Truth For Life

Bob Lepine: Have you thought about how you'll face death? Are you confident where you'll live in the next world? While death is an uncomfortable topic that many prefer to avoid, today on Truth For Life, Alistair Begg explains why it's important to make plans now while it still makes a difference.

Alistair Begg: Now, if you'll take your Bible and turn with me again to Genesis 47 and pay particular attention to verse 29 and the opening phrase when the time drew near for Israel to die. It's a striking phrase, is it not? Anyone who is reading the text carefully will, with any sensitivity, be caused to wonder at such a phrase. Certainly, not simply because it speaks to the history and destiny of this man Jacob, but because we find ourselves mirrored in such a phrase.

Because although we would rather, on many, if not most occasions, distance ourselves from this awful truth, the fact is that for each of us there will come a day when it will be apparent that the time has drawn near for us to die. And whether it is happening suddenly, without any sense of premonition or warning, or whether as a result of the onset of a protracted illness, there will be those who whisper behind their hands and walk from our rooms and remark to one another, "Surely the time has come for him or for her to die."

Now, it is not an immediately appealing subject, death. Indeed, one could argue that we have done our level best over the last 50 years to anesthetize all of us from the actuality of the one event for which we need all to prepare. A bioethicist, a doctor writing concerning this says, "Despite what you were told, the last taboo in polite conversation is not religion or politics, it is death. If you hang around hospitals, you don't need convincing of this fact."

"Families bravely soldier on, refusing to discuss death with a dying relative. Doctors can't bring themselves to tell patients that the end is in sight and they find refuge in euphemisms and false cheer. Our society seems to share a universal belief that Newsweek will come out next week or soon after that with a cover story: Found, a Cure for Death. But the figures are in and won't change. The death rate sooner or later is 100 percent."

In 1991, in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, a doctor from California included this poem entitled, "How Will I Die?" "I have often wondered how should I die? Should it be gently as in a return to my mother's arms? Or will it be with rage, and will I fight bitterly against that which I know nothing of? Or will I embrace deep darkness, battered and broken in sudden, head-on, crushing collision? Or will I, my body a ballroom for an anarchic diastral dance, surface from opium haze and plead, please read my living will?"

"Or will I, unknowing recipient of life-extending ingenuity, voicelessly shout: Let me go from endless gray to total dark? Or should I with my last breath murmur platitudes that might make my survivors happy? Or should I cry to myself: I should have gone to church oftener? Or should I smile and wonder at the memorial service: Will they say good things of me solemnly?"

When the time drew near for Israel to die. When the time draws near for you or I to die. You see, death is the great leveler. Irrespective of how athletic one might have been in one's youth, or how successful or otherwise in the middle years of business, how attractive to other people in terms of the externals of who and what we are, how engaging in conversation, how diffident in company. Whatever the characteristics of our life, there is one event which levels us all out immediately and completely, and that one event is here before us.

For you see the great question of life is not how do we face life and live in this world? The real question is the one which is beyond that, in that final exit sign on the motorway of life. The question is, how will I face death and where will I live in the next world? And indeed, no pastor has ever done his job properly nor prepared his people effectively to live life in all of its fullness unless he has prepared them to fight that final enemy and to make that final passing journey.

And yet, despite that, the preoccupation of so much, so many sermons has to do with telling people: Don't worry about that, let's concentrate on now, let us enjoy this and let us experience that and let us be concerned about all of these temporal, ephemeral, transient elements of life. Not that they are irrelevant—they are vitally important—but they are not ultimately the issue. For no one, as we have said with great frequency, knows what it is to live unless they have learned how to die. And Jacob serves as a wonderful illustration of how to die.

Now, at the risk of oversimplification, I want to try and gather this breadth of material under three simple headings concerning Jacob's passing. First of all, that he knew when he was leaving. Secondly, that he knew what he was asking. And thirdly, he knew where he was going. First of all, then, he knew when he was leaving. Now clearly he didn't know the exact time that he was leaving, but he had a sense that his diminishing powers were such that he probably shouldn't, as they say, be buying green bananas.

That his shelf life was nearing its end. That stamped on him that expiration date seemed to be coming up awful fast. And there is about the descriptive material here concerning Jacob many indications of the fact that he knew himself to be treading, as the hymn writer puts it, the verge of Jordan. He hadn't waded out into the stream of death, but he knew himself at least to be on the fringes of it. His feet were in the water, if you like, and there was a chilliness about the waters that had begun to come around his ankles. And it was apparent to him and indeed clearly apparent to others that he did not have long left in which to pursue his earthly pilgrimage.

He knew largely when he was leaving. Well, what then are the factors which point to this? And in asking this, we seek to learn a little of certain factors which actually will become apparent in the lives of those around us who are confronted by the actuality of this experience. Not all of them and all the time, not necessarily in this exact way, but certain of these factors irrespective of the time of the onset of death will become apparent to the people themselves and to others who are looking on.

