Death

We are thinking about death this morning because it's a very important topic. How we think about death will determine a lot about how we live. How we think about death will determine how we die. There is such a thing as dying well. We live in a secular age where we are taught and it's put upon us that this is the only life we have. Secular means time, right? We just have this one time. And there's a lot of emphasis and teaching that we might not be aware of that tries to help us believe that next life, what happens after death, doesn't matter. There's two ways in which many look at death today that are unhelpful. One is just to be flippant about it. The other is to fight against it. And I found two poems that are actually oftentimes read at funerals that I think capture both of these. The first represents treating death flippantly. Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there. I do not sleep. I'm a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sun on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning's rush, I am the swift uplifting rush. Of quiet birds in circle flight, I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand in my grave and cry, I am not there, I did not die." There we see just a denial of the reality of death and that it's painful and it's something we should grieve over and have sorrow. The other is a declaration of fighting against it by Dylan Thomas. Do not go gently into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right because their words had forked no lightning, they do not go gently into that good night. Good men the last wave by, crying how bright their frail deeds might have danced in a good bay. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight and learned too late they grieved it on its ways. Do not go gently into that good night. Grave men near death who sit with blinding sight, blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height. Curse, blast me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gently into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the life. As we think about the way God has taught us about death, we want to declare and insist upon some of the truths. The first is death is painful. Death is not the way it's supposed to be. Secondly, that without someone fighting for us, we are helpless in our sorrow and left to kind of comfort ourselves, whether a denial of what death is or pretending that we can fight against it. Well, this morning we want to look hard at death, believe it is as painful as God's Word says it is, so that we can actually embrace the good news that Christ is risen to give us hope. It's only good news if we first embrace that there is sin that causes death. This morning we're finishing 1 Samuel and beginning 2 Samuel. If you were to look in the Hebrew Bible, that's actually just one book. We divided it into two logically here, where it ends Saul's life and begins David's. We're looking here at what the consequences of many of Saul's sins have been. We see that chapter 28, the Philistines have come upon Israel. There's a final battle. And if you've been with us, or if you just look back, Samuel begins with a woman named Hannah who can't have children. And she prays to God. Bless me with a child, and I'll give that child to you." And the Lord blesses her, and the child grows up in the temple. And a key moment happens where 1 Samuel goes from saying, the word of the Lord was rare, to now that Samuel's been called to be a prophet, the word of the Lord abounded. So Samuel was a faithful prophet of God. Israel rejected God, refused Him, and asked for a king like the nations, and that's why they got Saul. And 1 Samuel is really the Ark of Saul. His rise, his calling to be king, his empowering by God to be king, his being blessed by the Holy Spirit to be king, and then his regular rejection of God. He did not keep the commands of God. He did not obey God. He did not have faith in God. And we see him spiral down in his irrational sin. The next section is the rise of David. And those two things do overlap. Second Samuel is about David's rise and collapse. If we look here, the Philistines, verse one of 1 Samuel 1, our first point is Saul's death. Saul's death. That's 1 Samuel 31. The second point will be David's sorrow. That is 2 Samuel 1 through verse 16. Saul's death. David's sorrow, and then we'll just spend time on David's lament. David's lamentation in the third point. First, Saul's death. The Philistines and the Israelites, they're coming to battle. If you remember, David has fled down to Ziklag because he was told to go. God blessed him there and strengthened him. We'll get back to that in a moment. These two things are happening simultaneously. The Philistines, verse two, overtook Saul and his sons. And we see there, Saul is in a moment of verse four. He's been wounded, he's facing death, and as the Philistines are pressing in, he's afraid. It's a real fear because the Philistines were not nice to captives. He's facing a real painful torture, especially not just as the king, but as this, an Israelite, he would have faced horrible torture that I don't want to go into now, but he is afraid of what they would do to him if they find him alive. And so he asks for his armor bearer, draw your sword and thrust me through, lest the uncircumcised come, and they mistreat me. And we see a motif picked up in the armor bearer's answer. No, he feared greatly. Who would put their hand on God's anointing? The armor-bearer refuses the king out of fear for God and out of reverence for the position. And then we see Saul do what Saul does. Over and over again, Saul takes matters into his own hands. He does not