Spending too much at Christmas - what I said to my kids

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This is what I wrote on the private blog I have for my kids last year…

There are a couple of things I worry about at Christmas if I’m honest.

One is that as a family we’ll lose sight of the true meaning of Christmas – which is that Jesus gave up His place with His Father to be born on earth in order to die for our sake, to save us from our sins. That’s something that will affect us for eternity – forever. Compared to the enjoyment we have each Christmas, which lasts for a few days, and even the presents which could last for a year or two, Jesus is much more important and much more precious.

The other thing I worry about is that Mum and I will spend too much on you, and that you won’t appreciate just how much it costs. By now you should be able to work out roughly how much the presents cost and work out that there are four of you, and that there are stocking presents as well, and therefore work out how much all these things would have cost altogether. And then you could think about what else we could have bought for that amount – a new car? A holiday abroad?

But here I want to hopefully make you see that there is a way of thinking about these two things together – the spending and the true meaning of Christmas.

What made me think about it was the word ‘lavish’. It’s a word that means ‘more than enough’. It indicates being given luxuries and treats, rather than just what you need. It’s what I thought when I tried to think what to buy you for Christmas, and when I realised that you don’t need anything. What we bought you for Christmas were things that were treats, things that are nice to have, but things you can do without. I thought that if we’re buying stuff you don’t really need, then we are being lavish. The other word is ‘extravagant’. We’re giving you everything you need and more!

And that made me think of where that word lavish appears in the Bible. There are two places I can think of:

‘See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!’ (1 John 3:1)

and

‘In [Jesus] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.’ (Ephesians 1:5-8)

You may not understand all of the big words in those verses, but you should be able to see that one of the ways God has been lavish with us is that we can be called His children. He as adopted us through the Lord Jesus Christ. When we call Him our Heavenly Father, we should realise that that is His lavish gift to us. It’s much more than we deserve.

The only reason we can have this wonderful gift is because of the sacrifice Jesus made in coming to earth and dying for us. That gave us God’s other lavish gift to us – forgiveness of our sins.

So because of Christmas, because Jesus was born and lived and died for us, we can be forgiven from all the awful and wrong things we’ve done and said and thought. And not only that, but we can be called children of God! So God gives us everything we need and more… forever!

Just imagine if you were the Queen’s son or daughter. Imagine if you were part of the Royal Family. Would you have everything you needed? Everything you wanted? Whatever food you wanted? Whatever clothes and toys? Could you go on holiday just about anywhere you wanted?

Now think about how much greater God is than our Queen. He is the maker and the ruler of the whole universe – everything that exists. He has the power to be able to do anything. He is perfectly good. So it must be so much better to be in God’s Royal Family!

So when Mum and I spend so much money on you at Christmas, when we are lavish with our gifts to you, just remember that God is much more lavish and extravagant. He has adopted us into His family, given us things that will last forever, forgiven our sins, all through the lavish gift of His Son…

… Jesus who came at Christmas.

David Silvester’s Mistake – Was He Right or Wrong?

In my last post I was thinking about the reaction David Silvester received recently to his open letter accusing UK Prime Minister David Cameron of bringing God’s judgment upon the nation. In the letter he said that, “The Scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons its faith and acts contrary to the Gospel (and in naked breach of a coronation oath) will be beset by natural disasters such as storms, disease, pestilence and war.” The particular breach he was talking about was the redefinition of marriage, passed into law by the British parliament months earlier, enabling same-sex marriages to take place. The natural disasters he linked to it were the heavy rains, storms and flooding that beset southern England early in 2014, and which continued to worsen even after his letter.

I observed last time that whether or not David Silvester is right to link the floods directly with the displeasure of God because of the same-sex marriage legislation, the reaction of the secular media and the public was really a reaction to truth that is central to the Christian message. He called homosexuality sinful and he portrayed God as involved in (and judging) the affairs of mankind. The reaction is because they don’t like the assertion that an unelected being is in charge, setting rules they don’t like, and enforcing them, whether they voted for Him or not. I concluded that since the gospel of love, forgiveness and hope cannot be understood without knowing what we need to be forgiven from and saved from, David Silvester was absolutely right to speak of an active sovereign God and point to the need for repentance from sin.

