Michael Horton
We find ourselves filled with a variety of emotions: pity, sorrow, rage, puzzlement, resentment and despair, and we wonder how things could possibly have ended this way. We wonder how someone who believed and preached the sufficiency of God’s Word and his grace in the face of all trials of life could leave us this afternoon wondering, “If it was not sufficient for him, is it indeed sufficient for me?” What happens when Christianity doesn’t work?
So often, when people come to Christ, they are promised “victory in Jesus.”
Smiling, happy people tell about how they once were unhappy, and now they are filled with buoyant exultation. Broken marriages are fixed, wayward children are returned to the straight and narrow, and depression is banished to the old life.
But, of course, those of you who knew Tim and his preaching are fully aware that this was not his message. He did not see Christianity as the solution to every earthly problem, nor did he worship Jesus as Mr. Fix-It, but as the Friend of Sinners, Redeemer and Shepherd of his sheep. He knew that there was a greater problem that we as fallen creatures faced, though he did not dismiss as irrelevant or trivial earthly challenges, but he placed them in their proper eternal perspective.
But even if Christianity does not answer every problem we have in this life, surely that eternal perspective helps us cope with them, so why, we wonder, did our father, brother, husband, friend and pastor cut his life short?
Whatever was wrong in Tim’s life, he had an unshakable conviction that his witness is in heaven. He knew that Jesus Christ was his intercessor, a friend to whom he could pour out tears to God and he knew that Jesus Christ, his Elder Brother, was pleading on his behalf with God as a man pleads for his friend.
So why didn’t this confidence keep our brother from ending his life? We cannot answer that question any better perhaps than Job’s friends could resolve the riddle of their friend’s suffering. But I can say this: Even if we are too weak to hang on to Christ, he is strong enough to hang on to us. Even though we may not be able to face tomorrow, Christ has already passed through death to the other side and has taken away death’s sting for us.
To Beth and the rest of the family, I know you have lost your husband, son, father and brother. Although I myself have lost one of my closest friends, I cannot begin to know your suffering, but God knows what this is like. For he too lost his Son. He committed his Son to dreadful suffering and a cruel death because through it, he could save people who hated him and make them his own sons and daughters.
Link: Complete Sermon
The Alpha Project 