07 Why Do You Weep? (Mark 5:35-43)

SPEAKER_01: Well we are in Mark chapter five today, verses thirty-five through forty-three. And as you know, we're going through the Gospel of Mark, stopping at the places where Jesus asked a question. And last week we looked at a section in the middle of this, Who Touched Me? was the question. It was addressed to the woman who had had a period that didn't end for 12 years, and she was ritually unclean. She was isolated, she was sick, she was living a life that was going from bad to worse. And she touched Jesus in hopes of getting physical healing, which she did receive, but then he offered her more than that. He offered her salvation and spiritual healing and restored her to her place in the community of believers. And what I want you to see as we've been going through these questions, is the evidence is mounting as to who Jesus is and that he is the Messiah. Remember, the first week we started, he claimed to have the authority to forgive sins, and then he proved it by healing the paralytic. And then we've seen him claim to be the Lord over the Sabbath. He uh we saw him deal with this external storm on the Sea of Galilee, so he was Lord over of all the forces of nature. Then we saw this internal storm of the man who was possessed by the Legion of Demons, and that again was no problem. Last week we saw him handle this debilitating physical illness. Um, and today we're gonna see him handle the final enemy, that is death. And again, as you see, we've been kind of going through each extreme, and now he's coming to what we think of as kind of the last enemy. And he's gonna challenge, I think, our views on death. Psychologists say that there's this predictable process to grieving and that we all go through it in in some fashion and some slower or some quicker, but that we tend to follow these same patterns that when we when you lose someone, that it starts with denial and shock and then goes to anger or bargaining, guilt and depression, and then finally acceptance. And there's in the literature they talk about you've got to get to this place of acceptance. And that notion I think is what Jesus is gonna challenge today, this acceptance of that death always triumphs, because as he's gonna show us, death does not always triumph, not um against him. So that's the core issue we're gonna look at. Just to lay this out, there's a woman named Mary Trumbull Slaussen. She was an author in the 1800s, and she wrote these very profound little folk tales that um, in her words, were to give a glimpse of the joy beyond the walls of this world. She said that was her purpose in writing. And I found one of her stories online, and it's a story of a little boy who was scared of dying, and it just it's I'm gonna read it to you, it's very short, and it seems very straightforward, but it's one of these stories that the more you think about it, the more you see she's got a message. It's uh written in kind of a colloquial speech of the day. I am gonna not do it justice, but I will try, so just bear with me. So anyway, this is um the author again was Mary Trumble Slaussen. She says, Once there was a boy that was dreadful scared of dying. Some folks is that way, you know. They ain't never done it to know how it feels, and they're scared. And this boy was that way. He wasn't very rugged, his health was sort of slim, and maybe that made him think about such things more. At any rate, he was terrible scared of dying. 'Twas a long time ago this was, the times when posies and creatures could talk soin folks could know what they was saying. And one day, as this boy, his name was Reuben, I forget his other name, as Reuben was setting under a tree crying, he heard a little bit of a voice, not squeaky, you know, but small and thin and soft like, and he sees it was a took a posy talking to him. 'Twas one of them posies they call Benjamin's with three cornered whitey blows with a mite o' pink on him, and it talked in a kind of pinky white voice, and it says What are you crying for, Ruben? And he says, 'Cause I'm scared of dying. He says, I'm dreadful scared of dying. Well what do you think? That posy just laughed. The most curious little pinky white laugh 'twas. And it says the Benjamin says, Dying? Scared of dying? Why I die myself every single year of my life. Die yourself, says Reuben. You're foolin'. You're alive this minute. Of course I be, says the Benjamin. But that's neither here nor there. I've died every year since and I can remember. Don't it hurt? says the boy. Nah don't, says the posey. It's real nice. You see, you get kind of tired of holding your head up straight and looking pert and wide awake, and tired of the sun shinin' so hot and the wind blowing you to pieces and the bees are taking your honey. So it's nice to feel sleepy and kind of hang your head down and just get sleepier and sleepier, and then you find you're dropping off. And then you wake up just the nicest time of year and come up and look round, and why I like to die I do. But some ways that didn't help Reuben much. I ain't a posy, he thinks to himself, and maybe I wouldn't come up. Well another time he was setting on a stone in the lower pasture, crying again, and he heard another curious little voice. 