Grieving with Hope - James Murray

Hey guys, Pastor James Murray here, and I want to welcome you to the Abide Sydney podcast. This whole podcast is designed to help you on the journey of discipleship, and our mission is to make disciples of the people of Sydney. But maybe not from Sydney, we hope this blesses you, so sit back, relax and enjoy this podcast. Today is an unusual day in the life of our church, as you've heard, already from Pastor George, the passing of a beautiful woman, a godly woman, a woman who will be always an inspiration to us, but will be deeply missed, and so if you are new joining us here today, we don't apologize for the sadness, because it means how much value someone held in our hearts. And so we do welcome you still, and we are grateful that you're with us. But today is a day where we are navigating something as a church that is difficult to navigate. It's one of those things that is never easy for any human being to face, and there is a reason for that, and so today what we're going to do is, as you've already noticed, we're doing things a little bit differently, but we need to, in response to what has been a really big week for us and for the staff family. But we have a teaching series we've been doing recently through the Book of One John, but clearly just didn't feel right to kind of continue going today through that. So I wanted to share a message with you this morning that hopefully helps you, and helps us as we navigate this season. So I want to read a scripture, and then over the next couple of moments we're going to really help one another, but also be helped by God's Word and by the Holy Spirit, which both are there to help us navigate every season of life. And that's why we're so grateful for both, and we're not, that we have an anchor, even the idea of an anchor isn't a profound, that anchors don't keep a boat dead still in the water, it just saves it from drifting into despair. And so yes, we have these rattling, turbulent, tumultuous moments like this, but God's Word keeps us anchored, keeps us from drifting too far. And then we also have God's Spirit, and God's Spirit, my goodness. We need His truth, but we need His Spirit. And I do pray God's comforting Spirit here this morning, because this creeps his heart just as much as it creeps ours. In fact, it creeps us. It creeps him more, which is crazy to think, but it really does. So here we go. We're going to read 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, and Paul the Apostle encouraging the church and through this encouraging us in difficult times, he says, but we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, you can say sisters as well, about those who are asleep, everyone say asleep. Yeah, this is interesting words that Paul uses. That you may not grieve as others who do not have hope, they have no hope. Verse 14 says, "For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus, God will bring him," or sorry, "with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not proceed those who are fallen asleep." Verse 16, "For the Lord himself will descend from heaven, and with the cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord." Verse 18, "Last verse, therefore, encourage one another with these words." This is God's word, I want to speak to you around the idea this morning of grieving with hope, grieving with hope, which is what we should do in these times, and I do have one point I want to kind of make amongst many others, but this is what I'm hoping you will walk away with, is that hope doesn't lift us above our grief and loss, it pulls us through it. So we're going to, over these next couple of moments, unpack that, it's back on, it's back on a bit, and the voice is quite strong, so can we pray, and let's commit these moments to the Lord, and really allow God's Word and God's Spirit to do a work in us today, so we thank you, thank you for the words, inspired by your spirit and captured by the Apostle Paul, these words do become an anchor for us, God that we can, and we should grieve, but we do it with hope, and it doesn't lift us above, it actually pulls us through. So I'm praying that by your spirit, that as we do navigate these times, we hold on to hope, we hold on to hope, in Jesus mighty name we pray, Amen, Amen once you grab your seats. As I was preparing this week and obviously felt to encourage or even help us navigate this time, I don't know about you, but when you hear news like this, it's very hard to comprehend, it's hard to comprehend, and the chance is pretty much everyone in this room has experienced grief and loss in their life, not just this week, but it is a part of life, isn't it? It's a part of a human condition, and I was thinking about what best describes how I felt, how people feel when you face these moments, now again, not to be insensitive to the moment, but I'm a picture person, so I'm like, how do I feel? How do people feel when you go through these moments? And I was literally, I came back to a moment of my childhood, and I don't know if anyone in this room is familiar with this, have you seen these things before? Yeah, if you're unfamiliar with what this is, if you were growing up in the 80s, I think they were banned in the late 90s, because of how dangerous they actually were, but you would hop in these, it's like a playground equipment, and there's a wheel in the middle, and you and your friends, probably four of you could fit in there, you'd spin it as fast as you