Sermon: How Should We Understand Suicide?

Would you open up with me to Job one? Um, this evening I'm gonna continue the series on death and dying, and we'll be addressing the topic of suicide. I have a few preliminary remarks because I know that, uh, this is a topic that is difficult. Um, this, the sin itself comes out of an intense mixture of confusion and suffering, but it's also a sin that produces an intense mixture of confusion and suffering. And we all come to this with various levels.

Some of you it's very close to, and some of you, it may just be a passing intellectual thing at this point. Um, so I wanted to read a passage quick out of Ephesians just to understand that while we address a topic with great suffering, and we have to come with great compassion, the way that God addresses suffering and sin in the world is by speaking his truth into it. Paul writes in Ephesians five 11, take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness,

but instead expose them for, to shameful, even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, awake, oh, sleeper and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. So as we come to, um, uh, a topic of great darkness, I wanna speak God's truth into it and let that be the, the guiding, the controlling theme

of the sermon tonight. Um, because we know that God allows great darkness into the world, and we, we speak and we believe as Christians that God uses darkness for great good. So we come to an area of great darkness and we can proclaim the glory of Christ, right? And so I want you to, to leave with this understanding that if we, if you rely on yourselves, it will only lead to death. But if you look to the glory of God as you find it in Christ Jesus, you will find life.

That is the message I want you to end with. Let me, let me read starting in Job one 13 and we'll read to Job two verse 10.

Now, there is a day when his sons and daughters were eating job's. Sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house. And there came a messenger to Job and said the oxen were plowing and the donkeys feeding themselves, and the sabians fell upon them and took them and struck down the servants with the edge of the sword. And I alone have escaped to tell you. While he was yet speaking, there came another

and said, the fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them. And I alone have escaped to tell you. While he was yet speaking, there came another and said, the Chaldeans formed three groups and made a raid on the camels and took them and struck down the servants with the edge of the sword. And I alone have escaped to tell you. And while he was yet speaking, there came another and said, your sons and your daughters were eating

and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house. And behold, a great wind came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young people and they're dead. And I alone have escaped to tell you. Then Joe Baroz and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, naked, I came from my mother's womb and naked shall I return, the Lord gave. And the Lord has taken away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord in all this job did not sin or charge God with wrong again. There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan came among them to present himself before the Lord. And the Lord said to Satan, from where have you come, Satan answered the Lord and said, from going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it, and the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant job?

That there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason. Then Satan answered the Lord and said, skin for skin, all that a man has, he will give for his life, but stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face. And the Lord said to Satan, behold, he's in your hand,

only spare his life. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with low some sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a piece of broken pottery earth, which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes. Then his wife said to him, do you still hold fast? Your integrity curse God and die? But he said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God

and shall we not receive evil in all? This job did not sin with his lips. This ends the reading of God's word. It's come in prayer.

Lord, we pray that your truth would be proclaimed clearly, that your compassion would be evident and that the glory of Christ would be magnified. We pray this all in Christ, amen.

When we find Job here, where we see him is a place of intense suffering. And it's a bit hard to just read it and, and see all that's happened. All that job has lost in just a very short amount of time. But I doubt that any of us have ever experienced suffering, like Job has experienced it right here where he has lost all his possessions. He has lost all of the servants that he's cared for, he's lost his very family. Everything has been taken away from him,

and his friends are gonna turn against him and blame him. He has nothing left. And to make matters worse, what's the hand behind it? Well, it's actually pretty evident that that God himself is behind it. Fire from God fell down from heaven and destroyed his sheep and his servants. And there is Job trying to sort out what has happened. And so I know some of you have experienced great suffering in trials. You've been in great pain

and you've been in spots of great confusion, um, use that to sympathize with where Job is at. And then what does Job hear? Well, this suffering, then his wife tells him, well, here's what you should do with that. You should curse God and kill yourself. The tempt, the the suffering leads right into the temptation to kill oneself.

But we are also given a different perspective in a way, job gives us a look behind the veil because there's not a natural conclusion from suffering to the sin of suicide. It, it doesn't lead from one to the other. There's a different voice that's speaking into it and trying to convince Job. This is the natural conclusion, and it's actually the, the, the voice that Job rejects. But the story in Job is, is magnificent because we see behind the veil into what's going on,

the, the cosmic context, the spiritual realities behind it. And we see that, that this is actually just a, a battle in a bigger war. And it doesn't start with job and his suffering, but the story starts in the throne room of God as Satan comes in. And so as, as we look at suicide, as we look at what would drive someone, what may drive one of us to be tempted in that direction, where we need to start is, uh, looking at what's the voice of temptation.