'Twasn't like the posy voice, but it was little, woolly soft and fuzzy, and he sees it was a caterpillar talking to him. And the caterpillar says in his fuzzy little voice, he says, What you crying for, Reuben? And the boy says, I'm powerful scared to dyin', that's why. And the fuzzy caterpillar laughed. Dyin, he says, I'm lautin' on dying myself. All my family, he says, they die every once in a while, and when they wake up they're just splendid. Got wings and fly about and live on honey and such things. Why I wouldn't miss it for anything, he says. I'm lautin' on it. But somehow that didn't jerk up Reuben much. I ain't a caterpillar, he says, and maybe I wouldn't wake up at all. Well there was lots of other things to talk to that boy and tried to help him, trees and posies and grass and crawlin' things that were always a dying and a livin', and Ruben thought it didn't help him much, but I guess it did a little bit of a mite, for he just couldn't help thinking of what every one of them said, but he was scared all the same. And one summer he began to fail up faster and faster. He got so tired he couldn't hardly hold his head up, but he was scared all the same. And one day he was laying on the bed looking out the east window, and the sun kept a shining in his eyes till he shut em and fell asleep. He had a real good nap. And when he woke up he went out to take a walk. And he began to think of what the posies and trees and creatures had said about dying, and how they laughed at his being scared at it. And he says to himself, Why some ways I don't feel so scared today, but I suppose I be. And just then what do you think he done? Why he met an angel. He'd never seen one afore, but he knowed it right off. And the angel says, Ain't you happy, little boy? And Reuben says, Well I would be, only I'm so dreadful scared of dying. It must be terrible curse, he said, to be dead. And the angel says, Why you beat it? And so he was. You gotta think that one through a little bit. I loved that story when I found it. Um part of I think her point she's trying to get at is we see these seasons of life, and we look all around us, and like right now, all the leaves turning color and um wildlife disappearing and the weather turning colder is a cycle we go through, but then spring comes around and the posies come up and the trees blossom out again and creatures come back to life. And all of that is a lesson for us that death is not really the end, that there is hope, and that God planned it this way. But, you know, we look at all that and it still leaves us with Reuben's worry, I ain't a pose, and maybe I wouldn't come up. Well, that's what Jesus is going to talk about today. So turn to Mark chapter 5. Um, we're gonna back up to verse 21 for a minute, because that's where the story begins. So remember, we began this story last week and then we we stopped in the middle. So Mark 5, 21 through 24. When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, so this is after the night with the garrisoned demoniac, and the townspeople asked him to leave, he gets back in the boat and he goes back to the shore he started from. So it's this day. A large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. Then one of the synagogue rulers named Darius came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him. My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live. So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And then the story is interrupted by the account of the woman with the hemorrhaging who touched his hopes of being healed, and that's what we talked about last week. So skip down to verse 35. It says, While Jesus was still speaking, that is, while he was speaking to the woman from our story last week. So in Mark 35, then, while Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Darius, the synagogue ruler. Your daughter is dead, they said. Why bother the teacher anymore? Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, Don't be afraid, just believe. He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. And when they came to the home of the synagogue ruler, Jesus saw a commotion with people crying and wailing loudly. He went in and said to them, Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep. But they laughed at him. After he put them all out, he took the child's father and mother and the disciples who were with him and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, Talitha kum, which means little girl, I say to you, get up. Immediately the girl stood up and walked around. She was twelve years old. At this they were completely astonished. He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this and told them to give her something to eat. Let me start with a couple of observations from the text itself, and then we'll look at what he's doing. He walks in and he and the question is addressed to the mourners. So in verse 39, he walks in and he says, Why make a commotion and weep? The child is not has not died but is asleep. Notice at this point he hasn't seen her yet. He's just walked in the door, and we're told in verse 40 that she is in a separate room and that he's going to go into the room uh later in the story. But at the point he asks this question and makes this statement, he has not yet laid eyes on her. Now that's curious. We have to ask what's going on there. Some commentators have suggested, well, this is just divine knowledge, and the miracle is that he knew she wasn't really dead. She was just in a coma or something, but he hasn't seen her, and so he miraculously knows that she's really not dead at all, and that's the miracle. I don't think that's what's going on. I think she is dead, and he knows she's dead, but he's making a bigger point than that. I don't think he's lying, I don't think he's misinformed, all of which have been suggested by the more liberal commentators. I think he's going to make a point about death and the nature of death that is the main lesson today. We're going to spend a lot of time on that in the end. So notice in 39 he hasn't seen her yet, and notice the question is asked of the mourners, not the parents and not uh the disciples, but he is asking the mourners, why are you making this commotion? Because the mourners were in that culture there was no telephones or email or any way to get the news out. So