can, and what was fun for like a moment was joyous for a moment, quickly shifted when you realized, oh my gosh, I am losing my sense of balance, and then once you got out, it was so hard to even walk straight, like you were rattled, your equilibrium was totally out, and so now you're trying to stand still, and the only feeling you can get, it's not, you've lost joy, you're just like, you're out of sorts, you're dizzy almost, you can't find yourself, and this is the best image for me that captures the sense of grief, when you experience grief in life it's like, I don't know what I'm feeling, I feel sad, I feel confused, I feel like I have this sense of like, man, there's some joy of the things that have happened, but now I have to live with the reality of what is, and so it's dizzying, it makes you feel like, what am I supposed to feel? I don't feel like I can stand upright so to speak, I feel knocked around by this, I can't, what was once a moment of joy quickly turns into a moment of dizziness, and this is the best way I can describe what I feel, many of us probably are facing even today or this week, it's like, I'm so thrown by this, I'm thrown by it, and this is the tension for us as Christians, now I don't want to assume that everyone in this room would call themselves a Christian, but for the majority this would be the case, this is our tension because death creates attention for Christians, it does, we believe in the resurrection, but death still hurts, we believe our loved ones are with Christ, but we still miss them, we believe death has been defeated, but we still have ten funerals and cry, we believe in eternal life, but death still feels deeply wrong, and so it's this tension on the inside for us, so again the question is like, what are we supposed to do, what are we supposed to do now in the heat of moments like this, and you know, the answers could be like, do we suppress it because we have hope, do we minimise it because we believe in heaven, do we, do we, does grieving somehow mean we aren't trusting God, like these are some of the tensions we wrestle on the inside or, or this one I'll submit to you today, is there a distinctly Christian way to grieve, one that is completely honest about the pain of death while being completely confident about the future, you see the tension there, one more time, is there a way we can be completely honest about the pain we feel, the pain of death while being completely confident about the future, because here's the point, ready Christians do not, and should not ignore the pain that death brings, but we should grieve hope. believe. We should grieve hopefully. And this is what Paul is trying to do for the church in Thessalonica when he writes this letter, but also now he encourages us. What's interesting about the context is that they believed like us that Jesus would return. They believed in eternity. They believed in life after death. They believed all of these things, but also people were passing away in the church community. And this is why Paul writes this letter. He's like, "Okay, Honoursteck, I thought Jesus returning." I thought it was, they literally thought Jesus returning like that year or within their lifetime. They had this anticipation that man is coming soon, but yet people were passing away. So they're like, "Well, what happens? How do we process this? How do we journey through this?" And so Paul, like an amazing pastor says, "Hey, this is how we should grieve. This is how we should take this journey of grieving through loss and death in our lives as believers." And so that's what we're going to talk about here today. First things first, what does the Scripture tell us about grief and loss? Well, number one, death doesn't feel right because it's not right. Death doesn't feel right because it's not right. It's just not right. Every human being, when you get to these moments, you're like, "Oh, like, we hear things like, well, it's a part of life." But something within us says it probably shouldn't be. Something within us says, "No, like, this doesn't make sense." Like, it doesn't feel right. My younger son, he came to me a little while ago and he says, "Dad, there's something wrong with my shoes." I said, "Yeah, son, there is something wrong with your shoes." He's like, "What is it?" I said, "Well, they're on the wrong foot." He said, "Oh, that's why it doesn't feel right." I'm like, "Yeah, it wasn't made to go that way." And he, he, me, death doesn't feel right because it's not right. It feels like putting shoes on the wrong way, but far worse, why because it's a discomfort in our soul. And it feels like this doesn't make sense because it shouldn't. Understand this. Roman speaks, this Romans 5, "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through the one man, this one man Adam, and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned." Understand this from the beginning. Death was never a part of the human experience, or was never meant to be. That we were designed to live in this perpetual state of wholeness and health and oneness with the Lord, but yet sin enters in and what sin brings is death. And so now we have this experience where we are made to be in relationship with God. We're made to have this beautiful union that is everlasting, but yet sin broke that union and now we sit in this tension of like, "Man, I know I should be this, but I'm not feeling this." Why? Because death isn't, doesn't feel right because it's not right. This doesn't feel