And so I wanna start there looking at the voice of the tempter and then continue on to look at two other people, the man who chooses death, but then the man of life. So we're gonna look at Satan and then the man of death, and then the man of life and hopefully better understand the sin where it comes from in our own hearts, but also the life that God offers to us, and how God can hold out his glory even in the midst of great darkness.

Okay? So as we look here, as we look at Satan, we see the tempter and we see him speak with the voice of death. There are two things that we need to understand about Satan, about where this comes from. First, we need to see what is his purpose. I think almost clearer than any world in scripture, we get a little look at how does Satan think. Look at chapter two, verse four. As God is discussing with Satan, Satan makes this comment,

um, about job, skin for skin, all that a man has, he will give up for his life. Now, that may seem normal because we hear that and we just think that this is talking about self preservation. And you think, oh, that would be true. A man will do anything to preserve his own life. But that's not what Satan means. Think about where he then goes with that. That's the principle that's guiding him. But then where he leads job is to try

and tempt him to take his own life. Did you notice that? So, so Satan doesn't mean when he says life, he doesn't mean life. What Satan means is a man will give up anything for his pride for himself. You attack the core of who a person is and and that's what he's gonna stand up for. And Satan believes this to the point that he thinks that job in, in asserting himself, will even take his own life to stand up against God.

Do you see that in the text? What does that tell us about the heart of Satan? Well, for Satan, life is all about himself. It's all about self-assertion. His life is wrapped into his own rebellion against God. And that's where he finds all that he is,

that is is the mind of Satan. And that's what we see in his actions as well. So what leads him to, to actually go after job? Did he, did he hate job? No, he had no prior thoughts of job until God points to Job, right? And he sees that God holds up job like a crown jewel and says, oh, have you seen my servant job? There's no one like him. This is my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased, right? And then as soon as God fixates on him

and says, look, I'm pleased with him, then God targets him. Or then Satan targets him because he's trying to drive him against God. Satan's whole purpose is to rebel against God. That's all that that Satan has, and that's all that he's going for. Joe Satan doesn't care at all about Job, and he's gonna come alongside job like a friend, but he's just gonna try and kill him. He's just gonna sow death because everything he's doing is trying to work against God.

But compare this with, with God himself. What do we see? The the angels are coming before him. And what does he, what is the first thing he talks about? Look at this person who is righteous. Look at this person who I'm pleased with. God, who has everything before him, is pleased with those who are his children. And that's what he wants to tell the angels about. That's what he wants to point to. Isn't that amazing to see God's heart?

And then you compare that with Satan, who's a murderer from the beginning, and all he wants to do is sow destruction and death. That's God's, that's Satan's purpose is just to sow death. But second, see his character. How does he do it? Because Satan only cares about himself. He will do anything to, to win anything, to assert himself to get his own victory. And we see this because he just sows confusion. He doesn't want clarity.

He incites the Lord against Job because he wants to bring pain and says, you know what, what's gonna bring confusion to a person? Pain, then he doesn't know what's behind it. Because for us, as as humans, pain is like, like a red cloak to a bowl, and the matador just waves it and entices him in. And that's what Satan does with our suffering. Our our vision's narrow and we think of nothing else. Just how do I remove this pain?

And Satan just reels us in with it. He's just pulling us in as we get hyper-focused on our suffering, and we lose track of the bigger context, the truth that we know in our life, or the bigger context of the spiritual realities that we know exist, that exist behind it. Because Satan doesn't want to speak in truth. Satan wants to create confusion. That's his character. Because Satan's words are always sowing confusion.

Think of how he even spoke there, all that a man has, he will give up for, for his life. And you think that he's right, but then you find out what he means and you realize, oh, wait, that's not, that shouldn't be right? What Satan says is, is not what he actually means. He twists words, he speaks like, like thick smoke that you think you, you could grab onto it, but as soon as your hand reaches out, there's nothing to grab onto and it slips through your fingers

because Satan's not standing on anything. He's building a false edifice. The the, the truth that Satan uses are, are similarly like looking out of an airplane. You see a cloud and you think, I could step out the door and just walk on this, but immediately you just fall right through. Because the truth that Satan is trying to construct for Job is that well look at that suffering. What that means is that God hates you, that he is your enemy.