when someone was dying or near death, people would gather at the house, and then when the person died, they would start this wailing and tearing their clothes and throwing dust in the air and banging instruments, and that was like the telegraph that let everybody in the village know what had happened. And since this man was a prominent man in the community, he was probably well known, they probably had been there for some time, uh, as long as his daughter was sick. So their job was to declare death is over, or the battle is over, death is won, we've lost this person. And in some ways, the more mourners you had, the more uh important the person was, but their role was to communicate to the village that uh someone has died. So, and Jerry has said I I think I mentioned this last week, he was the synagogue ruler. The term is for the person who takes care of the building or manages the services and arranges all the details. So it's essentially our Terry Burns kind of job. It's the one who kind of is in charge of all the facility. It was a job of very high status and position and was held in very high esteem in the community. All right, and notice then the contrast between Jesus' words and the mourners. You see them first in verse 35 when they it says some people came from the house. It's probably some of the mourners come from the house and they say to you, uh, your daughter's dead, why bother the teacher anymore? So there's this resignation of it's over, there's nothing left for Jesus to do, the battle is is uh has ended, we've lost hope. You might as well leave him alone, there's nothing he can do. And then you have him in verse 39 saying, No, that's not the case. The child is not dead, but asleep. So he there's this tension of they're saying one thing and he's saying the opposite. And notice when they when they come to him initially in verse 35 and say, Um, you know, why bother the teacher anymore? He ignores them. He doesn't even respond to them. He turns directly to the father and says, Don't be afraid, um, believe. So the mourners are saying, death is over, or death is won, the battle's over. Jesus is saying the battle is not over. There is hope. Um, there is something, there is something to learn here, something to go on. Now, notice he doesn't challenge their grief. I want to make really sure that you understand that. He is the issue is not don't be sad in the face of death. He does not challenge the family for feeling sad. He does not challenge the father for being heartbroken in any way. He is challenging their view of death. So grief in the face of death is always appropriate. It's inevitable, I think. It does hurt, and he's acknowledging that. You know, the sorrow, the confusion, the numbness, all of that that comes with losing someone you love, he is not challenging that. Um instead, he's challenging their view of death. So Paul echoes this in 1 Thessalonians 4.13. He writes, Um, brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep or to grieve like the rest of men who have no hope. So his statement is not don't grieve. His statement is don't grieve hopelessly. He assumes you're going to be grieving. He assumes that that is the natural and appropriate response. But the point is, when you're grieving, you don't grieve like men who have no hope. You grieve as people who do have hope, and that hope is what Jesus is going to talk about. So I think the same thing is going on here. Um, Jesus is not challenging the fact that they are heartbroken, he's challenging their view of death. Remember, he cried at the tomb of Lazarus, which I've always found intriguing because he knew he was going to raise Lazarus in in just moments, and that he was Lazarus would live many more years, and yet he still cries. Why? For the for the loss, for the heartbreak that death causes, for the um the loneliness that it leaves behind and the emptiness. So he's not challenging our loss or our emotional state, he is challenging the hopelessness. The challenge is um of faith is to acknowledge, yes, this hurts, but not to give way to despair or hopelessness. Okay. There are two ways that I want to approach this story. I want to look at how Jesus treats the family and then how he treats the mourners, and contrast the two of those because I think that's the best way to bring out what he's doing. The first so let's look at how he treats the family first. Notice that with the family, he is incredibly kind and tender. He is tender to the father who's just heard the news that his child has died. I mean, think about what it must have been like for this man. His his heart must have just dropped like a stone. Here he had come rushing to Jesus when he got back to the sewer, um, hoping he wasn't too late, urging Jesus to come and follow him. Jesus responds and then stops and talks to this woman who's hemorrhaging. Think about how agonizing that must have been for the father to stand there listening to this whole story when he knows that at any moment he could lose his daughter. Um, have you ever been like late to some really like a wedding or some really important event and you're late and you're sitting at a stoplight, and it's just like, oh, come on, change, change, change, change. That and you know the agony that can produce when you know every second counts? I mean, that must have been going on multiplied a thousand times for this man because he knew every second counts. And here Jesus stops. I mean, this woman had been sick for twelve years. If she'd been sick another few hours, it's not really going to make a difference, you know. And and here Jesus stops and talks to her and says, Tell me the whole story. Twelve years of the whole story. He must have been sitting there going, every second matters, and you're frittering it away on