right. Listen to me, death is universal, but it's not natural. Death is universal, we know that, but it's not natural. And this is what we must understand about the scriptures. From the very beginning, this was never meant to be a natural part of life, and that's why it doesn't feel right. The second thing we learn from this letter is that Christians do not ignore grief. They just grieve differently. We don't ignore it. We grieve differently. Verse 13 says, "Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope." The word grieve he talks about here is this word in Latin Gravis, which is where you get the word "gravity" from. It's the same origin word. And so when you grieved, does anyone else feel that? It's like a gravity coming down on you. In fact, that word "gravity" in Latin means heavy, weighty, serious, or burdensome, and that is exactly why grief feels like that. It's like a gravity. Suddenly, what's once felt so light is now suddenly weighing down on me, and this is what grief does. It's a weight. But how do we handle that weight? You see, because Paul is saying we shouldn't grieve like the world does. Everyone's going to have to have moments of grief, but we shouldn't do it like the world does. In fact, can I help you here this morning? Can I talk about three ways, first and foremost, that you shouldn't approach grief. Three ways you shouldn't, which many people do all the time. Number one, positive ignorance. Positive ignorance. This is probably the worst in the evangelical church. It's all right. They're in heaven. That way better than you're like, bro, shut up. Like you're like, please, this is not helping us. I understand that the sentiment, but it's positive ignorance to say something like, oh, they're in heaven and they're better off. I understand that. But that's not how we grieve. It's not how we grieve. Next one, stoic suppression. Keep living like nothing happened. Just ignore it. Suppress it. We shouldn't do that either. Many people live that way. Last one, passive acceptance. Passive acceptance. We should not grieve that way either. Well, part of life. That's not how the gospel tells us to grieve with passive acceptance. In fact, Jesus Lewis wrote a very, I read this book this week, just in light of what had taken place. And I'm like, wow, I need to understand more and be prepared more to deliver this sermon today. And I was reading this book by Jesus Lewis called a grief observed. And it's actually when his wife passed away and he then joined his journal through it and says, it's very short book. Easy to read. But he says, this is how I feel. It's so honest. It's so vulnerable. He's kind of like mad at God, but also he's like, he also loves the Lord and he has a faith. And so he's navigating this on this pieces of paper. And as I read it, I'm like, wow, what a beautiful thing to read and I encourage people to read it if that's something you're journeying through this week. But he says this, I thought I could describe a state, make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out not to be a state, but a process. It's not a state. It's a process. So how should we do it? How should Christians process grief? How do we do this? Because we shouldn't do it like I said before, positive ignorance, stoic suppression, passive, just acceptance. And the way we do that is we should look to the person of Christ. We should. I love Pastor George read this earlier, John 1133, when Jesus saw her weeping, he's talking about Mary and Martha, and the Lazarus's dad that says, and the Jews who had come with her also saw him weeping, he was deeply moved. Everyone say deeply moved. Yes, it's important. Deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, where have you laid him? They said to him, Lord, come and see, in verse 35, as you heard earlier, Jesus wept. What we see here are ingredients for us as believers to journey through grief. This is what I find amazing about Christ. He knows Lazarus is unwell, and most likely this will lead unto death, and he dies, and he shows up late to the funeral, and he already knows that he is the resurrection. He knows he can bring Lazarus back from the grave. But what's interesting is he still processes this, and journeys this, why? Because he is fully God, but he's also fully man. And he's trying to show us as human beings how we should process these times as well. And here's the ways in which we should process grief well. Here we go, ready? Honestly, angrily, and hopefully. I would encourage every person in the streamer, this is your journey this week, these three things should be welcomed into your grieving process. Honestly, it hurts. Be honest. Yeah, that really hurts. This is a, this is a, this is a, this is a grab us, this is a weight, and I feel I'm honest about that. So honestly, second thing, angrily. You know it's okay to be angry. In fact, it says this of Jesus, ready? He was deeply moved, which in the Greek, the word that captured there is imbremamae, which means what? It actually means indignant and angry. So when it says that Jesus has deeply moved, he's not like, oh man, I'm sad. It says Jesus is angry, indignant. Why? Because death is an intruder. Death was never meant to be a part of his plan. And so when he came to the tomb, yes, he was honest. He was, oh man, my heart is so broken right now, but then he was also angry. He's like, I'm, and I'm, who is he angry at? Death. Death is what he was angry at. This was not my plan. This was not my intention for