(upbeat music) - Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. We get a lot of really good questions via email, and many of them are from international listeners like this one, a heavy question. Hello, Pastor John, I am Nate from Manila, Philippines, and I've struggled with this one question my entire life.

My best friend passed away because of meningitis when we were 12 years old, and since then, I've been doubting how much God keeps his promises. He was a pastor's kid, he grew up in the church, he loved God, and he honored his parents very much. If Ephesians 6, verses two and three tells us of the commandment with the promise of long life, why does it seem like God didn't keep it for my best friend?

- I really empathize with Nate, and it's not hard to see how he and his friend would take from Ephesians 6, two and three, the meaning that God promises to each individual child who honors his parents a long life. On the face of it, seems to say that, here's what it says, "Honor your father and mother.

"This is the first commandment with promise," referring back to Exodus 20, verse 12, "This is the first commandment with promise "in the 10 commandments, that it may go well with you, "and that you may live long in the land." This is why parents and pastors should teach a full-blown biblical doctrine of suffering and death, not just later in life, but to children as well.

When children die or lose a parent or a sibling or a friend, they need a solid foundation of teaching in order to understand what's happening to them. It's so important that we look very carefully here now at the wording of Ephesians and at the Old Testament context in Exodus 20, 12, and at the wider context of Paul and other things he says about long life and death and suffering.

It's so important for us. It's so important for our children. So here's some observations. For example, Jesus was the most obedient son to his earthly parents and his heavenly Father that ever existed. There never has been a more obedient son or one who honored his Father in heaven and on earth more.

And yet, Jesus died as a young man. He did not live long on the land, and he tells his followers that they're going to experience similar kinds of suffering. He doesn't say, "Oh, I did this, "but it will never happen to any of you "if you're good enough like I was good enough." He never talks like that.

In fact, throughout the New Testament, obedience to God, honoring God, and keeping his commandments is correlated with risk and danger and death, not with security and comfort. So we need to teach our children like Paul did in his Discipleship 101 in Acts 14. "Through many tribulations, "you must enter the kingdom, "and some of those tribulations involve some of you "they will kill," Jesus said.

And then one thinks of the great promise in Romans 8:28 and 32, that all things will work together for your good, and all things will be provided for you, only to be followed in verse 36, four verses later, by, "For your sake we are being killed all day long." And it doesn't mean only 70-year-olds.

We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. So when we read Ephesians 6:3, "That it may go well with you," it sounds very much like Romans 8:28, "For those who love God." So Romans 8:28 says, "If you love God, "everything will work together for your good." Ephesians 6:3 says, "If you honor your parents, "it will go well with you." And going well with you in Romans 8:35 means you might be killed for Jesus' sake.

That's what going well with you may include. So if we have been trained to see these patterns, if children have been shown this, we won't be as likely to give Ephesians 6:3 a meaning Paul surely did not intend for it to have. In the Old Testament, this promise was made to the people of Israel as a whole that they would endure from generation to generation in the land of promise if they were the kind of people who kept the law and honored their parents.

It's not a promise to each individual Israelite who honors his parents that he'll live out his full three score in 10. Can read it, "You will remain in the land," meaning you, the people of Israel, won't be swept away into Babylon if you're law-keeping people. And they weren't, and so they were swept away.

And so my sense is that when Paul quoted this Old Testament promise, he didn't mean for it to promise a certain long life for every boy and girl who honors his or her parents. And we should then ask, "Well, what does it mean then?" When he says, "And that you may live long in the land." If we do apply that to our children or if we take it to ourselves as children, what might it mean?

And here's my suggestion. If you put the two halves together, it will go well with you and you will live long. I would suggest in view of all we've seen is that it means it will go well with you and you will live as long as it going well with you implies.

In other words, it will go well with you, defines you will live long, not the other way around. Living long doesn't define how it will go well with you. Going well with you defines how long you will live. And that is exactly the way I think we should say it to a child who is dying or who has lost a friend or a parent that in fact we don't speak glibly or say it without tears, but we do say, "You know, in God's mind and God's good heart, "it is going well.

"It's going to go well with you." We may choose not to say that at all in the moment of greatest pain. I'm not saying that we should be pastorally insensitive at all, I'm saying people sooner or later and better sooner before suffering and later perhaps during suffering. Sooner or later, something must be said to the parents who've lost a child or the sibling who lost the brother or sister or like we have here, a friend who was snatched away.

If God takes a child, He gives and He takes, He gives and He takes, blessed be the name of the Lord. If God takes a child, in the most ultimate sense, it has gone well with them and that's what He promised. It will go well for you and you will live long as long as it's good for you on this earth and then forever in heaven.

- Amen, thank you for those sobering realities, Pastor John, to a very heavy question and thank you, Nate, for sending that in. We appreciate international questions. We appreciate questions that come in that are heavy like this one. We're now gonna break for the weekend but feel free to look back on the episodes from the week and search our archive of hundreds of episodes, download the app, subscribe to the podcast or send us a question of your own.

Go to desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. On Monday, I will ask John Piper, how can I feed my soul on the hard books of the Old Testament, specifically the book of Numbers? I'm your host, Tony Reinke. I'll see you on Monday. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)