someone else, some poor outcast woman who has nothing, and would be nothing, and here he is, this important man, and he'd served God in the synagogue, and um this is his only child, and now she's in danger, and he's standing there waiting. And Jesus turns to him and says, Don't be afraid, just believe. And if you think about that, what physical evidence did Jarius have to believe? I mean, he didn't see a storm stop raging like the disciples, he didn't see the demons leave a man like um they had on the other shore, or the pigs drowning themselves. He didn't feel the physical touch that the woman in our story last week would have felt. All he has is the word of Jesus. And how could he trust him when he delayed, when he stood there talking to this woman? I mean, from his perspective, it must have looked like Jesus said, you know, get in line and take a number, I've got this other lady to do with. And now Jesus says, believe. I think for Darius, that must have been really hard. How could he possibly believe? He has no physical evidence. In fact, all the evidence looks like Jesus is um cavalier or complacent or not taking the care he should take. And yet Jesus is saying, trust me, this is not the end of the story. Um and he speaks tenderly to the father. And then notice when they start moving again, he makes the crowd stay behind. I think that's another act of compassion, because if you have four or five people, you can move a lot faster than if you have a hundred people. So when he makes the crowd stay behind, he is shortening the man's agony and the man the time it would take for him till he sees how the story's gonna end. I think it also removes the witnesses to his grief because this was an important leader in the community, and you know, he's just heard this news. Everybody in the community is gonna want to give him a hug and pat him on the back and console him and shake his hand and express their sympathy. Uh, and Jesus knows at this moment that's not what the man needs, because he's going to change the situation. So by making the crowd stay behind, he shortens the father's agony and the time he has to wait until he sees his daughter again, and then he cuts off all this sympathy that might have been expressed, because again, I think he's shortening the time. Okay, so then in verse 40, we see him arrive at the house. Um he sends the mourners all out, and he takes the child's father and mother and the disciples into the room where the child was. Okay, in verse 41, he took her by the hand and said to her, Talita kum, which means little girl, I say to you, get up. And immediately the girl stood up and walked around. She was twelve years old. Um I think again you see kindness here. He touches her by the hand. Now we know from other stories he doesn't have to touch her to heal her, but he does in this case, which would have rendered him unclean because you can't touch a dead body and be ritually clean anymore. But of course, he knows that she's not going to stay dead. And then he uses this wonderful Aramaic phrase, which was um that's what the Talifa kum is. It's Aramaic, it's the language of the household, it's what they would have spoken every day. And I assume Peter must have repeated this to Mark, who wrote it down. But it's a phrase that she would have heard every day of her life. It is um it's a Very kind of tender. It's little girl like child. It's a diminutive form that you would use to someone you have affection for. And it's something she would have heard scores of time. It's the kind of thing a parent would say, you know, if she is just learning to walk, and you know how when you walk as a toddler and you fall down, and then her parents might say, Little girl, get up. It's that kind of a phrase. It's dear one, let you know, get up again, as they helped her up as she was learning to walk. Or it's the kind of phrase that, you know, if she was late getting out of bed in the morning and she wanted to stay in bed a little longer. Um her mother might have said to her, Little girl, get up, it's time. It's that kind of, it's not a scolding, it's a little, it's a it's an encouraging kind of phrase, it's time. And so it's something that people would have said to her, people who loved her would have said to her often over the course of her life. And he uses that phrase, and I think Mark records it to impress us with the tenderness of it. And notice he does nothing else. There's no theatrics, there's no incantations, he doesn't ask the parents to perform any rituals, there's not even a prayer recorded. He speaks only a word, and he takes her by the hand and she gets up. So, like the storm, like the demons, like the the woman, he speaks, and it is so. And I think that's again part of the point Mark's trying to make, that we look at death as the final enemy. It's the one thing we can't control, it's the one inevitability that we all must face, and there's nothing we can do about it. You know, we have our our medicine and our vitamins and our fitness rituals, and we, you know, anti-aging cream and what else, control the cholesterol and the blood pressure, and you know, we do all this stuff because we know death is coming and we're trying to beat it, but we can't, and yet with a word, Jesus overcomes it. And I think that um is part of the point of the story. He's even for Jesus, this even this enemy is no problem. And then notice the last thing he says is he asks that she be given something to eat. I think again that's evidence of his compassion and his tenderness. If she had been sick for some time, she probably hadn't been eating regularly. You know, if she had a fever or whatever, you know, how as you decline your appetite decreases, and so she needs to get nourishment and she would have needed something to eat. And