And and let me tell you how you can win. You should spit in God's face and kill yourself, and that's gonna be victory. Victory by your own death. That's what Satan's trying to sow in Job's mind.

But then look at his trick. How does he even do it? He uses job's wife. See, Satan has no boundaries. He will do whatever he can to try and get you to sow death, to buy into death so that it's not Satan speaking to, to Job, but the serpent is speaking through the lips of his wife. Now, this is an important warning for us in regards to the sin of suicide because as we look on later, as as job refers to his wife later in the book, we see

that job does not refer to his wife as Satan incarnate. He looks at her and it's a burden on his mind that he has become a stench in her eyes. And so we aren't supposed to look at Job's wife as, as an evil person, but she's speaking with the voice of a serpent. She's speaking the words of Satan. And so this is a great warning for us in, in how do we even respond to sin? How do we respond to something that brings great suffering

and trials to us? Someone close to us has committed suicide or is, is struggling with it? What are we saying? How are we processing it? So are the words that we're saying somehow giving credence to this sin, or are our thoughts about the person? Maybe a celebrity has committed suicide and you think, well, that death somehow elevates them. In my mind, it does something to their prestige.

It's a great problem in how we can let our compassion speak against God's truth. In some ways, we speak out of our heart, but then sometimes we speak lies or we speak things that will place footholds in people's hearts for Satan to cling onto. You speak at a funeral and you say something that someone says, oh, okay, if I do that, then people will think that about me because of that sin. Now I need to be clear that I'm not saying

that we should defame the dead. We should be honoring the dead and respect 'em as much as we're able, but don't respect them because of the sin.

Do you understand this is, I know this is a hard sermon and there are gonna be hard truths in this sermon. Um, but we need to clinging onto God's truth in all areas of our life, even in deeply emotional ones.

So I want to just end, uh, this first point saying, don't let grief for the dead overcome your concern for the living. Okay? The dead are left to the Lord. Now our concern is, is for what are we doing with the living? How are we instructing them? Because the same sin that causes someone to kill themselves has roots in all of our hearts. I want to, I wanna turn and look at the heart of death, the man of death. And I wanna turn to because Job is not this man,

because he doesn't go down this road. It doesn't bind into temptation. I wanna turn to the most prominent act of suicide in scripture. Okay? Um, we read, you're probably thinking, I'm turning to Judas, but I'm not.

We read, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. The most prominent act of suicide that we have in scripture is Adam's first sin. And let me explain why I say that with, um, a note that Paul makes In one Timothy,

he says in verse 13, for Adam was formed first and then Eve and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Do you understand the importance of that? So Eve might not have known what she was doing, but Adam knew what he was doing. So Adam was created in perfect righteousness. He knew God. God was his whole reality. And what Paul is saying is that Adam had no doubts about the truth of God's word

because he saw the great power of God. He saw him create things. He saw that everything that God said came to pass. And so when God spoke to him and said, the day that you eat this fruit, you will surely die. There was no doubt in Adam's mind what the result of eating the fruit was going to be. Do you understand? There has never been a sin with, uh, more knowledge than the sin that Adam committed. See, you can, you can pull the trigger on a gun,

and it might, it might not fire. There could be a misfire. People have fallen from great heights and miraculously survived. But, but Adam knew when he ate that fruit, there was no doubt about what was going to happen. But, but he did it. He still did it. And that's something that's hard for us to comprehend. But what it tells us is that what was Adam pursuing himself? He knew what the result was gonna be, and he chose, no, I want the thing

that God's not gonna give me. I want it faster than God will give me. I want to be in charge my own self autonomy when, when he knew exactly what was going to happen. It's the same thing that we see in the heart of Satan is, is fueling the heart of Adam as well. And this is important to bring out because I, I think it, it brings a little bit closer to us and it widens it out a little bit because the sin in Adam's heart is the one

that's been passed on to all of us. We have that same heart of death because we may not be as, as knowledgeable in our, in our sin as Adam was, but we all have those moments where we came to a spot and we knew it was wrong, and we actually stop and our conscience bothers us. And we think, oh, okay, I know what's gonna happen. And then you click on that website, right? Or you're stopped in the middle of a conversation and you feel guilty about what you're about

to say about someone, or how you're about to exalt yourself in their eyes. And then you throw it outta your mind and you keep on going. You see, it's, it's, it's the thing, the same thought pattern going through our heads. We know God's law and then we turn away from it because what we think we know better or we just don't want to have to think about it. And then after we commit that sin, then we start to validate it.

