SPEAKER_00: Good morning, First Baptist Wimberly.
SPEAKER_00: This is Mike Gibbons.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Monday.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 90 that we walked through yesterday can be difficult to take to heart.
SPEAKER_00: None of us really wants to think about dying.
SPEAKER_00: There is something in us that tells us it is not good and not natural.
SPEAKER_00: And indeed, it is not.
SPEAKER_00: It is not part of God's good, original design.
SPEAKER_00: It is the last enemy.
SPEAKER_00: And in our flesh, we really don't want to focus a lot of time and energy thinking about it.
SPEAKER_00: But eventually, awareness of our mortality catches up to us.
SPEAKER_00: And on that day, the strategies of denial and procrastination fail.
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's the terminal diagnosis, the tragic before her time death, the close brush of an accident or an illness.
SPEAKER_00: Any of these make us pull up short.
SPEAKER_00: And we can no longer deny, distract, or run from the fact that death is coming our way eventually.
SPEAKER_00: In the past, funerals especially presented an opening for faithful Christian witness to the hope afforded by union with Christ in his death.
SPEAKER_00: That isn't the case as much anymore, but I truly believe that Psalm 90 reminds us that part of our Christian work is to proclaim the reality of death.
SPEAKER_00: It is a central part of the gospel we believe in.
SPEAKER_00: The tradition of memento mori, remember death, was not merely a medieval invention, it is a central scriptural focus.
SPEAKER_00: Our culture of eat, drink, and be merry needs to hear that death can't be pushed away.
SPEAKER_00: Luke 12, verses 19 through 20 show us this in no uncertain terms.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read those.
SPEAKER_00: And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years.
SPEAKER_00: Relax, eat, drink, be merry.
SPEAKER_00: But God said to him, Fool, this night your soul is required of you.
SPEAKER_00: And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?
SPEAKER_00: To proclaim death is to remind us that we are not God.
SPEAKER_00: We are creatures made by a loving God.
SPEAKER_00: So to announce death is to proclaim God.
SPEAKER_00: Many times we need to feel the weight of death, which hopefully Psalm 90 did for us yesterday.
SPEAKER_00: And after we have sat with that for a while, we then turn to Jesus, the resurrection and the life, and be grateful even more for his sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: This is Mike Gibbons, and I love being your pastor.