1-31-2016 Bioethics Part 42

The speaker begins by praying and expressing gratitude for the opportunity to discuss the topic of death and dying. They acknowledge that this topic is complex and often avoided in society. They ask the audience why it is unpopular to talk about death and dying, and the responses include fear of death and discomfort with the topic. The speaker explains that the topic is complicated because there is still much unknown about death and dying, and advances in medical technology have made dying more difficult. It is emphasized that death is a vital topic because everyone will experience it, and it is important to understand and prepare for it. The two predominant views on death are discussed: embracing it as a natural part of life or fighting against it at all costs. The speaker highlights the benefits and drawbacks of each view. They conclude by emphasizing the importance of living towards death and preparing for it in a virtuous manner. The difficulty of dying well is acknowledged, and it Let's pray, God we thank you for this wonderful period of time in the midst of winter when it is nice and warm outside and we pray that as we meet here that we would be encouraged by your word and by thinking deeply about how we ought to live and how we ought to die. Give us wisdom we pray in Jesus name, amen. A few weeks ago we started talking about our last topic in bioethics that covers a very wide range of things so it's going to take a while to get through the topic of death and dying. We saw that the topic of death and dying is rather unpopular, seriously complicated and a totally vital topic at any place and at any point in time. So I would like for you to help me out in summarizing what we did a few weeks ago because I'm sure you all remember exactly what we did. Why is talking about death and dying so radically unpopular today in our society? Nobody wants to die, there you go. What else? It can be anything by the way, this isn't a test, you're not going to get graded. We already have somebody that wants to get saved, that's nice. You can walk in the aisle, yeah. I don't even have to do anything. Anybody? Why is it so unpopular? Well let's just make it real personal. Why do you not like to talk about death and dying? Why is maybe being here something you're like what the heck did I show up to this for? I don't want to be here. There you go, yeah. What the heck do we say to people who are in that position? I don't even want to, I don't even think about it. Good. Yeah, okay, so then you have the Christian point of it, do I believe what I say I believe? It's unpopular because it's like death might mess with my belief structure, which it will or it should. It doesn't mean it's going to change it but it should make you think seriously about what you believe. Good. Why is it so seriously complicated, the topic of death and dying, here and now? Right, okay. Yeah, nobody in here has died and like fully died and then like never come back and just gone off and like that's something we do and then it's kind of over. So it's complicated because we just don't know even kind of how to think about it really. What else makes it complicated? There's so many ways to not quite die. Yeah, you want to expand on that? What does that mean? Yeah, great. Yes, the scientific progress that we have made in today's society, in the kind of advanced technological society which we live in, makes dying infinitely more difficult. There are, I don't know, there might be, I don't know, I know for a fact, there are some people in this room that would be dead today were they to have lived 200 years ago. Just because of the medical technology that was not available then is available to us now. We have not only things that keep us alive longer but also things that lead to a large number of complications which we will get to. Do you have, same thing, yeah. Okay, so it's complicated and why is it so vital to talk about death? Everyone dies, there's a number one reason. We said this last time we were together, each and every one of you is currently in the process of dying. You're welcome, good morning, right? Everybody. So, which makes the first two interesting, like the fact that it's unpopular and it's complicated, makes the vitalness all the more kind of, I mean, everybody's dying. It's not something that you might do or might happen to you. Like, you might be put in the position of having to wrestle with the issue of assisted suicide. That's a very real possibility. It is very real that you have to make the decision, possibly, of whether or not to quote-unquote pull the plug on life support with somebody who is in a permanently vegetative state. However, what is absolutely true is that you are going to die and everybody you know and love is going to die. So, we should probably be talking about it. Why else is it vital? It kind of gets to what we were talking about before. We don't exactly know everything about what happens when we die, but that doesn't mean we don't know anything, so we should know what we can know. And also, it's so difficult to talk about because we don't, like, we don't talk about it and we don't, it's weird, we're weirded out