What I want to examine now is whether Mr Silvester is right to claim that the Bible clearly shows God as actively punishing wayward former-Christian nations with natural disasters; and whether he is right to link the winter 2013/14 floods with the same-sex marriage bill.

Sovereignty, sin and punishment

Mr Silvester claims that, “the scriptures make it abundantly clear”, and so we will turn to the Bible and check it out. Whole books are written on this subject, but let’s try to do it quickly…

1.  The Bible clearly conveys God as being in absolute control over His universe, and therefore nothing happens (including floods) outside of His purpose.  “For I know that the Lord is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps. He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes lightnings for the rain and brings forth the wind from his storehouses.” (Psalm 135:5-7) (See also Daniel 4:34-35; Psalm 22:28; 113:4.)

2.  The Bible clearly conveys God as holding every human being, family, community and nation responsible for living according to His rules, and judging them with His wrath for disobedience. (Psalm 9:8; 98:9; 96:13; 58:11; 149:7; 47:8; 94:10. See also Jeremiah 46.)

3.   God’s ultimate judgment will be in the future when this present creation is swept away and His people will inherit the new perfected creation, and the rest will be consigned to eternal torment being excluded from any of God’s blessing. (Revelation 20:11-15; 21:1-7; Matthew 25:46)

4.   However, the Bible shows us that God does act now in this life, punishing nations for systemic and ingrained wickedness, as well as blessing nations for genuine obedience. (Deuteronomy 9:4; Isaiah 13)

5.   In the Bible, God’s punishment on nations comes in the form of famine, wars, disease, economic hardship, division and confusion, being enslaved to other nations via debt, and the like (e.g. Deuteronomy 28). The 10 plagues on Egypt (Exodus 7-13) and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18-19) are among a very small number of occasions where God visits particular focussed judgment in a miraculous way. The Great Flood of Noah’s day (Genesis 6-8) was the only time recorded in the Bible when God used storms and flooding to bring about His judgment.

6.     Homosexuality is ‘an abomination’ according to God (Leviticus 18:22) and was one of the reasons that He punished the Canaanites: “Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled... and the land vomited out its inhabitants.” (vv24-25).

So it’s clear that the Bible does portray God as all-powerful, able and willing to punish the disobedience and wickedness of nations directly, both now and in the final judgment. And it’s also clear in the Bible that homosexual sex is something that God sees as sinful and worthy of punishment, and that He uses both natural and human disasters as means of delivering judgment upon nations.

It’s also probably true that God does hold His own people under stricter discipline, and that the UK monarch’s coronation pledge in church, before God and all UK citizens, to rule according to ‘the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel’, makes the UK a Christian nation.

So I can see why David Silvester draws his conclusion that the UK is under God’s judgment, that same-sex marriage is part of the reason for that judgment, and that natural disasters (i.e. floods) are a manifestation of His judgment.

But there is, however, some evidence to the contrary.

Not an exact link

Jesus explicitly rebutted the claim that if bad things happen to people they must be worse sinners than those who don’t suffer. He was asked (Luke 13:1-5) ‘about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.  And he answered them,  “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way?    No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.    Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?    No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”’ So there were no specific sins to which those disasters could have been linked.

We might also consider that the famine in the time of Joseph (Genesis 41 and following) was not explained in the Bible as a punishment of the Canaanites, any more than the wealth that the Egyptians gained through it was due to their righteousness. And yet it was God who warns Pharaoh of it in advance, and God who brought it about.

We should also consider that the Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek and Roman empires were for long periods very rich and successful forces in the world, and yet that was not because of their righteousness, for they were some of the most corrupt and brutal regimes in world history.

Even in our living memory we could point to the fact that we suffered the horrors of two world wars during a period when church attendance was high and Christian morality was still very much adhered to by the majority of the British and American population. However bad the 2013/14 Southern England floods were, they caused nowhere near the same level of destruction or loss of life as the World Wars, and yet Christians would argue that we have generally morally declined rapidly since then.

So however much a disaster looks to be an extraordinary work of God, we are not entitled to draw the conclusion that it is aimed as a punishment on a specific misdoing.

Let me clarify further by saying that I do believe that the UK and other Western nations are under the judgment of God. Social fragmentation, economic crisis, STDs, increasing health and psychological problems, etc are all evidence of God’s wrath. And the weakness of the church is also a sign of God’s wrath. And I could even agree that the floods were part of God’s punishment, because they are financially draining on the country’s financial services sector (insurance companies).