the human condition. And he was angry at death and we should also be angry at death. We should have an anger about this. No, this is not right. We should be indignant is the word there. But the next one around this as well, and this is important because you can't stop at those two. If you are just honest and then you just angry, if you're, if you're just honest and you just, you can sit in that emotion and there's a time to do that. But if you sit in that too long, you end up despiraling out. But then if you sit into anger for too long, guess what happens, you harden. And so you can't sit in only the honesty and also the anger. You must come to hope, which is the last but not least because Jesus, the tears were real, but they weren't hopeless. Jesus, grieve while knowing that death was not the final word. Watch this. Hope is the medicine we rub into the wound of our grief. Hope is the medicine. We rub into the wound of our grief. This is a wound. But we must rub hope into this, which leads me to the next point. Number three is that hope is the hand that ultimately pulls us through our grief. Hope is that hand. Verse 16, "For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven." And with a loud command, it says this is amazing thing that's going to happen when Jesus returns. This is that, and the dead in Christ will rise first. It's an interesting that when Jesus, or sorry when the apostle Paul and Jesus refer to death, guess what they refer to death as? Sleep. I don't know about you. This is where we should have hope. When you're younger and your parents say it's time to have a nap, you're like, "I don't want a nap." When you get older, someone says it's time to have a nap, you're like, "Bring it. This is so good." A nap? I'm allowed to. This is fantastic. The early church, even Christ, when he said of Lazarus, "What did he say?" He's not dead. He's only sleeping. Paul right to the early church. Hey guys, for those who are asleep. So while the world in infancy and misunderstanding what death truly is for the believer, they're like, "No, I don't want death. For the believer we go, it's just a sleep. It's just a sleep. And one day we will rise. We will rise." You see, this word "hope" is this word "elpus" in Greek, which means absolute assurance of future good. Absolute assurance of future good. So hear me, while this message is being quick, I do not want to make light of the journey of grief. This is not something. Well, here's seven steps. And by the end of the day, you should be fantastic. Not that at all. But we should take this understanding that death is not natural. It's not right, but it doesn't feel right because it's not right. And we should recognize there is a way to grieve His believers, but also we need to come to the idea of hope. And there's three reasons for hope that this letter gives us. And first, this, this, this, this, this, this, this. There's this. Three reasons for hope. Number one, Jesus will return. Jesus will return. Yeah. Second thing, those who have already passed with Him will return with Him. Hear that? This not fiction fairy tale. This is reality. Next thing, number three, we will meet them and be a part of God's ultimate plan of renewal. We'll meet them. Now that time comes now or later down, that maybe we were already asleep. Maybe it's the next generation who was falling asleep, right? But understand this, this is what Paul is trying to say that it is sleep is temporary. And He will return and He will make all things new. Watch this. He says this. We who are still alive or are left will be caught up together with Him in the clouds to meet them in the air. Now please hear me out here, don't want to get to controversial here this morning. This is pretty much everyone's where you get rapturous theology from that we're going to like, oh, we're going to get caught up in the air and like, no, please, you got to hear what Paul's saying here. When it says that we will meet them, guess what this actually means. It's a very detailed word, but the word itself means this and the best picture image I can give you is the image you should have because that's how they read it. And the word meet, they would have immediately saw something like this. This is a picture of a king returning from battle in victory. And it says when you meet that idea of meet was the civilians or the people of the city would come out to meet the king who was victorious with those who have been with Him in victory, coming into, you'll meet and you'll come into the city together. And so when Paul writes this letter, he's basically saying, guys, one day Jesus will return. But when that happens, we're going to meet Jesus as he comes to bring about His ultimate renewal plan. What does it say? It says that He's going to come down. Not us going up, Him coming down. And He will come down and all things will be made new. This is our ultimate hope. This is Revelation 21. Ready? You've heard it many times before. God voiced from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. Not man with God. God with man, Him coming to us. He will dwell with them. And they will be His people and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. And death shall be no more. Neither shall they be mourning, no crying, no pain anymore. For the form of things have passed away. But He has seated on the throne said, behold, I am making all things new. That's the hope. Christian hope, NT Wright said, is not ultimate that we go to where Jesus is, but