by it. So, we should learn about it. If anything is important, probably learning about death is important. We saw that there's two predominant views on death. Anybody want to give me one of those views? How do we view death? What? Great. Yep. So, this is a, this is a rising view in our society today. It's just, it should be peaceful. It should be something that we just come to grips with. It's because it is a natural part of life. So, you just embrace it. What's the other one? Pain for, pain free. Okay. What does that mean? Yeah, most people prefer to die in their sleep. Good. Yes, that is true. That is even true, though, of the people that just want to embrace it as a natural thing, right? They're just like, I'm just going to come to grips with the fact that I'm going to die. Everybody wants to die without, just without any pain, without any suffering. The, the opposite view of coming to terms with it and just being at peace because the natural event is what? Avoiding at all costs, and that it was the dominant model until about the last 20 years. It's still, I think, probably the predominant opinion of most Americans and most Christians. I'm going to do whatever it takes to just give me more time. I don't care what it is. I don't care what it costs. I don't care what it might do to me. Just keep me alive. Now, what is there to commend in the first view, the peaceable death come to grips with it because it's natural view? Okay, you're being real about it. Good. Right. Yeah, so it is something that's going to happen, so coming to grips with it is, in some very real sense, beneficial. Anything else? What is there to commend? Not trying to take control? Right. You are not the master of your own destiny. I don't care what Barney tells you, right? It's, you are not in control of the world you live in. Good. What is there, though, that's wrong with the view? It makes it so we can't go, that, that's fully in line with the way Christians ought to view death. Okay, so it doesn't inform you about anything? Okay. There you go. Yeah, that's another big one, right? It's not, death is not natural. Death is what happens to all of us. However, death is a result of the Fall. Death is a result of us in disobedience to God. Death is not something that is just a natural part of life. You and I were not created in order to die. You and I were created in order to reach, here's a fancy term for the day, eschatological life, right? The life with God forever in his kingdom, which is what we have now attained in Jesus Christ. What about the opposite view, though? The view that, like, we just need to fight against this with everything we've got. What's there to commend in that view? What's positive about that view? Okay, they're gonna do something about it. Sure. They want to take an active role. Good. Yeah, you recognize that life is a gift. To lose it is not a good thing. Death is the enemy. We are at war against the enemy, right? What about, though, what's negative about that view? At what point do you stop? Yes? Is it based on fear? So now we're back to virtues, which is what we're going to be talking about for the next couple weeks here. If you act out of fear, you are wrong. Yes, that is an absolute blanket statement that applies to every single action you will ever take in your life. If you act out of fear, you're wrong. Done. That is a vice, it is not a virtue. It is understandable, but it is not positive. So to act out of fear is wrong, and there is, it is very hard to see how you are loving your neighbor by just keeping, just, I'm just gonna, either I'm gonna stay alive, or I want you to stay alive. I'm gonna put you through whatever hell you need to go through here just to keep breathing, because I can't deal with your loss. That's not exactly loving. Does that mean that we can't fight diseases or anything like that? No, absolutely not. My goal through this whole entire thing on bioethics has been to make the world a much more gray place than you thought it might have been when you came here, and I have succeeded at that task up until now, and hopefully with this upcoming stuff that we're going to get into, it will be much grayer, because there are very few things that are absolutely right or absolutely wrong when it comes to medical decisions. There is always, the focus needs to be placed on what, why are we doing what we're doing. So, in conclusion, it's a long summary, but a good one. Last week we saw that a healthy way to live was to always be living towards death, the inevitable end of all who live in a fallen and broken world. We saw that to do that, we need to be pursuing what right now? As we're living towards death, what do we need to be doing today? Living, okay, great, living how? Yeah, so you are always constantly living before the face of death, always. You can ignore it, and that will turn you into a miserable and terrible person upon the arrival of your own death. It will come as a surprise and a shock, and it will mess with you hard, or you can always be living towards death, pursuing a virtuous life, preparing yourself for the day in which you will inevitably die because you find yourself sinful. You cannot hope to die