And I also believe that the UK and Western nations have been gradually eroding Christian morality as the basis for national government and law – whether that be the abolition of the death penalty, the legalization of abortion, the acceptance of sex (hetero- and homo- sexual) outside of heterosexual marriage as normal, Sunday trading, talk of legalizing euthanasia, embryo research, not curbing the greed of rich bankers, or changing the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.

What I can’t find support in the Bible for is the assertion that a particular spell of bad weather, or a particular catastrophe, can be linked to a particular rejection of God’s laws, unless God explicitly says it is.

A sad reaction to a slightly misguided prophet

So I do think that David Silvester is wrong to confidently assert that the winter floods were God’s judgment on the UK because of the same-sex marriage decision. There is no Biblical justification for saying that.

However….

I also think that if He were here in person, Jesus may have said something similar to his statement in Luke 13, “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” In other words, God is in control, He is causing the rain, wind, storms and floods. And we are sinners, rejecting His ways. And He does threaten awful punishment for those who reject His Son and fail to repent of their sinful ways – definitely in eternity, but sometimes in this life too.

Sometimes even if natural disasters are not directed at any particular sin, the events demonstrate to us tangibly, visibly, audibly, physically,

1.     How powerful and awesome God is, because He has power over all those events; and

2.     That we have no strength to resist His power.

Natural disasters cause us to fear because we cannot resist or control these things, and that fear is really the fear of God, because He is behind it all.

I find it very sad that the reaction to hearing about God’s judgment is not fear. If you found yourself in gangland territory, and heard that you had annoyed the local mafia (even if you thought you’d done nothing), you would fear. Why is there no fear when there is a suggestion that we are on the wrong side of the Almighty Creator and Owner of the entire Universe, and that He is angry? Why aren’t we quaking, asking what we have to do avoid His wrath? Why don’t people at least ask whether this is true?

The reason is because our sin has blinded us. Our desire to determine our own destinies, our desire to live the way we want to live with no one telling us what’s right and wrong, has eclipsed our natural human sense that we are created and are responsible to our Creator. It’s as if we’ve turned the volume up on the TV deliberately so loud to blot out the voice of conscience, just because we don’t want to change…

It just shows how far we have strayed when we can even block out the voice of these storms. Because even if the floods are not a particular judgment on a particular evil, they still shout at us, “God is awesome! Don’t be on the wrong side of Him!” Events like this should force us to face up to the fact that Christianity is not a private religion – God in my little heart. If God is God at all, He is awesome, owns everything that exists, and can do anything with anything that exists. He can’t be limited to church buildings, and particular places or times. He is the One to whom every created being owes their existence, and every human being owes their worship.

The sad thing about the mainstream reaction to David Silvester’s letter to the Henley Standard is that the overwhelming response is ridicule and horror and not fear and repentance.

The prophets of the Old Testament faced the same kind of reaction among the Jews, who were supposed to be God’s special people. The prophets predicted God’s judgment upon their waywardness and unfaithfulness, and they were often locked up, beaten, ridiculed and chased into hiding (take Elijah as an example).

On the other hand when the prophet Jonah (the one of the Big Fish) went to the non-Jewish Ninevites and called them to repent in order to avoid God’s judgment on them, they did in fact repent. They wept and mourned, and God saw that and turned away from the punishment He had planned.

And the big point of Jonah’s story was that whilst the Jews were persecuting prophets, thinking that God would never do anything bad to them, the people they considered to be beyond mercy were receiving mercy because of their heartfelt repentance.

Conclusion

David Silvester may have been theologically incorrect to assert a firm link between the disastrous Southern England flooding of 2013/14 and God’s anger at same-sex marriage. However, he was not wrong to point out the wrongness of same-sex marriage, and homosexuality in general. He was not wrong to call for repentance. And He was not wrong to point to God as The All-Powerful Creator and Judge. For the gospel to be understood, these kinds of things need to be said.

As Christians we should be praying that God will turn hearts from ridicule to repentance, because He can do that as well. And in the meantime, we should stand with David Silvester and continue to proclaim the good news of salvation from God’s wrath, through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

David Silvester's Mistake - What Was the Fuss All About?