In the end, it just started with, well, well, this is what I want. I don't wanna have to think about the consequences. And we deceive ourselves, but then we start to make explanations. Well, well, God's laws aren't just, or he's being stingy with me, or perhaps I know better than him about what's good for me. And then we start furthering down the path of rejecting God, rejecting who he is and his control over our life.

And we're just, we're just sowing footholds for Satan to sow death among us, right? And for some people that death comes immediately, but for other people, that death comes down the road because the sin that you have sown is not the death of killing yourself with immediate consequences, but it's a death that maybe stays hidden for long periods of time until you face the judgment of God. And so I want you to think about

where does this sin take root in your own heart? Where are you hearing the voice of Satan saying, well, your, your glory, your victory is found by death, by sin. That's what's really going to give you glory. That's what you really want. And where do we start to buy into that?

I wanna bring this out with, with two examples. The first example is a man named, ah, Hitha fell. So just a, I know your Presbyterians, I'm just gonna do a straw poll. The beginning of the monarchy. There were two people who were very renowned, who knows who David is and why he was famous. Raise your hand and then everyone, keep your hands raised and look around. Okay? Now who knows who a hitha fell is and why he was famous in Israel.

Now, now look around again. Okay? Alright. Now let me explain the story. So David is, uh, this is partway through his monarchy. He has already fallen with Bathsheba and his country is falling apart. And now one of his sons, Absalom has, has created a coup and has taken over. And he drives David out. And David has to flee in despair. He's an utter shame. He has a man cursing him and throwing rocks at him. And David is in such a spot where he says, well,

for all I know, this is perhaps the curse of God. And so, so don't do anything about that man. He's probably right. And as David leaves in despair, he sends a man back named Hai, and he sends him back with, with one objective in mind. Because there's one thing that David's afraid of, and it's the objective is not to assassinate Absalom. It's not to kill the commander of the army. It's because David is afraid of a man named,

uh, a hitha fell. A hitha fell, was just a counselor to the king. But the words that a hitha fell, spoke, it says that they were taken as the wisdom of God. So Hai goes back and Absalom is taking counsel with everyone, and Hitha fell comes and he tells Absalom, here's how you're gonna defeat David. Here's how you'll kill him. I'll even lead the men into it. And he gives the perfect plan. And then Hai comes in and spoils everything.

He twists it and twists the truth and find some way to convince them no, a hit the fell's wrong about this and hit the fell. It says that when he saw that they didn't believe him, he goes back to his village, he settles his house, his house, sorry, all the ths and the S's are mixing my, my mouth up. He settles his house and then he kills himself.

So this man was renowned in Israel, and if you pair him up with David, what do you see? Well, David's hiding away in a cave in despair. It seems like there's no hope for him, but he's crying out to the Lord. Ah, Hitha fell, is living in the king's palace, and he's respected, but something has pricked his pride. Ah, they're not gonna listen to me. Well, well, I know what's right. I'm gonna show them. He's, he's the tragic hero.

And his pride drives him to just show his control over his life by taking his own life. Do you see that? But what does it sow? It just sows death. It didn't do anything for Ael. And David goes on to return to the throne, even though he's living in a place of, of complete suffering and with no hope. But the second person I wanna draw out is, is Judas, who you're probably more familiar with, the man who betrayed Jesus. And after he sees that Jesus is condemned, he reaches a spot

of despair and he has deep regret. He tries to return the money and they won't take it. And his deep regret drives him to hang himself. He kills himself.

Now, that's important to see that he knew he was wrong. He confessed his sin to the Sanhedrin.

But what was the one thing he couldn't do? He couldn't actually come with repentance. He was a step away from coming to the Lord with his sin. His heart was still clinging onto this pride, this idea of, I know what I've done wrong and I need to fix it. He's like the, the honorable Samurai. Okay, I brought myself into this mess. I need to be able to take care of it. And that's the thing, his pride, his view of himself, that

that stops him one step short of coming to the Lord. He doesn't come in repentance, even as he admits his sin, even as he feels so deeply about it,

what he, he couldn't see. And what he couldn't do is, is humble himself underneath the Lord. And so I want to turn and see, um, what does it look like? What brings someone to be able to humble themselves underneath God? Let's look at the man of life because in both of those examples, the Hitha fell and Judas, they both are paralleled with someone who chooses life. A hitha fell, is held up against David and who is in the worst position.