well unless you start preparing for it now, and dying well is difficult, isn't it? Why could we say that? I mean, I've never died, I've never been in the process of dying, right, I've never had cancer and just been wasting away. How is it that I could possibly say that dying well is hard to do? Okay, you got funerals you got to go to? Yeah, we have evidence all around us of people dying poorly. The question is, is that the way that Christians ought to die? Yes or no? Why don't Christians die differently? Well, it's because I don't think we live very differently. So we're going to go back to the virtues and look at especially how these virtues play into the topic of death. As we saw at the beginning of our study, faith is the foundation of all the other virtues. Faith for Christians is valuable for what reason? Why is faith so foundational for the Christian? Okay, so you wouldn't see the world the way it is? From a truer perspective? Okay, why is our faith so valuable? There you go. Yep, so it's actually the object of our faith that matters. Your faith, and this is kind of talking about this, reading with a couple guys in Galatians and Romans, and it's been interesting to see that if you are saved on the basis of how much faith you have, what hope do you have of getting to heaven? Zero. That's right. It is not the level or quantity or strength of your faith that saves you. It is the object of your faith that saves you. The object of your faith is Jesus Christ, who is the fulfillment of all the promises of God. Faith matters for the Christian because of who we have faith in. So, let's think about it for a moment. There's not just one right answer to this question, but I want to know what you think. How does the virtue of faith work for a Christian living towards death? It takes away fear. Why? Okay, yeah, hope is the next virtue. Thanks for stealing my thunder, Brian. Yeah, so there is this thing that's placed in God, right, through Jesus, and so we go, okay, it's removing fear and looking towards this nebulous future that we have. Any other ideas? By faith, what are we? Children of God, right? We are declared something. Righteous. Which makes us these children of God. That act of being declared righteous is called? Justification. Good job. So, we are justified by faith. That means that we are declared to be righteous, which means what for your standing before God? Objectively. Blameless. So, one who has faith in Jesus Christ is before God blameless. Now, here's the interesting thing. Question. Are you currently blameless? No. And? Yes. It's interesting that you are not made blameless, as in you are made perfect objectively that you don't sin anymore. You are declared blameless. It is the most awkward position of the human condition before God. You are, in the words of Martin Luther, simultaneously justified and sinful. You are not what you actually are going both ways. Before God, you are blameless, but actually sinful, and here you are sinful, but actually blameless. This is the thing. If you ever go to a Christian, and the Christian goes, I am struggling with faith, what should be your first response? That's right. That would be a good one. You can ask why, but you should already know the answer. Faith is ridiculous. Faith is absurd. Faith is definitely a supernatural gift from God. The reason why I cannot create faith in you, or you cannot create faith in me, is because it is ridiculous to believe that I am made right with God on the basis of something God did for me, and it's not actually true of me. That is craziness, but it is true. Faith helps us live towards death, because when I die, what do I know is true because I have faith in Jesus Christ? What do I know for a fact? There's all kinds of things I don't know, but what do I know? You're blameless in the face of the sight of God. That's right. I will be accepted by God because I have faith in Jesus Christ. Now we can ask all day long, how do I know I have faith in Jesus Christ? How do I know I'm justified? That's for a different day. The reality is that for those who are justified in Jesus Christ, 10,000 things that we don't know are going to happen to you, but what we do know is going to happen to you is the only thing that really matters in the world, right? Is there going to be streets of gold? Who gives a crap? Nobody cares. Are there really pearly gates? Can I make the pies in heaven? Nobody cares. You shouldn't care. Why? Because the only thing that does matter, first of all, there's no way to know that kind of stuff. I don't care who says they know any of that stuff. There's no way to know that, but what you do know is the only thing that matters. I'm blameless before God. If that doesn't help you die well, then nothing will. Nothing. Now, question. Does the reality of the virtue of faith in the life of a believer make death a friend and comfortable and without any fear at all? Why yes? Yeah. Okay. So there's always this kind of tension, right, where you're working back and forth. You're like, yeah, okay, I know that's true, but oh man, how could that be possibly true? So there's this yes and no thing. It will not just remove everything, though. If you go, listen, if