Well, let me just give to you one or two factors that are in the text. Number one, the fact of his age. You don't have to be brilliant to deduce that. Verse 28, Jacob lived in Egypt 17 years. Remember he had arrived there reunited with his boy Joseph when he was 130. 130 is a pretty good innings, I would say, and he had never anticipated that he would have experienced all of life since. But he's had another 17 years and he's now approximately 147. In other words, he's aware of the fact that he's gone into extra time.

That he is, if you like, beyond the ninth inning, he's in the 10th or the 11th inning and the clock is ticking. His experiences in the past have served to introduce him to the faithfulness and the character of God, and now as his days begin to close in around him, as the various features of his life begin to dwindle, he is aware simply by his looking at the fact of his existence that he's about to die.

Now secondly and correlatively, he was aware of the fact of his diminishing physical powers. His diminishing physical powers. Chapter 47 and verse 31, "Swear to me," he says, encouraging Joseph to promise him these certain things. And then we're told that he worshipped as he leaned on the top of his staff. Now his staff was simply there for him to lean on, and he would have leaned on it as an elderly person would lean on another for support.

But when he would not have leaned on his staff was when he was worshipping. Because when he worshipped, he would have bowed down before God. He may actually have prostrated himself flat out on the ground. And so the fact that we're told at the end of 47 that he worshipped leaning on top of his staff is an indication of the fact that he no longer is as supple as he once was. He can't guarantee that if he goes down and lies flat out on the ground that he'll be able to get back up again, and so he worships leaning on top of his staff.

The variant reading is that he worshipped bowing his head on his bed. That would be an indication of the same thing. Indeed, the Hebrew is so very similar that you get this disparate reading. Either way, it doesn't alter the essence of what is being conveyed, namely that whereas before his worship had a physical dimension to it insofar as he would have laid himself out before God, now he no longer is able to do so. And this little passing comment that he worshipped leaning on the top of his staff, or he bowed down at the head of his bed, is an indication of his diminishing physical powers.

As I was thinking about it this week, I recalled my roommate in college back in '72 in London, a fellow from Rhodesia, a most excellent chap. And when we became roommates, he was very, very diligent about having his quiet time or his devotions in the morning. I can remember waking up, sorry soul that I was, to the sight of him kneeling down by his bed and having his devotions, and of course it jarred me into action and I was both encouraged and embarrassed by him.

And he made it through September and into October still out kneeling down by his bed. And then one morning, one cold morning in November, I awakened only to discover that he wasn't by his bed. But as I looked through the blur of my eyes, I could make out this weird form in his bed. And it was apparent to me that he was still bowing down, still kneeling, but he had determined that it was too jolly cold to get out of the bed. And so he had put himself in a kneeling posture within his bed. He pulled all the blankets and the covers up over his head and it looked as though there was a large hound dog underneath the blankets. And he had a flashlight under there and he was reading his Bible and praying. He still wanted to be in the posture, but now he bowed with his head on the bed. There's something about that here. He is indicating something by his posture. At the same time, you will notice in 48 and in verse 10, "his eyes were failing because of old age and he could hardly see." And these are little indications of the fact that he was about to die.

The diminishing of his physical powers. Thirdly, the fading of his mental capacity. The fading of his mental capacity. He just was not on it all the time. Now I hope I'm not reaching too far, but as I read these verses, see if you can follow along with me. Look at verse five of chapter 48, where he is very lucid concerning the sons of Joseph. And he is very detailed about his expectation for them in terms of the blessing that he plans to give them and the destiny which they will face.

And then in verse eight, "when Israel saw the sons of Joseph, he asked, 'Who are these?'" Now this will be no surprise to anyone who has cared for elderly people. Because this dimension of disorientation is not unusual. One moment they're able to tell you how they remembered the birthday party and the events that you had enjoyed way back in 1917, and then the next minute they turn around and ask you who their grandchildren are.

"Who's this?" "These are your grandchildren, Dad." "Oh yeah, that's right." Now some of you are a bit concerned by this because this has actually been happening to you last week and you're not out of your 40s. And so you're going to put two and two together, your wife's nudging you: "Hey, you're on your way out, buddy. You were doing that last week." And it may be true.

But the fact of the matter is, age, the diminishing of physical power, the fading of mental capacity, this kind of disorientation is often an indication of demise. Fourthly, the onset of illness which holds little prospect of recovery. 48:1, some time later Joseph was told, "Your father is ill." Now if you let me try and say this to you the way it needs to be said. This isn't, "Hey, your dad's not feeling good."

This is not, "Hey, your dad has a bad back." This is, "Excuse me, do you have a moment? I need to tell you your father is ill." And in the very enunciation of the phrase, there is that chilling awareness which creeps into the very core of the individual as they acknowledge that what is being conveyed to them by a loved one, a friend, or a doctor is something far more than simply an indication of the onset of the flu or of a cold or of whatever it might be. "Your father is ill," and there is little prospect of recovery.