David Silvester is a local government councillor near Oxford in the UK, until recently representing the UK Independence Party. At the beginning of 2014 he (in)famously said in a letter to the Henley Standard, “Since the passage of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act, the nation has been beset by serious storms and floods.

“One recent one caused the worst flooding for 60 years. The Christmas floods were the worst in 127 years. Is this just ‘global warming’ or is there something more serious at work?

 “The scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons its faith and acts contrary to the Gospel (and in naked breach of a coronation oath) will be beset by natural disasters such as storms, disease, pestilence and war.”

The response from the media and some sections of the public was censure and derision. He was then expelled from UKIP and there was a petition asking him to resign his council seat. Most comment I heard at the time falls into the category of the secularist’s favourite way of dealing with religious (and especially Christian) outspokenness – name-calling!

Mr Silvester clearly considers himself a Christian and wants to make a public stand for God’s glory and the gospel of Jesus Christ, and because of that I consider him a brother and desire to stand alongside him in the gospel. The derision and contempt he has suffered do not in themselves indicate to me that his views are necessarily as wacky and misguided as they are made out to be.

But do I stand with him, echoing his remarks? Or do I stand with him as a Christian, whilst distancing myself from such “extreme” views? I think that Christians, especially in the UK, would be well advised to ask themselves these questions. Are we glad that someone has had the courage to speak up with clear truth, even though unpopular? Or are we embarrassed that such extreme words bring the church and the Christian faith further under the contempt of our neighbours, friends, colleagues and journalists?

The whole furore sparked two strands of thoughts for me, so I’ll consider them in two separate posts. I do want to consider whether he is Biblically right in what he says. And for Christians that question must be important, as it’s all about what God is like – the God which we claim to be the only real true God.

But first, I’m also intrigued by what underlies the reaction that he’s faced for holding those views. What are people reacting to? And why have people written him off with very little meaningful engagement with his beliefs?

I will admit that what I say is only based on personal observation, and not huge amounts of research. But it seems to me that what made David Silvester so unpopular was two things:

Whose rules rule?

First, his objection to gay marriage, which is not greatly tolerated at the best of times, had a slightly unique dimension to it. David Silvester has been thrown out of UKIP, whose MPs largely voted against same-sex marriage. So it wasn’t just his opposition to same-sex marriage that has caused the furore. He went two steps further, first by pointing out that God says that homosexuality is wrong, and second by claiming that God is willing to enact some ‘consequences’ on the whole nation for simply approving of it or turning a blind eye to it.

Lots of people have expressed opposition to same-sex marriage, even some practising homosexuals. However, to say that homosexuality is wrong is intolerable in the present cultural climate; and to say that it is something deserving punishment is clearly even more intolerable.

The Daily Telegraph reported (5 Feb 2014) that David Silvester had “deepened the rift… by calling on gays ‘to repent’”. That is what got him dropped from UKIP, which initially said that he was entitled to his religious opinions. The party were happy enough to oppose same-sex marriage, presumably on the grounds (valid enough) that homosexuals have legalised equivalent civil partnerships and therefore we don’t need to redefine marriage for everyone else. That doesn’t involve belief that homosexuality is wrong, that homosexuals need to repent, or that God has anything to do with it whatsoever.

So it appears to me that the main thing that made people angry about Mr Silvester’s remarks was that he suggested something was really and objectively wrong that they believe is right. They don’t like his suggestion that homosexuality is wrong when they think there is nothing wrong with it.

My Who’s Rules Rule? series examined the generalised form of this point. Suffice to say here that the point at issue between modern secular Westerners and their Christian contemporaries is just this – that today’s unbelievers cannot stand the Christian assertion that human beings (including individuals and governments) do not have the final say on what is right and wrong, and that being out of step with God’s laws has serious consequences in this life and the next. Today’s unbelievers want to make the rules themselves… in fact it’s their fundamental rule that no one else sets the rules but themselves!

The other thing I pointed out in those articles is that secular Westerners misunderstand what Christians mean when we say that something is wrong. Just saying something is wrong, and calling for repentance, does not mean that we hate people who do wrong things. So to talk of David Silvester ‘inciting hatred’ is grossly unfair. And when you think about it, the only hatred he actually incited is hatred of himself!

The God who interferes

Second, people don’t like the idea of God interfering with their lives, and particularly that God may be angry with them, because that implies that they are not in charge and have no influence in the rule of the universe. The thought is almost, “What right does God have to tell me what to do? I didn’t elect Him to rule over me! Who is God to interfere?”