pray, he does not look up to God, he does not strengthen himself in the Lord in any way, he kills himself. As our bearer Saul was dead, he also fell upon a sword. Saul took his own sword and he fell upon it. He seeks to take matters into his own hands. Now, verse six is a summary statement that's very powerful. Thus Saul died, and his three sons, and his armor-bearer, and all his men on the same day together. Now it, it, my interpretation of just the way 1 Samuel's played out is that Saul is dying as a man who, who doesn't trust God. He dies as a man who lacks faith. He dies as a man who, who doesn't look up to God and, and trust Him. And really what we see here is a fulfillment of what Samuel said. If you weren't here a couple weeks ago, this is going to sound weird, but when Saul originally saw the Philistines come, he prayed to God, and because he had always forsaken God, God didn't answer him. And so he took matters into his own hand, and he goes to a medium. That is, somebody who speaks to the spirit world. And he had her call up the dead spirit of Samuel. And when Samuel shows up, What are you doing calling me out of the grave and out of my rest? Because you have denied God over and over Saul, tomorrow you will be like me. Samuel prophesied to Saul. You've rejected, you've rejected, you've rejected. Tomorrow you'll be in the grave with me, you and your sons. And here we see that actually come to fulfillment. If we actually look at 1 Chronicles 10, which retells the same events from a different author in a different way, 1 Chronicles 10 verse 13 gives us a little bit more interpretation. So Saul died for his breach of faith. He broke faith with the Lord in that he did not keep the commandment of the Lord, and also consulted a medium seeking guidance. He did not seek guidance from the Lord, therefore the Lord put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David the son of Jesse. We've seen over and over again, Saul is given a construction of the Lord and he partially does it. Saul is given a command of the Lord and he denies it. Saul is given an instruction of the Lord and he figures out how to do it his way, not the full way of God. And the author of Chronicles gives us a clear declaration. It's for his breach of faith. He's broken faith. He's not kept the law. It's a sad ending. He's supposed to be the one who hears God and leads God's people to trust God, and he himself refuses at every opportunity to truly listen to God, to truly trust God, and to obey him. But we see here a sad ending to a life made up of bad decision, after bad decision, after bad decision. We need to recognize that every little decision we make is somehow forming habits, and forming character, and determining who we're going to become. We see here in Saul a warning. He does not fear the Lord. He does not delight in his law. He will not keep His commandments. If you're a child, hear this. Choose today who you'll serve. Will you listen to God and just know that whenever God speaks, He's giving you something better than your own ideas? Will you delight in God's Word as Psalm 1 instructs us? A blessed person trusts in God's Word. Delights in it. He's like a tree planted by water that's full of nutrients and health and blesses with much fruit. We believe God's Word that we're sinners. And that God will punish our sin unless we believe in Jesus who forgives little children. Love God, which means we listen to Him. Which means we seek to know what He says is the wise life, and we set our walk. We set our thoughts. We set our actions based upon what God says. Parents. Saul's a warning. What kind of pattern do we have? What kind of pattern are we setting for our children? The kind of priorities we make? What kind of ways in which we can see Saul as a warning? Bad decision after bad decision. As we teach children, or as I try to teach my children, if it's not full obedience, guess what? It's not obedience. How often are we trying to push against the boundaries and try to figure out little loopholes? This is what foolish sin does. Yeah, I hear what God says, but here's my loophole. Here's my excuse. God does not bless that person who does not keep His commandments. And that's a blessing for us. If we look even further, it's not the way it's supposed to be. Verse 7, the men of Israel, when they, on the other side of the Jordan, when they heard what happened, they flee their cities, and the Philistines came and lived in them. Now if we go all the way back to the Exodus, remember, God told Israel, you're going to live in cities you didn't build. The whole idea is that Israel's supposed to go into Canaan, and they're supposed to win the battles, and they're supposed to just take cities and vineyards they didn't plant, they didn't build. But here are the opposites happening. Instead of blessing from God for obedience, there's a curse from God for disobedience. The Philistines are now living in the houses Israel built. That's not the way it's supposed to be. We see in verse 8, beginning there, there's two responses. The Philistines, they strip the slain. They find Saul's body. They cut off his head. They send the word out. They're heralding good news. We've won the battle. We've killed the King of Israel. Saul's own people, the people of Jabesh Gilead, they go and they take his body and they bury it with respect. Let's step back for a moment and just think about what's happening here with Saul in the moment of despair when he is close to being by himself. He does not turn to the Lord. He does not take into account his bad decision after bad decision. He does not repent. He does not strengthen himself in the Lord. I believe that at the same time he's