you walk up to somebody who's dying and go, I'm struggling, and you go, oh yeah? Will you have faith in Jesus Christ? And they go, yeah. You go, what are you crying about? I don't know why you would. This is ridiculous. Exactly. Listen, dying is terrible. The only reason that you might not think dying is terrible is because, A, you're a fool and think that you're never going to die. That's dumb. Or, number two, you've never died before, so you don't know how bad it hurts. It's going to be miserable for the vast majority of us. For some, it's going to be more miserable than others. It's like the most encouraging Sunday school of all time, right? But let's be honest. It is not going to be good. And those of us who are older, in this congregation, nobody's old up in here, but the older ones can tell you that the longer you live, the physical reality of life gets more difficult, right? All these older people look at all the younger people going, yeah, what's up now? We know more than you do. It's true. Living longer makes you realize that living can be painful. Faith is necessary and faith is difficult. And you might think, well, Jeremy, I got faith a long time ago. I've believed in Jesus since I was six years old. To which I would say, like, congratulations, good for you, I'm glad. However, if you are sitting here and you are thinking, okay, I have every reason to believe, I am reasonably confident that I am justified by faith, I believe that, I find comfort in that. Are you now done pursuing faith? No. At what point are you done pursuing faith? When you're done, when you are dead. You and I daily need faith in order to hold on to the promises of Jesus, don't we? And the longer you live, what is objectively true of you? Every single day, like when you wake up tomorrow, what will be true of you? Okay, you'll be closer to death. And when you're thinking about the justification, being declared righteous, though you are sinful, what will be objectively true about you tomorrow? Huh? Okay, you'll still be justified, and what's the other part? You will still be a sinner, however, tomorrow you will be more of a sinner. You will be more deserving of the wrath of God 15 minutes from now, probably, than you are right now. Definitely in the next three hours. You already deserve to go to hell for what you have done in the last three hours. It will be weightier on you three hours from now. Therefore, you will need the grace of God, as shown in Jesus Christ, more tomorrow than you do today. Now, the nice thing about being justified in Jesus Christ is, it gets rid of how many of your sins? All of them! Not just most of them, not just some of them, not just 99% of them, all of them. Done. However, you demand, you need justification more tomorrow than you do today, should you live that long. Faith is needed daily to hold on to the promises of Jesus. How does faith come about? There you go. Yep, Romans 10, 17. This is good for all of you who want to grow up and be preachers. Burn this one down to the back of your brain. Romans 10, 17. It comes at the end of a long line of argument by Paul. However, he says here, faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. How is it that faith is engendered in human beings through the word of Christ being spoken? David Van Drunen says this, There is probably nothing better that prepares people for death than being or becoming members of a faithful church of Jesus Christ, where the word that produces faith is proclaimed Sunday after Sunday. God also ordains sacraments, baptism in the Lord's Supper, to be administered alongside preaching. Sacraments are God's visible and tangible ways of setting Christ and his redeeming work before our sight, taste, and touch. That sounds like the most absurd and ridiculous thing to the vast majority of American Christians today. Alright, we can go take a poll. I'm willing to place all the money I don't have in the world on the fact that if we were to poll people, what is the most important thing you could do as a Christian in order to die well, the last thing they would say is, become a member of a church where the gospel is preached week in and week out. Well, you know, the most important thing I could do is think about my family. Pray hard. Read my Bible more. Anything but this. But if this is how faith is engendered in human beings, then it is one of the most helpful things we can possibly do. Question, could you go to heaven? Could you have faith and could you die well if you weren't a member of a local church? Yes. It's possible. So why do it? Yeah, where the gospel is preached. That's right. What does that assume about you, naturally? You need help. That's right. The reason why people go, I just need a spiritual experience with Jesus on a mountain with my Bible is because they do not realize the truth about them. I got this. It's what made America great in a lot of ways. That self-reliant spirit of idiocy that goes, I can do anything I want. And it got us pretty far down the road as far as the civil society has gone. However, it has made religion a disastrous joke. I don't need Jesus. I mean, Jesus could help me out and stuff, but I got this. Same thing goes