Grieving with Hope

Good morning, good morning, welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This morning we're at Deuteronomy 14, only two verses today, verses one and two. So it was a whole chapter yesterday. So verses one and two today, we're going to talk about how do you grieve or mourn for people who die?
So, ready to have some coffee? Pray? You're just going to be silly? OK. Oh, you're just drinking water today. You're all out of coffee. OK, let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for your word. We thank you for the blessing it is to get to read. And we pray that your spirit would help us, help us know, Lord, how we are to live and how we are to bring you glory. In Jesus's name. Amen. All right, Ellie, you ready? We just have two verses. I think it's super short today.
You are the children of the Lord your God. You shall not cut yourselves, nor shave the front of your head for the dead. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. And the Lord has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who are on the face of the earth." That's it. Which face? Face, meaning like on top of the earth. No, not on God. God created the world.
And where do you walk? Do you walk on the world, on the earth? No, no, I walk in the earth. Oh, you walk in it. OK, well, the Hebrew idea would be lifne, right? So like upon the face of the earth, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so what what do you think this was talking about, Ellie? When somebody died, what were they not supposed to do? Well, it wasn't about not celebrating the birthday, but after somebody died they weren't supposed to shave the front of their head. Yeah, right. Mr. Spencer, grandma's wife, he died. Right.
But the question is, is she going to mourn like the idol worshipers around or will she mourn the way God would want her to mourn? Mourning is like being grieved or sad that somebody has died. Oh, she was very, very sad when Mr. Spencer first died. Yeah, today is his birthday right when he would have been another year old And so it could be sad for people when they die or people they love die Yeah, grandma didn't die she's still alive right but did you know what happened in certain places like in India and It used to be that if a man died, you know what they did with his wife?
They would burn her. Mm hmm. There's a certain sect in Hinduism where if a man died, the honorable thing was for his wife to be burned also. You think God would be glorified in that? No, no. And so and so God is also saying, right, hold on, hold on. You're my people. I love you. So I don't want you to grieve the way the pagans grieve. What they do is they'll cut themselves. They'll take knives and they'll say, I love I love this person so much that they'll start marking their bodies for the dead. Cutting themselves for the dead. Shaving the front of their heads. And what does God say?
Nope. Don't do that. Don't do that, right? Don't make permanent marks in your body for that. They were to remember that God made them. That God gave them life. Like every time I walk around a stranger, they have like marks on their arms. Mmm. Yeah, so some people have like tattoos and marks and on them Yeah, but that's not really what this is talking about so much, but this is really talking about marking yourself for the dead But you know some people will do that there. I think there could be an application Right, maybe somebody gets a tattoo and it's supposed to remember somebody that died That might be something like this is talking about you know what they would also do They would take some of the other person's ashes in the in the ancient world. They would take their ashes after they died They would burn them and take their ashes and they put them in like oil And then they would give themselves and then they would cut themselves with that. So the so the ashes of that person was in their body That's one of the theories that they think used to happen and God saying don't don't grieve like that So How do people still be alive when they're dead?
Yeah, so that's because God made you a body and a soul. Yeah, and so there's many times in the Bible where it says, and his spirit went up to God. Or like Jesus died and he breathed his last. Right. And so there's there's different places where it talks about people resting or people sleeping or they're giving up their spirit. And so that's why I don't want to.
Yeah, well, for the Christian, do we have to fear death? No, because we believe in the resurrection. that when our souls leave our body for a time, that's only a short period of time, our souls are going to come back to our bodies, our spirit will come back and be reunited at the resurrection of the dead and we'll live forever with Jesus.
Pretty good news? Yeah, you ready to pray? OK, God, we pray that you would teach us to grieve with hope, not like the rest of the world who doesn't have any hope. Lord, we have the hope of the resurrection. We have hope in Jesus Christ that though we die, we will live again. Father, we thank you. that we know that you receive our spirit because you have received even Jesus's. And so, Father, we pray that you would please have our life hidden in him. And that when we die, Lord, we pray that we would have the object of our faith, Jesus Christ, and we would have the hope of the resurrection. Please, Lord, let us grieve with hope in Jesus's name. Amen. Well, may the Lord bless you, even in the face of grief and death. May you know that your God lives and that if you trust in Him, though you die, you will surely live. We'll see you next time. Can I say bye-bye? Bye.