can explore all of our episodes in our archive of now about

00:11:52.400 | 1300 episodes to date.

00:11:53.960 | There you can see a list of our most popular episodes, read full transcripts and submit

00:11:57.500 | questions you might be wrestling with yourself.

00:11:59.680 | For all of that, go to desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:12:06.080 | We are going to return on Monday.

00:12:08.360 | Until then, have a great weekend, enjoying the gift that is this day, a gift from God.

00:12:13.560 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:12:15.040 | We'll see you on Monday.

00:12:15.800 | [END]

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I Will Die Young — How Do I Fight for Hope?

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