Precious in his sight
"Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints." (Psalm 116:15)
November 19, 2024
Dear friends,
Having ministered the past 24 years in a university community I have officiated far more weddings than funerals. But now the funerals are beginning to be more frequent.
And I'm more aware now of the grief that comes when one loses a spouse after many years of marriage. As one person told me, it's like being "amputated down the middle."
Yet Scripture says that Christians do not grieve such losses as the world grieves (1 Thess 4:13-14). In fact, as painful as the death of a loved one might be, the Bible says, "Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints." (Psalm 116:15)
As I prepared to officiate a funeral recently -- of a dear Christian lady in our church, leaving behind her husband after fifty years together -- I thought about how could this be seen as precious? After all, death was placed upon humanity as a judgment for sin (Gen 3). Death separates people from their bodies, and people from people, and people from the good things of this world. The Apostle Paul calls death “the last enemy to be destroyed” (1 Cor 15:26). And yet, the death of the believer in God's sight is precious.
(By the way, a saint is someone who trusts and belongs to the true and holy God. It does not mean some kind of super-religious person with a halo, one who is in the upper tenth percentile of godliness. A saint is a believer, a member of God’s family, set apart for God's purposes. Saints are called holy ones because Christ died to sanctify them, and the Holy Spirit indwells them. If you believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ, then you are a saint, set apart for God.)
The adjective "precious" used in Psalm 116 means something of great value. In the Bible it is used to describe costly gemstones and precious metals (1 Kgs 10:2; 2 Sam 12:30), and of the magnificent foundation stones in the temple (1 Kgs 5:31). Life and faith are precious. The death of a beloved friend in Christ may be painful in our sight but it is precious in God’s.
Why? How can we say such a death is precious? For every believer who dies we realize that this person is...
-- A person known, loved, and valued by the Lord from before time began. (Eph 1:3-6)
-- A person shaped from conception to live for God's good purposes. (Ps 139:13-16)
-- A person possessing the gift of faith in Christ, which is more precious than gold. (1 Pet 1:7-18)
-- A person tested and tried through life's experiences, and now ready for the future kingdom. (Ps 66:10; 1 Pet 2:5)
-- A person whose race is completed and whose conflict is now over. (1 Tim 4:7-8)
-- A person who is a good work of God, and now a finished work. (Phil 1:6)
-- A person who is finally at rest, home in the Father's house. (John 14:3: Heb 4:9-10)
Christians have a different view of physical death in this life! The future bodily resurrection is coming, and even if we die in this life, we still enter life (John 11:25-26). Jesus conquered death; he holds the keys of death. As the Apostle Paul faced possible execution in Rome, he wrote, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain... My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better." (Phil 1:21-23) Far better, he says.
When John the Baptist saw Jesus he declared, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29) He is freely offered to you as Savior -- have you received him? "Our greatest moment," wrote R. C. Sproul, "will be when we walk through the door and leave this world of tears and sorrow, this valley of death, and enter into the presence of the Lamb."
Precious indeed!
RECENT READING.
-- "Where you spot a need, consider meeting it. Where you spot a weakness, consider strengthening it. Where you spot an opportunity, consider taking it." (Tim Challies) Read "The Spiritual Gift Inventory I Believe In."
-- "People on the right have regularly, of late, been making the mistake that because someone agrees with us on one thing, they must agree on most things." (Erick Erickson, "Worldview Matters")
-- "To understand the religious and political divergence between men and women today, Christians must understand the power that social technologies wield in our society." (Samuel D. James, in "11 Theses on Instagram and the Modern Woman")
-- Dr. Rob Plummer takes a short journey through Codex Vaticanus, a 4th-century book manuscript now online, specifically looking at a textual variant in Colossians.
-- I am enjoying again this little book written by J. Gresham Machen in 1925, What Is Faith? [Recommended!]
FINAL QUOTE.
"Acceptance of the Lord Jesus Christ, as He is offered to us in the gospel of His redeeming work, is saving faith. Despairing of any salvation to be obtained by our own efforts, we simply trust in Him to save us; we say no longer, as we contemplate the Cross, merely 'He saved others' or 'He saved the world' or 'He saved the Church'; but we say, every one of us, by the strange individualizing power of faith, 'He loved me and gave Himself for me.' When a man once says that, in his heart and not merely with his lips, then no matter what his guilt may be, no matter how far he is beyond any human pale, no matter how little opportunity he has for making good the evil that he has done, he is a ransomed soul, a child of God forever." (J. Gresham Machen, What Is Faith?)
That's it for this week! My newsletters for the next few weeks may be sporadic. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Sandy
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.