I received the phone call from Lavonne on Saturday around
noon. She was at the emergency room. Marty had died. I was shocked. What
happened? We don’t really know. He just got suddenly sick and died.
Everybody who has heard about Marty since then has had the
same reaction. It is unusual for people to die suddenly. We’re used to hearing
about people being sick before they die. That provides some kind of warning. Unexpected
deaths hit the loved ones harder than deaths that come after extended illness
or old age. I’m sorry for the shock and grief that this has caused.
What shall we say about these things? How can we explain
this? Is this just bad luck? The answer that the Bible provides is an emphatic
“no.” Jesus says, “Two sparrows are sold for a penny, and yet not one of
them falls to the ground without the knowledge and consent of God.” His
point is that birds aren’t that important, and yet God orders the course of
their lives. Or how important is it that a hair should fall from your head so
that you have one less than you previously had? God knows this knowledge also.
How many hairs we have on our head isn’t very important to us, for what
difference does it make?
Something that we care a great deal more about is also known
by God. This thing we learn from Job in our Old Testament reading. God
determines how long each will live. The number of months has been set by him.
There’s a limit, and nobody is able to live one day past that limit. So God
determined that Marty was to live exactly 56 years not one day more or one day
less. Of course, also, then, God knew the way that Marty would die—that it
would be unexpected and come as a shock to us.
What we can see from all this is that God is not far away.
He is not detached from his creation. He knows everything, great and small. Not
a single hair falls from our head without his say-so.
Because God is so close and determines everything, we should
see the importance of a good conscience. When we are burdened by a bad
conscience we wish that we could be far away from this God who is so intimately
tangled up in our lives. It’s like how a kid, who has done wrong, stays away
from its parents, or the way that a criminal stays away from the police. It is
very unpleasant to be together with the judge and the executioner when a person
has a bad conscience. Therefore, when it comes to God, people will retreat to
hopes and dreams that God isn’t real, or that he isn’t close, or that he
doesn’t care about how I live my life. This is wishful thinking that will not
come true, but if we don’t have any hope of having a good conscience, then
maybe this is the best that we can do.
God does not want us to have a bad conscience. He wants us
to have a good conscience. In the Christian Church we hear a lot about the word
“peace.” That’s talking about having a good conscience towards God. A good
conscience is another way of saying that there is peace between God and you and
you and God.
How can there be peace between God and you? Is it by living
a good life? Theoretically, and perhaps ideally, that would be the case, but
that ship sailed long ago. How, then? It is by the sacrifice of the Lamb of
God, Jesus Christ. The sin of the world was placed upon Jesus’s shoulders and
he was punished for the sins that we have committed. By this atoning sacrifice
the air has been cleared. Through faith in Jesus we may have a good conscience
towards God because in Jesus is the forgiveness of all sins. St. Paul says, “Having
been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
It can be hard to believe that there is peace between God
and you for Jesus’s sake. As soon as just one past sin comes to mind it is easy
to believe that God could never approve of you. That is where it is necessary
to remind yourself that Jesus took your sin away from you and suffered God’s
fearsome wrath for it on the cross. You’re right: so far as you yourself are
concerned, apart from Christ, it would be good to be a million miles away from
God, if that were possible. But that fear is not necessary. This is the privilege
of being a Christian. The good conscience toward God is given to us as a gift
to be received and held to by faith.
Having a good conscience for Jesus’s sake changes everything
so far as the nearness of God is concerned. Instead of being a bad, terrifying
thing, it is recognized by faith as being a good thing—even the very best of
things. Jesus, in our Gospel reading, says that God is very near and he knows
and works everything that happens to us. Not a sparrow falls from the sky or a
hair from our head without his say-so. Then he says, “So do not be afraid.”
No matter what might happen, God is near and God is for you.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a friend that is rich and
powerful and could help you out of every possible predicament? We’d be quite
delighted just to have a friend like that who is a normal human being. God’s
Gospel reveals that that friend is God himself. There is no trouble that is too
much for God. If God is for you, then who cares what might possibly be against
you. If God is for you, then even the devil, even death, even your sins, even
hell itself must submit to him, for he is God.
Think of Marty’s last moments on this earth. There isn’t a
single one of us who wouldn’t like to have been there so that we could help him
in whatever way we could. But who was there? It’s not inconceivable to me at
all that when Marty knew that he was in trouble that he asked his Lord Jesus
for help. Jesus heard his prayer and shepherded him through the valley of the
shadow of death. Marty feared no evil once he learned that Jesus was near him,
his rod and his staff comforted him.
A goodly part of the training that Christians undergo is to
learn about God’s nearness, how God is for us in Jesus, and that we have been
given God’s name to call upon in every trouble. Marty was faithful in his training
as a Christian. He knew what to do when death came calling. No matter how
strong death is, Jesus is stronger. Easter is testament to that. Although death
holds Marty in its grip at this moment, death’s back is already broken. It can
only hold on for a little bit longer. For soon, very soon, Jesus will come on
the clouds and say, “Marty, my friend, get up.” His body will rise again to
life, just as we hear about in the Scriptures.
Now that Marty has gone through what he has gone through, he
has witnessed the saving power of his God. He has learned even more thoroughly
the importance of a good conscience towards God. So I imagine that if he could
give all of you who love him a message it would be this: “What a friend we have
in Jesus.” Come out from whatever rebellion you have had against God and
embrace the gift of peace that God gives you in the crucified and resurrected
Jesus.
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