Many secular Westerners may call themselves agnostic, because they can’t bring themselves to say for certain that there is no god. But they can only bring themselves to admit there may be a god if the god that may exist is powerless or disinterested!

The kind of god that they can tolerate is one who isn’t too fussy over his friends. He forgives without any cost, just because that’s what he does, and doesn’t mind if you ignore him your whole life. He’s just there to help out if you call on him, and will meet up with you after death to sort out something nice for you. That kind of god is one that they don’t need to bother with at any point in their life unless they feel they are in desperate need. He’s not going to intrude unless they ask him to. It’s kind of a ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’ type of relationship. So it doesn’t really matter whether he exists or not.

The kind of god they definitely rule out is one who says they owe Him respect, reverence, worship and obedience; who tells them what’s right and wrong; is undemocratic; and threatens them with eternal consequences for disobedience... whether they acknowledge His existence or not.

Another way of looking at it is that people seem to be ok with religion if it’s a matter of choice. Well, they would be wouldn’t they?!  Some people choose one god, some people choose another, and some people choose none. If people choose a god and then don’t do as he/she/it says then they should be aware of the consequences. Saying that a god punishes his/its/her followers for not adhering to the rules of the religion makes sense, because the followers have made a choice to be under those rules. So secular Western thought has no problem allowing for the fact that some people have religious beliefs, and adhere to a religious creed or code. It’s just their choice.

However, in contrast, David Silvester’s God – the God that Christians believe in – is One whose rules must be obeyed, and Who must be worshiped and revered, by every human being. If people choose not to do so they will face consequences, both in this world and the next. His rules apply to all of humanity and not just Christians.

The gospel issue

So when David Silvester spoke of God punishing people who don’t believe in Him for doing things that they think they have the right to do (i.e. changing the definition of marriage), it touched the secular majority on their most sensitive nerves. Whether he was right or wrong to say that the recent floods are actually God’s judgment on a nation that has given its approval to homosexuality, in essence what the secular media and the public have really reacted to are the central truths of Christianity.

Christianity presents the one and only real God as the Creator of everything, the Owner, the Ruler, the King and the Judge. He sets the rules, and sets the consequences for transgression, and enforces them. God is not passive. He cares what all human beings do, as His special creations. He doesn’t need permission from us to be our Ruler and Judge. He has that on His own authority as the one who made, and who owns, the universe.

The point is really that God’s sovereignty over the universe, and His right to be the only One authorised to define what is good or bad for humanity, are the foundation truths of the Christian gospel. Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 8, “…we know that ‘an idol has no real existence,’ and that ‘there is no God but one.’ For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.”

We should expect at least some unbelievers not to like it when we apply these truths and call attention to them. They conflict with their own basic principles – that morality is a matter of choice and that there is no higher authority than themselves.

But further, since we are called to ‘make disciples of all nations’ we should be aware that people will not appreciate their need of the love and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ if they don’t know why they need it. And they need it because they are sinners who have set aside the only real God in order to have their own way, and because God will not let that go unpunished.

So we should not be ashamed of talking of our great, holy God who sets the rules and enforces them, because that sets the foundation for presenting the good news of the way of salvation through Jesus Christ.

Was David Silvester mistaken? Not in speaking of sin. Not in calling attention to God’s displeasure at the rejection of His laws.

But was he mistaken in linking specific natural events with God’s displeasure over specific sins? To that we will turn next time, God willing.

The Most Realistic Movie Ever Made

I found out the other day that an old colleague of mine had died suddenly of a heart attack. She was my age, and had two children the same age as my younger ones.

That reminded me that another colleague from the same place died in her twenties a few years ago in a road accident in tragic circumstances. Both of them had worked in the same small department with me. There were four of us excluding our manager, and now half of us are dead. Death seems to be ticking us off his list one by one.

That started me thinking of all the other people I knew that had died prematurely…

Another colleague from that same company died of cancer a few years ago in her thirties. I worked in another place where one of my bosses died of cancer, and one of my sales colleagues died in a motorcycle crash. I remember speaking to him on the Friday and then hearing after the weekend that he’d been killed in the accident.

I could even think back to school days where two of my classmates died suddenly in different mishaps.