David was in the worst position, but a hitha fell, was a dead man walking because of his pride. And David was living even while he was suffering in a cave. And who's held up against Judas? Well, Judas betrayed the Lord himself, but so did Peter. And they both felt deep regret over what they had done. But Peter comes to the disciples and he comes to the Lord and he runs after him. He runs to the tomb. He jumps outta the boat and swims to him

because he has a heart of repentance. He, he, they're following a different model. They're following a different example than the world follows. Victory is not with your own self-assertion for them. Victory is found by humbling yourself before the Lord. And we see that because the model they were following was Jesus himself. When we look at Jesus, do you guys understand the extent of his own humility as he went to one redemption?

He was the son of God. He had all glory, all power, all authority. And then he took it all off. He had no expression of it as he clothed himself in flesh. And then he lived a life that was a human experience of suffering that he should never have had to have gone through. And he lived in complete obedience to not his own will, but the father's will. At every single point He lived in complete dependence on the power of the Spirit for everything that he was going to do.

And then he, he lived not looking for how am I gonna assert myself? How am I gonna win my own glory here? But he was looking to your glory. He was looking to my glory. He was looking to our salvation. He went through all of that to be able to pay for our sins, to be able to bring around all of all of the darkness and say, this will make sense of it. I will atone for sins and my people will be saved, but all through the humility of Christ to the Father

and the father's will. And so to end, I I just wanna look at Christ. And I think that what we have there is, is answered how do we deal with pain and suffering?

When we look at the world, we think that, well, the most powerful thing out there is the suffering. And we get overwhelmed with it. You read the news and you think, well, how can anything make this right? What we're we're missing is, is the perspective of God that there's a, a different context, something that we don't understand, and we have to humble ourselves underneath the reasoning of God. That in, in God's mind, he's saying, he,

he sees all of the suffering. And he says, the thing that will make sense of all of this suffering is when you see the glory of Christ and I, I I, I, I wish I had a better experience. I wish I had a better way to express these words to you, to somehow pass along a knowledge that I don't have to give you a feeling that, that I only have, have glimpses of to properly communicate the glory of Christ to you. But as I was thinking about it this week

and trying to find out the what story can I tell? What there's, there's nothing in our experience that can express the glory of Christ to us, that can see how much this covers over everything, how much this, this should consume all of our vision and drive out all of our fears. So the only thing I can think of is, is that when, when you think of your own suffering, God is walking through your suffering with you, and he feels your suffering more deeply

than you even feel it. He understands it at a more profound level than you ever will.

Furthermore, not just looking at yourself, look through the pages of scripture and see all of the sin and the wickedness that God has dealt with, all that He is allowed to happen. And as, as God is pointing to, look at all this suffering going on in the world, look at at all that I'm holding out in scripture, unflinching. What he's also saying is, now, look at my son. This makes it all worthy.

And so I don't know in my mind how to make that make sense, but I know that it's true because God says that it's true. And that when we see Christ for who he is, we won't have questions about the pain and the suffering. We'll see the king of glory. And so may, may we set our eyes now on that king of glory. May may that be our hope. And may we, when we get overwhelmed with our suffering, when our, our, our eyes are pointed down

and we hear the voice of the tempter, we hear our heart pulling at us to, to choose death. When you, you, you see it happening around you, set your eyes on the glory of Christ. It's more powerful than any suffering, than any pain. And may that give us us hope as we look to Christ, as we submit to the glory of God in Christ Jesus, would you join me in prayer?

Lord, as we come to you, we pray that you would reveal Christ to us. Would you come alongside us with great compassion for those who are suffering, for those who are trying to make sense of the confusion of the world, some making sense of it, having known you and some maybe who are trying to make sense of it without a knowledge of you. Yet we pray for those without knowledge that they would look and see Christ as savior,

and that we would have the eyes of our hearts enlightened, that we may know what is the hope to which you have called us? What are the riches of your glorious inheritance in the saints? And what is the immeasurable greatness of your power towards us who believe according to the working of your great might, that you worked in Christ when you raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far

above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named not only in this age, but also in the one to come. Lord, may your gospel go forth bearing fruit in our lives that we may see your glory and pursue it. Amen.