with faith. And my faith is, by what I do, I don't need the help of anybody else. It is one of the most laughable, though tragic, conclusions that human beings could ever come up to. So how has this played a role in your life? This is testimony time. How has the preaching of the gospel affected you in relation to faith? Go for it. Anybody have anything they would like to say or share? That was good. Thank you. Hmm. It's calmed your fears? Yeah. I like that language. It hasn't taken them away, has it? Nope. Alright. It's calmed them, though. You will never get rid of your fears. But there is a real calming of them that happens in the preaching of the gospel. Good. Anything else? Hmm. Yeah. It clarifies it. Why does it need to be clarified? Yeah. Yeah. We make up our own religion. We all have a tendency to make up our own religion. Here's the proof of that. I guarantee you that almost everybody in this room, historically speaking, when it comes to Christianity, is a heretic. I'm not kidding. I bet you that I could find out within five or ten minutes something that you currently believe in that has been deemed a heresy or a belief that is not to be held within the Christian community. Now, why do I not expel you from this church and get really mad? It's because you don't actually know you believe that. Let's go with the good one. You probably grew up believing that the Trinity is like water. I grew up hearing this. The Trinity is like water. Why? Anybody know why? It takes three different forms. It is all water, but it can be... what are the three forms? Ice? Water? Steam? That's right. Why is that not appropriate? That's right, it can't be all three at one time. Steam cannot be water. It becomes something different, even though it is technically the same thing. It is totally different. And you go, well, but that's such a nuanced thing. You're right. It is nuanced. We work hard at understanding who God is, because if you do not understand who God is, then there is no possibility of you rightly understanding how it is you are made right with that God, or what that God demands of you, or what that God is going to do with you being made right or not being made right with you. It just keeps going down the rabbit hole. So you and I seek to, on a weekly basis, get to know God better. You do not know God nearly as well as you ought to. And neither do I. We work at it, day in and day out. Because faith, again, is valuable for the Christian for what reason? We started with talking about faith. Why is faith valuable? No, I know that. But why is it valuable? It's valuable for this life, but why is it not valuable for this life? No, I know that. But why is it valuable? It's valuable for this life, but why is it not valuable? Huh? Okay, because we are weak. That's true, too. But if I got faith in a tea kettle, that is not going to get me very far. So faith in and of itself is invaluable. What about faith is valuable? The object of my faith is valuable. It is valuable because we are weak. It is valuable for this life. It is valuable, though, because of the one we place our hope in. However, what is our faith in? Jesus Christ. That's right. It would be interesting to bring you all up here one by one. It would be nerve-wracking. Some of you hate public speaking. I'm not about to do this. However, it would be interesting if I invited you up here and said, Okay, ready? Give as much time as you want. Tell me everything you know about Jesus Christ. Go. Would everybody's answer be exactly the same? Would some of the things that we said out loud be crazy? Probably. Probably, right? We've never had to say that. How do I say all that and make it all fit? It's funny because we go, Oh, yeah, I have faith in Jesus Christ. The moment that you go, Who is Jesus? Things start to get complicated. You go, You know, I mean, it's just like the things like the second person of Trinity. It's like God and man. He's both at the same time. It's complicated. It's like the flux capacitor union or something. I don't know. It's like something's going on there where they're like together. It's separate but not. And then like he had a body. And like he did some stuff. He's like spit sometimes. Jeremy was talking to Mark. He's like spit and did miracles. And like he walked on water and made some bread. And like then they got kicked off with him. I think, I don't know. It's like somebody killed him. Like it's the Jews. But not the Jews. But like me. The Romans. And like then he ascended to heaven. I don't know what that means. But like then he's like seated at the right hand of God. Like I don't know if he's actually seated. I don't know what kind of chair it is. But he's sitting there. And he's not going to come back. I don't know when. And I don't know how really. But then like. Right? It's so easy to blow off this idea that to have faith. Yeah, faith in Jesus Christ. Yeah, duh. I'm fundamentally convinced that the reason why there's such an absurd idea that faith in Jesus Christ is not the foundation of all the virtues is not the most important thing to believe for when we die is because you and I don't actually have a very high view of Jesus. We don't really care. I need anything else. Jesus? Who cares? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got that out of the way. Yet if we were to try and vocalize who Jesus is most of us would be completely lost. And it is not easy. Which is why we have to be assaulted on a weekly basis by the gospel that informs us of who Jesus is. Over and over and over again. Without faith there's not much chance of growing any other virtues. Thankfully, God creates faith in us through a rather ridiculously simple way. Which is? Preaching the gospel. Week in and week out. Faith is the first and the foundation of everything that leads to hope. We're not going to get all the way through this one, but Christian hope is distinct from regular hope in that it's not just some vague sense of a better tomorrow, but a fixed hope on a known though not fully understood reality. Give me an example of hope in the way that we ordinarily use it in this life. Like just in your everyday verbiage. How would you use, or how would somebody use the word, the concept of hope? There you go. I hope it's not raining today. I want to take my students outside for recess. What's up? What else? I hope I get an A on my test today. That's right. It's just wishful thinking. And is that inherently a wrong way to use that term? No. It is the way that we have come to use that word in the English language. There's nothing wrong with that. I hope that I eat boldly I hope that I eat a bowl of flaming hot ramen in the next 48 hours because it sounds desirous to me. However, I do not know that it is going to happen so that is something dramatically more in my control than I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow. So there's a better chance of that happening to me but still it's just this vague hope for the future. What about Christian hope? Why is that different? It's a sure expectation of what? Okay, something that's already been done. Do you understand all of what is encompassed in the Christian hope, yes or no? Is it humanly possible to understand everything that is encompassed in the Christian hope? No. Give me an example of something that is not possible to know that is encased in the topic of Christian hope looking towards the future. The day that Jesus comes back. What else? What is all heaven going to be like? We have some idea but we don't have really when it comes down to it very much of a clue of what's going to happen. But as the men who have been in the Calvinist study know for the last couple of weeks we're not really going to care what it's like because God is going to be there and we're going to be there and that's going to happen forever and that's going to be enough. Hope for Christians is born out of faith. Faith in Christ. So our hope is in what Christ accomplished is what you and I will participate in forever. That which he accomplished is what I will participate in. Since we don't have that right now we wait in hope. Now do you and I have part of what Christ accomplished? Yes. Give me an example of what you and I tangibly have today as God's people that is a result of the work of Jesus Christ. Faith. Indwelling of the Spirit. Faith. Faith. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. Assurance. There you go. We keep going. There's all kinds of things that we currently have but as I have said on a regular basis and will continue to say to the day I die if this is as good as Christianity gets I quit. I fire myself. Please for the love of God go home because if this is as good as it gets we are all hosed and this really isn't worth anything. I am waiting for something. I hope you are waiting for something. If you are not waiting for something and you're a Christian then what the heck are you here for? And I guarantee you that you are as discouraged as all get out because life is not a whole lot of fun all the time. We have hope. Christian hope draws us towards the end because what you and I are hoping for in Christ is what we don't have. If we do have it are we hoping for it? No. We already have it. So now we're back in the topic of faith. They're not completely separate but it's like I need to have faith that what is true of me. Right? Justification is something that the Christian currently has. So do you hope for justification? No. You have to have faith that justification is true but it's not a hopeful thing. I hope for the resurrection for example. I don't have it yet. This goes a long way towards killing the ordinary tendencies we often have to simply look for something a little ways down the road to have our hope fixed merely on things in this life. For example, I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow. I hope I get an A on my test. I hope I eat a bowl of flaming hot ramen in the next 48 hours. Those are simple hopes. I'll bet though that if we all had a nice little time where we got in a circle and had a nice little time of honesty talk we would get down to it that you and I have some pretty profound hopes for this life. Right? Anybody want to share one? Like a big hope that they have for like their life. All your children will be saved. There's a big one. Yes, Jake. He hopes he's a millionaire. Alright. Cool. There are profound