you can imagine the parents in their shock and wonderment would have, might have forgotten. They might have been so overwhelmed with what just happened that they would forget that it's time to she needs to eat something, and they're probably going to be besieged with well-wishers and people from the community wanting to celebrate with them. And so he's reminding them, you know, take care of her physical needs before this this flood of well-wishers descends on you. So again, uh, I think all that kindness is to make a point. He knows that death hurts, he knows that it's a loss, it's a part of the tragedy of our world and a fallen world, but he treats those struggling with death in this with this great compassion and great tenderness. And that I think is something to remember. I mean, we when we're dealing with people who've experienced a loss, it's easy to, you know, kind of want to beat them with theology, you know. Let me tell you what you you know, and you can be too hard with that. We don't want to beat people up with theology, but remember the tenderness and the intimacy Jesus shows here that this is hard and we need to treat people with compassion and tenderness, um, and still offer them the hope of the gospel. Now contrast this with the mourners, how he treats the mourners, because with them he is quite abrupt and he is almost challenging to them. Uh I don't think he has any particular grievance with them as individuals. I don't think he's trying to suggest in some way they were sinful, although of course everyone is sinful, but I think what he's denying is the role they were playing. Because their job was to, uh, as the mourners was to insist that this that death is won, it's time to give up, get over it, start moving on with the life with your life, start facing the facts that death is one again, um, and then begin the job of grieving and moving on. So that's what he's challenging, that that role. Um so he ignores them when they come to talk to Jarius, then he challenges them when they when uh he walks into the house, they in turn ridicule him and he subsequently throws them out. So he, in contrast to how tenderly he treats the family with the mourners, he's like, nope, you don't have a place here. This is not what's going on. And he's opposing, I think, their view of death. He is saying death is not the final victor. There, you know, for him, there was a day coming on a hill outside Jerusalem in a few more months where he was going to fight death to the end, offer his life as a sacrifice, and ultimately ransom us from the power of death. So he's he is challenging that. He's saying, look, I'm giving life back to this beloved child, uh of this beloved child to this family, because in the end, death is not the end of the story. It's not the final in it is our final enemy, but it is not the champion. And so the role of mourners was to point out that death will win, we need to accept it and get over it. And he is trying to teach them death is not ultimately going to win. We have hope. So why weep? What's all this commotion about? We have hope, we can trust God. And I think that's why he says to the father, don't be afraid, just believe. He's urging him to believe what Jesus is going to claim about who he is and what and his power over death. Um, the writer of Hebrews makes the same point about this fear of death. It's in Hebrews 2.14. Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity, so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death. So he's talking about the Messiah. He might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is the devil, and free those who all their lives live who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. So think about that in terms of our story. Jesus came to destroy the one who holds the power of death and to free us from the fear of death, to free us from that slavery of of being uh of living as if death were stalking us at every moment. And I think that's what's behind him saying, don't be afraid, just believe. We have one on our side who is greater than death. We don't have to fear what's before us. We know that even when we face death, that all the best things in life will not be lost, that um the people that we have lost we will see again, that nothing of eternal consequence is really um lost to us, and we don't have to live in fear. We can live in confidence and hope, knowing that there's one on our side who is greater than death. I was talking about this with my daughter, and she said, Oh, it's like Peter Penn. I thought, hmm, Captain Hook, remember Captain Hook in the story of the crocodile? At some point in his life, uh Captain Hook's hand was bitten off by the crocodile, and so the crocodile liked the taste of it so much he spent the rest of his life trying to to catch up with Captain Hook and eat the rest of him. But he swallowed the alarm clock, and so Captain Hook could hear him coming because he'd hear that ticking noise. But you see, especially in some of the live action versions of Peter Pan, at various points in the story, Captain Hook hears a ticking sound and it just terrifies him. It just throws him into panic and he runs scared because he knows that ticking sound means death is coming, the crocodile's coming and going to destroy him. And that's how the fear of death can operate from us. We we can live as if there's this ticking crocodile over our shoulder at every minute, and it's going to eat us someday, and so we live in this fear and terror. And part of what the author of Hebrews is saying is you don't have to live in that fear. You have been freed from that fear of death because um there's one who is greater than death, who is fighting for you, who has actually won that battle. And I think that's what's behind Jesus' words to