Chuck Larsen

One of the most important ways that I deal with the inevitability of my own death is to focus my attention on the promises of God contained in the Bible. Nowhere in the world will you find more comfort, more assurance, and more compassion than you will find in God’s Word. The Psalms, though not the only book, offer a treasury of comfort regarding our mortality. One Psalm especially is key to this treasury. It is Psalm 119. The Psalmist, presumably David, writes the longest of all the Psalms with176 verses. The subject is God’s communication to man. There are nearly two dozen different titles for this revelation in the Psalm; precepts, laws, rules, commandments, directions, guides, instructions, and so on. The entire Psalm is an acrostic. The first 8 verses begin with the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet, the Aleph. The second 8 verses begin with the second letter, the bet, and so on through all 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet. Of course the letters of the Alphabet are the instruments through which God’s Word has been revealed to man, thus even the poetic acrostic serves to reinforce the focus on God’s written revelation to man.

In verse 103 David writes, “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” Chocolate is sweet. Candy is sweet. Sugar is sweet. Honey, of course is sweet. But how can the Bible be sweet? It can only be explained by giving you an example. The following are some of the sweetest words I know: The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

I listened to the podcast of Dallas Theological Seminary’s chapel service. Donald Campbell spoke on the sweetness of God’s word. He (in effect) said that these sweet words should excite the taste buds of every person. If they don’t, your taste buds have been dulled by the saccharin of this world’s culture. He went on to quote James Montgomery Boice, who said, “to soothe bitter experiences of life, fill your heart with sweet verses like this.”

Chuck
“The Lord, all powerful, will destroy the power of death and wipe away all tears.” Isaiah 25:8

David is often referred to as a “man after God’s own heart.” His name is actually a title that means “warrior or champion.” There are immense articles in theological journals expounding on this reality and explaining its origin. That fits with his life as well. He stood up to Goliath in the Valley of Elah when all Israel’s Army was crippled by fear. He led the Israeli forces to victory after victory against the perennial enemy of Israel the Philistines. He recruited men of great courage and skill in warfare that they were called “David’s mighty men.” David’s courage and valor and faith led him to become the man “after God’s own heart.”

Yet in Psalm 54, he writes, “my heart is troubled within me; and the fear of death has fallen upon me.” I’m so encouraged that “fear” is something that even the bravest warriors experience. Courage and valor are not expressed because of the absence of fear, rather, they are expressed in the presence of fear. In fact, there is no courage or valor without the presence of the fear of death. Have you noticed that Psalm 23 says, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…” Please notice that David, the author, is acknowledging his walk through the “valley of the shadow of death.” It’s not death he will not fear, it’s evil of any kind.

David, the great warrior, does not repress the fear of death; he acknowledges it in his poetry. We don’t live our lives with the daily consciousness of the fear of death. How morbid would that be! But it’s absolutely essential that we come to terms with our mortality. Hebrews tells us that Christ came to die for those who “through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.” The slavery comes not from the fear of death, but from the denial of the fear of death. Even 1 Corinthians 15:32, “let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die” is not a declaration of freedom to live life any way we want, but is simply another form of, as Piper says, “benumbing denial.” He continues, “Death looms as the great enemy. And we become its slaves in the illusory flight of denial…” Once we acknowledge, like the warrior hero David did, that the fear of death is real, we are then truly free to come to terms with it.

Chuck
May …peace be yours …Jesus was the first to conquer death…Christ loves us, and by his blood he set us free…” Revelation 1:5