Then I realised that the longer I live the more people I will know who will die prematurely. Eventually if I live to 100 years old practically everyone I know will have died. But that’s because death catches everyone eventually. No one escapes it. Whether it comes at 15, 25, 45 or 105. Whether it’s sudden or after an illness or just because the body gets worn out with age, death will come. It’s the one and only thing you can know about your future with absolute certainty.

That’s why I think the film Final Destination is actually a pretty accurate micro portrait of life.

In the film a group of people cheat death in a plane crash. They leave the plane before it takes off, and watch as it explodes in midair. In the following days several of those people die in sudden and unexpected ways (and gruesome of course!), bringing the group to the belief that death is tracking them down one by one in the order that they should have died. The chilling conclusion is that even if you escape death once around, death will track you down and get you eventually. When your time has come, there is no escape.

I’m not trying to be deliberately morbid in writing about this. I just feel that reflections on these things can be helpful. Think about it. The way you view your death can give a pretty good indication of how you view your life. And how you view your life will affect the way that you live your life.

You could put death out of your mind and try to pretend that you’re immortal. After all worrying about it isn’t going to change what’s going to happen. Might as well carry on and just live your life?

Or I suppose you could face up to the inevitability of death, and your lack of power to stop it, by living your life to the max, drinking in all the experiences that life has to offer because you know that your time may come at any moment.

But deep down I think most of us fear death. The majority of human beings actually like living, and we like the experiences we have in life, even if for periods we suffer pain or hardship. Even some of those who suffer for most of their lives, I venture, are able to find comfort and enjoyment in places, and live in the knowledge that it’s not supposed to be like this. So even they live with at least a grain of hope that they may see better days. Death brings an end to that enjoyment, and an end to all hope. And what is the point of it if it has to end? We don’t want it to end.

And I think that’s because deep down we know that we are not meant to die. We were made for more than to briefly appear on the world stage and then disappear. There’s something that feels very wrong about death, as if it shouldn’t be happening. We know that it comes to everyone eventually, and yet we grieve – sometimes inconsolably – when those we love are taken, and the thought of our own death makes us tetchy and anxious. If death were so normal, then even the death of children should move us to little more than a shoulder-shrug.

According to the Bible we were not made to die. We were made to be perfect, and to experience perfection in God’s eternal presence forever. And yet, because of sin and the consequences of it, under the judgment of God, death is a reality. There is a very real sense in which all death is premature. Just because most people die in their 80s doesn’t make them any less unfortunate. God made human beings as immortal. Death only exists because God had to take immortal earthly life away as a punishment.

The irony is that death is not only God’s punishment on sin – His way of ensuring that those who reject His rule cannot share in His blessings and His goodness forever. Death is also our only hope, because it is also God’s way of giving new life.

First, since the whole of creation was put under a curse because of the sin of human beings, death means that we need not be under this curse for eternity.

Second, God’s rescue plan, His way of pulling human beings out from the curse on sin, involved the death of His Son on a cross. Without death there would be no sacrifice for the Son of God to make, no way of bringing sin to an end with the finality of a punishment taken in our place.

Third, bodily death gives God the way of sweeping everything from this life away and starting again. We can look forward to a New Heavens and New Earth, into which God’s people will be brought with resurrected and perfected bodies. We can be thankful for the hope of that resurrection, but it wouldn’t be possible without death.

The difference with the New Creation is that only those who are in Christ can be part of it, only those who have turned from the sin that brought the curse, accepted the rule of God’s Christ, and live by faith in Him in this life, those for whom Jesus made atonement.

So finally, death is a reminder to us, a message, if we will listen, confronting us with a deadline. We cannot keep on acting like we are the masters of our own destiny. Death tells us brutally that we’re not. We must face up to our mortality, and accept Jesus Christ as our only way of salvation, before it’s too late. Without Him, after death when there is no way back, we will be shut out from the presence of God, from His blessings and His goodness. We will immortalise our rejection of Him, and He will turn His back on us forever.

Sobering thoughts… at least I hope so.

In Final Destination death always gets the victory. It always wins, and that’s what makes it so scary. But for those who trust in Christ death is not victorious. The Bible says, in speaking about the Resurrection, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). The ultimate victory over death is that God uses death in bringing the hope of eternal life for those who trust in Jesus. So perhaps Final Destination is not all that realistic after all!