failing in faith, David is actually there in that moment where he shows up in Ziklag, we studied it last week, and everything's gone. His wives, his children, his livestock, everything's gone, and then his men are so upset with him, they wanna stone him. And what does David do in that moment? He strengthened himself in the Lord. There's two different men, there's two different stories, same God. There's two ways we can live, same God. We can trust God. We can obey God. We can live in His blessings. Or we can be like Saul and be a coward and find weakness and just try to take things always in our own hands. You know, I really always want to think there's some third way. There's just not. There's trusting the Lord and His wisdom. Or there's trusting our foolishness. There's not a third way. They're submitting ourselves to the Lord, or they're submitting to what we think is always right in our own eyes. You see, Saul, his pattern is just doing what he thinks is right. He's the Frank Sinatra of the Old Testament. He does it his way. But David is a man after God's own heart. He trusts God. It's a call to walk by faith. It means we trust His promises. We trust His commands. We walk by faith. We seek wisdom from above and not the foolishness that stirs up underneath. We walk by faith. We try to stay center of what God says and not push the boundaries. We see Saul's death a tragic, sad ending to a life that had much promise. He was blessed with the Spirit of the Lord, and yet he rejected God. The second thing we see is David's sorrow. David's sorrow. And this begins 2 Samuel chapter 1. After Saul died, David had returned. We see these things are happening near the same time. David is there in Ziklag. He's already captured the camp back from the Amalekites. And then this man shows up with dirt on his head and clothes torn. And it could be this looks like he's, he's been in battle, but these will be signs that he's mourning and grieving as well. These will be kind of physical expressions of grief. When he comes to the ground, he, he, he grabs the David. He falls to the ground. He, he pays homage. Says there, there's been a fight. How did it go? The man informs him, well, I fled from the battle. Many people have fallen. And then he informs him the hard truth, verse four, Saul and his son Jonathan are also dead. David wants to know more. That's hard news for David to hear because of his reverence for the king and his love for Jonathan. How do you know that they're dead? Well, the young man then says, by happenstance, I was walking by and I saw Saul leaning on his spear. And the chariots were coming up on him. And Saul says to me, will you help me? Will you put me out of my misery before they come upon me? And so I did. So David says, who are you? I am an Amalekite. So we see here there's something interesting going on. We need to back up a little bit. If we recall, in 1 Samuel 15, God told Saul, go and finish the business of the Amalekites. They've been an evil people. They've been a people who have cursed Israel. They were harsh to Israel. God says, whoever curses my people, I will curse. And so Saul's job was to go out and wipe out the Amalekites because they were so wicked to God's people. Saul decided he didn't have to do the whole job. He could just make a sacrifice to God. Now, in God's providence, it's an Amalekite who takes Saul's life. Saul tries to pretend that to obey is better than sacrifice, and here now God has his life actually being ended by Amalekite. Now I do want to just pause here and expressed, there are some that believe the Amalekite is, is lying. Because he does get the story wrong a little bit. There's a sword, or there's a spear. There's chariots rushing up on the mountaintop. That doesn't seem right. At some level it's inconsequential if he is lying, or if he's telling the truth. What seems clear is he's hoping to get a blessing on his head. David, then, says to the Amalekite, who are you to think you can lay your hand on the anointed? And instead of a blessing on his head, he has his head cut off. This is a theme through David. David over and over again had the opportunity to kill Saul who was trying to kill him and over and over again David had a reverence for the anointed and would not lay his hand and now this Amalekite kills Saul and so David has him killed. But I want to focus here on verses 11 and 12. having heard and convinced that Saul and Jonathan and, and Israel have been defeated, verse 11, David took hold of his clothes, he tore them, and, and, and so all the men with him. And, and just listen to the repetition. They, they mourned. That is, they grieved. There was, there was internal sorrow of the soul. They wept, and they fasted until evening. for Saul, for Jonathan, his son, for the people of Israel, for the house of Israel. For the people of the Lord and the house of Israel. Now, sure, David doing this for Jonathan, whom he loved, that makes perfect sense. Okay, David weeping and mourning for the house of the Lord, the people of Israel, that makes sense. He loves his nation. He's actually called to be a king for his nation. But what really stands out here is that Saul is wept over. David mourns Saul. Saul has tried to throw a spear at David three times to kill him. Saul has made his life miserable for years, rushing out to make him live in the wilderness, to the point where he had to go live with the Philistines. Saul has been a constant threat and burden and curse to David, and yet when David hears that he dies, he mourns for him. He, he weeps for him. He fasts because of his death. I think we see David taking into reality the, what, what, what death is. It's not the way it's supposed to