hopes that we have. Big hopes. Hopes that look way down the road. However, it is easy to merely get focused on our hopes for this life, isn't it? Kevin Young and Greg Gilbert wrote a great book called What is the Mission of the Church? And in it they say to be a Christian then is to receive God's good gifts and enjoy them the most need them the least and give them away most freely. Same thing goes for our hopes. You just have hope in this life. Right? Some of you have hopes about what you want to do. You have a five-year plan. I don't understand those kinds of things. But you have them and you're working towards them. That is great. Is it wrong to have hope in this life? No. Absolutely not. On a big level, right, I hope wars end. And also on a small scale. I hope I get to eat some delicious food in the next 28 hours. None of that stuff is wrong. However, our hope for this life often overwhelms us. And hoping for what is coming in Christ in the end, tempers our hopes and dreams in this life. So, for example, go to the book of James with me. Chapter 4. In verse 13. Come now, you who say today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make profit. Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. That, by the way, is not a legalistic term. I've heard this so many times I could puke. If the Lord wills, I'm going to get a donut. Right? It's like, really? That's where you're going with this? This is a condition of the heart and life that is looking forward going like, if this is what God desires for my life, then this is what's going to happen. I'm not going to just brazenly go, this is what's going to happen in life. What happens if you and I pursue life on the basis of our own hopes and dreams and work as this guy who wants to go to a town and trade this and that and all that stuff? What happens to us? First of all, do all of our hopes and dreams come true? No. Therefore, what happens to us if we live on the basis of our hopes and dreams? Discouragement. Guess what the vast majority of Americans are? Discouraged. Talk to old people, or people, right? That have lived their lives on the basis of their hopes and dreams and have shaped their identity and reality around them and I guarantee you that they are ticked off. Maybe less ticked off than the next guy because they've achieved some of their hopes and dreams. But can you ever achieve everything you want to achieve in this life? No. It is not possible. You will never become all you want to become. You will never do all the good you want to do. You won't even do all the evil you want to do in this world. It's impossible. Living on the basis of your own hopes and dreams is going to ruin your life. So, change it now. Change it how though? By focusing on the hope that we have and what is to come in Jesus, which then tempers our hopes and dreams for today. That's all it does. So your hope to see all your kids get saved, that's a powerfully dangerous one, isn't it? It's a great one. But what can happen if that hope overwhelms us? Thinking about that one, my kids are going to get saved. What can happen? Anxiety? That's right. You feel like you have to get them saved? And let's say that you're older in life and your kids are grown and you've had that hope since they were little. What will end up happening to you? You'll get incredibly depressed. That's right. Now, it will be hard to be rightly discontent, right? Longing for that without getting discouraged. But if you live on the basis of I'm going to get my kids saved, then A, you're just going to take them to every VBS and get them baptized 6,000 times hoping that it sticks once. Yeah. Seeing that happen. Or B, what you're going to do is just get incredibly bitter with God because He didn't do what you wanted Him to do your whole life. Absolutely. Yeah. Yep. All I ever wanted from you is to get saved. That says a lot about what you think about God, by the way. It says more about you than it does about your kids or about God or anybody else. It says a whole lot about you. When we say those kinds of things, our hope is to always be placed in what is coming in Jesus Christ. And if that's the case, then we long for our kids to get saved. We long to see clean water in Africa or whatever the heck it is that we want to do. Knowing that my hope, though, is on something that is coming. So I'm going to work hard today longing for that last day, which will help us to die well. Let's pray. God, we thank you for the fact that we are given time right now to prepare for our own deaths, knowing that those deaths are inevitably coming. We don't know when. For some of us, we will die incredibly quickly and soon. Others of us will die a long time from now. Some of us will die incredibly long and painful deaths. Whatever it is that is in store for us, however, what we must do is prepare for death today by pursuing a life of virtue, a life of faith, and a life of hope. We pray that you would help us to do that. We pray that we would listen to the Word, that we would immerse ourselves in the truth of who you are, that we would understand the gravity of what it means to live towards death. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.