the Father, don't be afraid, just believe. There is a champion fighting for us who is greater than the enemy that wants to destroy us. Okay, one more comment on the text itself, when he says, why all this mo commotion and wailing, the child is not dead but asleep. I want to talk a little bit more about that. Why does he say she's not dead when she is dead? I mean, that you look at that and you go, okay, what's he doing? Is Jesus lying? Um some commentators have suggested that she wasn't really dead, she was just in a deep coma, and Jesus knew it, but no one else knew it, and so he's going to revive her out of the coma. Um I don't think that's what's going on. I think she was dead. The word for sleep is frequently used in the Bible to refer to people who have died. We saw the one in 1 Thessalonians 4, just earlier, the one I read, 413, where Paul says those who are asleep, and he is talking about those who are dead. In the story of Lazarus, um, he is referred to as being asleep even though he's been in the tomb four days. So that's another case where this word of sleep or slumber is used of someone who is undeniably dead. So why does he say she's not dead but asleep? I think he's trying to make a point about death, that people who are dead can wake up. And that's Rubin's worry. Maybe I'm I'm not opposing, maybe I won't wake up. His point is they will wake up. Uh words have meaning. You know, we that's what all of political spin is about, is trying to put the right word to get the right connotation. Uh if you, you know, it's the gay lobby, the homosexual lobby took the term gay to try to make a point about their lifestyle, to try to claim that this was a happy and uh uh happy-go-lucky kind of alternative lifestyle. It's the same, I'll think about all the words around the abortion debate. Nobody wants to be pro-abortion, so they're pro-choice because they're trying to make a point about their position. And there's a new one coming, this one really annoys me. There's an atheist group who has started calling themselves bright. They're the bright people who don't believe in God. Now, why are they using the term bright? They're trying to make a point about the rest of us who believe in God as we are not bright, and they're it's it's appropriating that term to make a point about their position. That may or may not be true. Um I think that's what's going on here. When Jesus says she's not dead but asleep, he's trying to make a point about death. Um He's saying, You're using a language that implied that death is the end, that it's over, that it's the final victory. But what I want you to see is that there is a day coming when all the dead will awaken and everything will be made new. And it is there is a very real sense in which those who are dead are just asleep. They're just gone for now, and he's urging them to believe that that uh death will not ultimately triumph, that Jesus will triumph. He echoes this in John 14, this is verses 2 and 3. The people we love who are in Christ and who are no longer with us will be with us again. You can't get more direct than that. The people we love who are in Christ and are no longer with us will be with us again. I'm going there to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me, that you also may be where I am. His point is death is not the end. There is hope, there is a chapter beyond death. So now we grieve because it's still a loss, those who are they are no longer with us for now, and our hearts are broken, but we don't grieve hopelessly. We grieve knowing that we have a champion and a victor, and that Jesus has won the greatest of all battles, and that is the battle over death, that he came to give his life and was raised from the dead, and that life will ultimately win and death will ultimately lose. And that changes everything. We don't have to live like Captain Hook in fear of a ticking crocodile or like Reuben, maybe I won't give it, maybe I won't wake up. But we can live with the confidence, knowing that whatever happens, God is with us. We can live confidently, aggressively, hopefully, waiting for the day that even though we may die, knowing we will wake up again. Just to close, I want to read you the very last words of Scripture because they speak to this. It's the last, the end of Revelation, and John is giving a description of the new heavens and the new earth when having awakened forever, we will participate in the recreation of everything. So this is Revelation twenty-one one to six. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. And then notice this first, he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, I am making everything new. Then he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. He said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To him who is thirsty I will give drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. For the day is coming when everything will be made new, when every tear will be wiped away, when there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. And I think that's the point Jesus is making here. They're not dead, they're asleep, because the day is coming when they will be with us again. And we won't be with our Lord. Let me just pray and then give you some time to respond. Father, I just thank you that death is no problem for you, that though we fear it, we mourn those who have have gone before us, um, that we know that you are ultimately in control of everything, and that you are there to champ be our champion and to raise those who trust you from the dead. And I just pray that especially for those who are grieving, um, and we know how long it takes to to adjust to the new state of normal, that you would be uh writing these words into our hearts, helping us to live each day with the last time.