that Jesus comes to us and renews creation. He renews all things. First Corinthians 15, again Paul the Apostle writing this, he says, when the imperishable, when the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable and the mortar with the immortal, then they're saying that as written will come true, death has been swallowed up by victory. You've heard this before, where O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God. He gave us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. This is our hope. That's what we hold on to. That is, listen to me, it's the hand that pulls us through our grief, doesn't lift us over, doesn't avoid it, pulls it through, pulls us through. George Herbert, he was kind of one of the church fathers a long time ago. He says this, death used to be an executioner, but the gospel has made him just a gardener, just a gardener. You've thought that was the end, knowing that the gospel says it's not the end, because from this will come a whole new beautiful way of life, a renewed life, the life that Jesus said, I'm coming back to give. So we should grieve this week, we should, but I pray you grieve with hope, you grieve hopefully, and yes, you take these motions and the process and the dizziness that has been these recent events, and you allow God's Word and God's Spirit to kind of settle the soul eventually, just to settle it, and that you would, we would hold on to the hand of hope and let it pull us through, because it's not lifting us above, it's pulling us through. To be honest, this week, the angry, this week, or maybe even longer, to be hopeful, be hopeful, because hope doesn't live us above our grief and pulls us through it, and closing I do want to say this that I want you to close your eyes where we are, because I feel even Heather would be very much in alignment with this, what I'm about to do here this morning, but maybe you're here today and you don't have that type of hope, she had that hope, she had it, that's why she could face the season that's been with bravery, my goodness. What is that? What's a hope? It's an assurance, death would raise your sting, and it's been swallowed up in victory. So this morning, if you don't have that hope, you don't have that absolute assurance that I am right with the Lord through Jesus Christ, then today's the day of salvation, where you say, God, I admit, I am a horrible God of my own life and I make you Lord of my life. So if you hear this morning, you've never actually prayed that prayer, you don't have that assurance, I'd love to include you in that prayer, so with your eyes closed, if you're here today saying, James, just include me in that prayer, would you just lift your hand and say, yeah, that's me today, I don't have that hope for assurance, but I would like that. If that's you here today, put your hand up and say this to me, include me in that prayer today, James, I'd love to be included in that prayer, I want that, I want that assurance. Beautiful. Well, as we stand to our feet, I want to pray a prayer for you, for us. Would you just hold your hands out in front of you as if to receive you this morning from the Lord? I'll hold your hands out, this is a posture of receiving, of receptivity and openness, so Lord, we just come today, God, we're honest about what we're feeling, we're angry, we're hopeful, and so would you come Holy Spirit, come Holy Spirit, the comforter, the comforter. You would bring comfort to your people, give a strength to navigate, the days ahead, gotta pray for the staff family as well Lord, they journey through this, your provision and care every other aspect of their life that doesn't matter right now, but you've got that. So we entrust them to you and entrust all of that to you Lord, we just pray for God's peace and comfort upon them. We thank you for the gift that was Heather's star, the gift that you blessed us with, that the legacy of her life will go on. Because their life was built on Christ, an unshakable kingdom. I said today Lord we are, we ask Your help through this next season. We trust You, we know that life is not good but You are good, You are good. We trust that You will make all things new. That's where I hope lies in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well this morning I want to encourage you as well. We have this week a couple of details around the funeral and our gathering this week to celebrate the life of Heather and it's going to be happening this Thursday around the corner at Southside Church, a church that has got a lot more space than we do in here and that's exactly why we are going there because this is a life that is going to be celebrated and acknowledged and so we would encourage you if you have the time and they are able to do that, come and celebrate this beautiful life with us but outside of that church we want to encourage you this, just even as you go out this week I know it's a, like I said it's a dizzying time for us as a church but just keep the staff family in your prayer and keep our church in prayer as well but we love You, God bless You and we'll see you this week on Thursday if not next Sunday. God bless. Well we hope this podcast has inspired you on your journey of discipleship to Jesus. If you want to know more about our church just go to abide.cidney we'd love to get to know you if not, you're from another place, hey why don't you share this with someone else and hopefully it helps them as they continue to follow Jesus. Have a great week.