Fifthly, there is the indication that is represented when individuals in their later years begin to reminisce about the telling moments in life. Now we all reminisce, some of us have started it way too prematurely and could be cured of it yet. But what we're talking about here is something a little different. And again, if you take the balance of the text in verse five, here you have Jacob and he is very lucid and he is describing these things.

And he is talking about what the future will hold for these boys. And then in verse seven, what you have is essentially a soliloquy. If you were setting this in a dramatic form, if I were directing the drama, I wouldn't have Jacob enunciating this in this seventh verse in the same way as he does verse five and verse eight. Rather, I think the picture is of him drifting off. As he thinks about the future, he thinks about the past. And he says, "You know, it was when I left Paddan that dear old Rachel died. Man, I love Rachel. I loved her memory. I remember we stopped at the side of the road on the way to Bethlehem and we dug out that grave and we laid her there." And then he sort of shakes his head and he turns around and he says, "Who are these?" coming back into it, you see. Lucid, reminiscing, disoriented.

Have you visited elderly people much? Perhaps you have one in your home. It's not easy to deal with. Because in the moments of lucidity, you cherish great hope that this is what it's all about. You endure the frequent reminiscing and you're disappointed by the obvious disorientation. But it is an indication. It is a God-given indication that time is passing, that life does not go on forever, that we will not always be together in this way.

And God in His grace and in His mercy provides for some in going into old age these indications which they may cherish to themselves, which they may make a matter of prayer, which they may share with those who are nearest and dearest to them, but which are signal blessings from God to prepare us for the fact that there is a dimension that is different from this so that we will not hold on unduly to that which represents life now.

You can't see the way you once saw. I was talking with a friend the other day—"the other day" is a euphemism for in the last few months—and as we got out of the car to play golf, this chap said to me, he's about 56, he said, "You know, I'm seeing it in my legs." I said, "Seeing what in your legs?" And he said, "You know, just in getting out of the car, I'm starting to see it. I would just always get up from chairs, I'd get out of the car, but now when I go to get up, it's different. And the Lord is saying, 'Hey, Bill, you're closing down, buddy.'"

"You're not going to be here forever. You're not supposed to be here forever. Don't worry about it. It's better where you're going. You're going to get new legs." The fading you see of our physical frame, the diminishing of our mental powers are not things to be railed against. They're not things to be fought off. They're things to be understood as indications of God's signal blessing to us so that we might recognize: Am I making adequate preparation? When the epitaph reads for me, what will it mean?

And the reminiscing there, the wonderful picture in 48:11, Israel said to Joseph, "I never expected to see your face again, and now God has allowed me to see your children too." If it was late 20th century, he would have a couple of photographs, and when you went to see him in the nursing home or when you went with him to McDonald's when he got that senior coffee for a ridiculous small amount of money, and when he sat there with a Plain Dealer just kind of looking at it but not turning the pages, any occasion he would get, he'd bring out his wallet and he'd say, "Let me show you these boys." Can you imagine as years from today, sharing a park bench quietly? How terribly strange to be 70, and 80, and 90. To become old friends. To become that person we've observed. To walk like a grasshopper. To be unable to hear the telephone and yet to become an insomniac because of the sound of the birds. How can that be? You can't hear the phone and the birds wake you up.

Bob Lepine: You're listening to Bible teacher Alistair Begg on Truth For Life. We'll hear more tomorrow about how to face death. As we continue our study of God's providence in the life of Joseph, I want to make sure you have requested your copy of Alistair's book, *The Hand of God: Finding His Care in All Circumstances*. This book takes you deeper into the evidence of God's providential care in Joseph's life.

As you read the book, you'll learn how the Lord was at work orchestrating circumstances throughout Joseph's dark, difficult days as well as in his triumphs. You'll learn to discover how God is doing the same in your life today. This is a reassuring book to read if you find yourself in a time of difficulty. In each chapter, you'll gain encouragement to trust God and rest confidently in His unfailing promises, whether you're facing disappointment, waiting for direction, or wondering how God can bring good out of a struggle.

Ask for your copy of the book *The Hand of God* when you donate to Truth For Life today. You can give online at truthforlife.org/donate or call us at 888-588-7884. If you'd rather mail your donation along with your request for the book, write to us at Truth For Life, PO Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio, 44139. If you have a friend who is struggling through uncertain times, the book *The Hand of God* would make an encouraging gift. You can purchase additional copies in our online store. They're available at our cost of $4. Visit truthforlife.org/store. I'm Bob Lepine. Thanks for listening. Tomorrow, Alistair offers practical tips that will help you adequately prepare for your own death as you lighten the burden on your loved ones. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.