be. This is not a, a good ending for him. This is not the way he wanted the story to go, even though he's been told he will be king. And David, God has, God has rejected Saul. We see here a true response to death inspired for us. We mourn for death. We weep at death. We should fast. Death is what happens to everyone. And at the same time, it's not the way it's supposed to be. Those are the two truths we actually have to hold in tension here. Death is going to happen for everyone, yet it's not the way it's supposed to be. How can we hold those two things in common? How can we hold those two things together? If we go to Genesis 1 and 2, we see there's a God of life. He breathes life into man. He creates all things that live according with his own power of, of word. And then he tells man, here's my garden. Keep it. It's yours to enjoy. It's yours to watch over. But, but here's my one rule. There's one tree in the whole garden you can't eat of. There's thousands of other trees that have great fruit. God is not limiting man from something good. He's giving him just one thing he can't do. Don't eat of the one tree when there's thousands of other trees filled with fruit. God graciously provides all that he needs, and then he takes the one thing to make sure he remembers, you're not autonomous here. You're not the owner. You're the keeper. If you take the one fruit of the one tree, you're going to die. What happens next is amazing. Satan comes to Eve and he repeats this kind of command. What God really said But is God good in that He would tell you not to eat this one treat? You can't eat anything? He's twisting God's words. He's lying so that she's deceived. And all along, Adam is there, knowing what God said, and not watching or keeping. And they took, and they became ashamed, and they died. Now what's really amazing about that story, if we keep going, and this is what Sunday School will look at next Sunday. It takes God all of like ten lines to promise He's going to fix this. The problem we cause in the garden by refusing to obey the one command He gave, God says to Satan, All right. Your, your children are going to have enmity. There's going to be problems in this world. There's a, there's a, there's a spiritual battle going on for all of history now. But here's the promise I have for you. There's going to be a child born of Eve who's going to crush your head. There will be victory over sin and death and you, Satan. It's a promise that Jesus fulfills on the cross. Even more so, there's a picture there when, when God is pushing them out of the garden because they can't take the tree of life or else they'll live forever in sin. Remember they, He covered them? What did He cover them with? Animal skins. What had to die in order for their sin to be covered? Something innocent. Innocent life had to be slain in order for their sins to be covered. And that's pointing to something, because Jesus comes as the perfect Lamb of God, the true Lamb of God, that doesn't just cover our sins, He takes them away. As far as the East is from the West, Jesus takes away our sins. Here are the good news. John the Baptist says, behold the Lamb of God who takes away sins. Better than all the Old Testament sacrifices. They would cover sin, but no, Jesus takes them away. How? By taking our sin upon Himself and dying in our place for our sin. One of the sacrifices that covered sin was the Passover. As they're about to leave Egypt, there's a, put the blood over the doorpost, and the judgment will pass over. And here we have the Lord's Supper, which replaces the Passover. Because it's better. This is what we do now in the New Covenant, because Christ's blood has actually washed us. In preparation for the Lord's Supper, and we think about death. It's somber. We think about the fact that Christ's blood had to be poured out because of our sin. The consequence of sin is death. It's sober because of what it costs our Savior, but yet it's also at the same time rejoicing Because we receive life. Because he died for us. We hold these two things together. It's grieving with hope. We grieve that this is what our sin has done. We rejoice because of what Christ has done. It all points us back to death. We deserve to die and to be judged for our sin. But God in His kindness sent His own Son to die on our behalf, to take away the sting of death, which is sin and the judgment that comes before us. If you're a believer this morning, the Lord's Supper isn't for you, but the offer to believe in Jesus and be forgiven is. The offer to believe that Jesus has died so that you can be forgiven, that you won't have to live forever in the consequence of sin, in the curse of sin, and one day come face to face with the Holy of God with your sin. Believe in Jesus who can wash you and remove your sin from you by taking it upon Himself. I want you to see something important here about what David does. He mourns. He weeps. He fasts. He's a, a good man. He's a good king, about to be finally anointed king and take the, the reign to the king. I want to remind you of what we know is the shortest verse in the Bible. Just as David weeps, Jesus weeps for death. If you turn to John 11, you don't have to look at it now, but look at it later. It's, it's one of those important passages to think about death. It's the end of the first half of John. The rest of John is about the Passion Week, the one week of Christ in Jerusalem for the last time. But before he goes in, there's this significant event. Jesus hears that Lazarus is sick, and he waits. He intentionally doesn't go immediately. And then when he's coming, Mary comes, and she says, Master, if you had been here. Jesus says, I know. And then he gives her a theological lesson. I am the resurrection and the life. All who believe in me will live. Do you believe? There's an invitation. There's a, there's a truth. And Mary gets that wonderful theological lesson that we want to proclaim loudly in just a few weeks on Resurrection Sunday. But then notice also, Martha comes and she says the same thing. Master, if you had been here, It's very important. Jesus doesn't give her the same theological conversation. He doesn't teach her He is the resurrection. No, Mary and Martha are two different people that He knows and He loves, and He cares for Martha in the way that Martha needs to be cared for. He walks with her. And then when they get to the graveside, what does He do? He weeps with her. Here is the God of life. The resurrection and the life. And when He sees the pain of death, when He sees the consequence of sin, and the death of Lazarus and all that it's affecting, He weeps with His people. That's how He cares for Martha. What a shepherd! What a Savior! He knows He's going to conquer death. He knows He's going to bring Lazarus up. But yet, looking at how it affects us, He weeps with us. He comforts us with His own tears. And then He comes to conquer what brings those tears, death itself. This morning, we have a Savior who comforts us in our mourning, and a Savior who gives us hope in His resurrection. Finally, let's look at David's lament. Beginning in verse 17, we've seen Saul's death, we've seen David respond with sorrow, and now we see a specific limitation. And limitation is just the expression of the sorrow. It's helpful to see what's going on here because 17, verse 17 tells us, this is something he said should be taught. This is instruction, instructive. There's something pedagogical going on here. There's something that needs to be remembered for all people, not just Saul, but how to grieve. It's hard. I read those two poems from our own culture that's right at funerals all the time. We don't know how to grieve. Even Christians, I don't think we really know how to grieve. There's a couple observations I want to make of this. One, if we were to read it in Hebrew, it's one of the highest elevated poems of David. He is a fantastic poet. It's also just a horizontal declaration. What I mean by that is most of his psalms lift us up to God. They call upon God. They'll express sorrow, but with God in view. There's no reference to God. This is just a straight, horizontal, not vertical, a horizontal way of looking at what is taking place with sorrow because of death. It's important to know how to express sorrow. It's an expression of how painful death is. There's a couple ways in which we can organize it. First, we can see that over and over again, he repeats, the mighty have fallen. That's an organizational expression. Verse 19, 25, and 27. That's an expression he uses to organize and really emphasize what's going on. Notice verse 19. Your glory, O Israel, is slain on your high places. how the mighty have fallen. We see there the open expression, and your glory is not referring to God, but it's Saul and his sons and the royal presence of Israel. He's speaking highly of Saul. And then verse 20. He doesn't want the enemies of Israel to have any victory. He's zealous for God and his people, just like he was with Goliath. They can have no victory, no celebration. Do not let it go out to Gath. Do not let it be told to the Philistines, lest they rejoice. And then it's Saul's own people. Mountains of Gilboa. Let nothing good happen there. Let it be a time of grieving. Let the shield of him not have any anointing of Saul. There's supposed to be a grieving and a mourning in Saul's own place of death and among his own people. Verse 22, from the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned not back, and the sword of Saul returned not empty. He's really saying there's many sacrifices and many victorious battles that these men have won. They were successful. Saul was not always successful, if not rarely successful. Kind of interesting that there's nothing negative said about Saul in this lament. There's something very instructive about them. When someone passes you, you remember what good they were and what good they did. It's not a time to get a jab in. Verse 23, Saul and Jonathan. The heightened language. Beloved and lovely. In life and death, they were not divided. Now, remember, Saul did try to kill Jonathan, but Jonathan stayed by Saul's side in battle even after that. He was a son who honored his father. They were swifter than eagles. They were stronger than lions. Verse 24, your daughters of Israel weep over Israel, who clothed you with luxury and scarlet, who put ornaments of gold on your apparel. How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle. Saul, when he, when Israel was asking for a king of the nations, if you remember the, the warning Samuel gave is that a king of the nations is going to take, going to take, going to take, going to take. Here, David is actually saying Saul was the kind of king we really wanted in that he, he gave clothes luxuriously. He, he ornamented us. He, he gave us such good things. Again, he's remembering him in his, his goods. Now we see the emphasis on Jonathan. Jonathan lies slain on your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan. Very pleasant have you been to me. Your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women. How the mighty have fallen and the weapons of war perished. I'm frustrated I have to even talk about this at one level, because if you Google verse 26, you're mainly going to see a lot of arguments from the LGBT community that verse 26 is promoting that David was a homosexual. That's just sad. I'm going to leave it at that. This is an expression of a friend to a friend. This is an expression of love among those who care for one another. It's sad that we've lost the idea of friend love, and we've so made erotic sex love the emphasis that that's the way we want to think. We can take any perverted idea and try to make Scripture present it somewhere, but that's denying what everything else Scripture says. No, in Lewis's Four Loves, he gives two distinctions. There's erotic love, and that's where bodies are naked and romance is enjoyed. And then there's filial love. That's where personalities are naked. That's where two men can stand before each other without pretense, without judgment, without fear of one another, and truly walk side by side in a way that cares for another. Lewis says, this love, free from instinct, free from all duties, but those which love as freely assumed, almost wholly free from jealousy, and free without qualification from the need to be needed, is eminently spiritual. It's sad we've lost the idea of friendship. That a loving friendship between two people, especially two believers, is twisted in some way, erotic. Now remember, Jonathan was extraordinary. He knit his soul to David. They truly were in a committed, loving friendship. And we see there that there's a beauty to how David was blessed by Jonathan. At one point he was weak, and David came and strengthened him. When David was being attacked by Saul, Jonathan's own father, Jonathan would come and remind him, no, persevere. God is with you. He's going to give you the kingdom. That's, that's a good friend. We should want these kind of good friends. We should pattern our lives to be these kind of good friends. I want to conclude with making it very clear we, we have a friend better than Jonathan. We have a friend who has said, I am with you until the end. We have a friend who said, I've come and I've not called you servants, I've called you friends because I've told you everything for my Father. I am a friend to you in that I'll lay down my life for you. I'm a friend to you in that I know who you are in your worst, and I'm still going to commit to walk alongside of you and give you my love and my life. It's Jesus Christ. That's pretty amazing. He who knows us the best, at our worst, says, I will love you the most. That's Jesus, our true friend. We need to see that Christianity speaks to death and its real pain. We are supposed to grieve over death, but we're supposed to do so with hope because Jesus has come and said, I have come to conquer death. If we just think about that 1 Corinthians 15 passage we heard read earlier, and that the sting of death is gone. It's such a victorious message to be heralded to one another, to encourage one another. And that passage ended with the declaration, be encouraged to keep working. Because if your work is in the Lord who has risen and taken away the sting of death, your work is not in vain. Is that the kind of work we're really committed to? Is that the kind of friendship and walking alongside of others in love that we're committed to? Because that's what we do when we're walking in the victory of Christ. I want to close with another poem. This is a poem from a Christian. Her name is Macrina. She was a fourth century believer. her meditations on a funeral. You have released us, O Lord, from the fear of death. You have made the end of life here on earth a beginning of true life for us. You let our bodies rest in sleep in due season, and you awaken them again at the sound of the last trumpet. You entrust us to the earth, our bodies of earth, which you fashioned with your own hands, and you restore again what you have given. transforming with incorruptibility and grace what is mortal and deformed in us. You redeemed us from the curse and from sin. Having become both on our behalf, you have crushed the heads of the serpent who had seized man in his jaws because of the abyss of our disobedience. You have opened up for us a path to the resurrection. Having broken down the gates of hell, and reduced to impotence the one who had power over death. You have given to those who fear you a visible token, the sign of the Holy Cross, for the destruction of the adversary and for the protection of our life. Remember me also in your kingdom, for I too have been crucified with you, for I have nailed my flesh out of reverence for you and have feared your judgments. Let not the dreadful abyss separate me from your chosen ones. Let not the slander stand against me on my journey. Let not my sin be discovered before your eyes, if I have been overcome in any way because of our nature's weakness, and have sinned in word or deed or thought. You, who have on earth the power to forgive sins, forgive me, so that I may draw breath again and be found before you in the stripping off of my body without stain or blemish in the beauty of my soul, but may my soul be received blameless and immaculate in your hands as an incense offering before your face. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you that you have not left us alone because we have chosen to reject you. We have chosen death. Lord, forgive us for not listening, for not trusting, for not obeying. We thank You that You've sent Your Son who did perfectly trust You, who did perfectly obey You, even to the point of death and death on the cross, so that we can look to Him and find forgiveness, find peace, and see the clear message that You are the God of life. You are the God of love to be trusted. Help us learn to think about death according to your word. Help us learn to rejoice in the life you promise us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.