The Gift of a Good Ending

Good morning. If you could have a seat, we're gonna turn our attention to God's word.

Today, we are in Deuteronomy chapter 33 and 34, and we're gonna read a few verses from chapter 33 and then skip over to 34 as we read on the death of Moses. This is in your bulletin as well as on the screen behind me, and it's our custom as a congregation to read God's word aloud together. This is really important to us. I know some of you are very much into God's word, and we love that you're reading God's word. Some of you, this may be the only time you read God's word, but this is why we do this aloud together. So if you would join your voices with mine in Deuteronomy 33:1, 29 and 34, those verses there.

This is the blessing that Moses, the man of God, gave the Israelites before his death. How happy are you, Israel? Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord? He is the shield that protects you, the sword you boast in. Your enemies will cringe before you, and you will tread on their backs. Then Moses went up from the Plains of Moab to Mount Nebo to the top of Pisgah, which faces Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the land, Gilead as far as Dan, all of Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, the land of Judah as far as the Mediterranean Sea, the Negev and the plain in the Valley of Jericho, the city of palms as far as Zoar. The Lord said to him, this is the land I promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I will give it to your descendants. I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you will not cross into it. So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab according to the Lord's word. The Israelites wept for Moses on the Plains of Moab thirty days. Then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses came to an end. No prophet has arisen again in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unparalleled for all the signs and wonders the Lord had sent him to do against the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, to all his officials, and to all his land, and for all the mighty acts of power and terrifying deeds that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel. — Deuteronomy 33:1, 29; 34:1-5, 8, 10-12

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Today is the second of what was supposed to be a five-week series on death and dying. It's turned into a seven-week series because of weather. And a friend told me this week, I think the only thing worse than a five-week series on death and dying is a seven-week series.

Here's where this is coming from. We preached through Deuteronomy all this fall. And as we're headed toward the end of the book, I realized I can't skip the death of Moses. It's such an important event. I've pastored this church now for almost fifteen years. And I've realized that as much as I've taught about heaven and hell and the new heavens and new earth, I've not done a lot of preparing this congregation for death. And unless the Lord returns soon, that is a boundary we all will cross. It's really important for us to think about what it means to die well.

I know that phrase doesn't even make sense to a lot of people—dying well. But it's really important that we are people who think biblically about our own mortality. We know how to walk alongside others that we love. We know how to have conversations that are realistic about our own lifelines. So that's why we're doing this series. And this may make you uncomfortable. That's okay. I'm trying to be gentle with this, but I'm also trying to lead us to engage God's word with us, and it's really important.

I know this is not a theoretical topic. I know that for many, when I say the word dying or death, it brings faces to mind. So like I'm doing every week in this series, and like we do in a lot of places where people light a candle and remember those before us, those whom we love, whom we've lost, I just want to acknowledge for the congregation: I know that this is personal. And there are people that when we talk about this, you immediately think of. So let's take a moment for that, and then we'll turn to God's word.

The History of Life Expectancy

Life expectancy has changed so much with the advent of modern medicine. This is no surprise to anyone, but here are a couple of statistics on this. In the Roman Empire, in the days of Jesus, thirty years was a long time to live. From the 1500s to 1800s in Europe, life expectancy was between 30 and 40 years old. Even at the dawn of the twentieth century in America, life expectancy was around 49, and none of those numbers take into account infant mortality. Since 2023, life expectancy is around 78 years old in this country.

Modern medicine is an amazing gift, but it's changed the way not only how we live, but also how we die. Dying has changed so much with the advent of modern medicine.

Dying used to be a much more precipitous affair, as in precipice, as in cliff—like this happens very quickly, in a way that's almost like weather happening to you. That's how death happened.

If you looked at the history of our presidents and how they died over the last two hundred and fifty years, it's fascinating. George Washington developed a throat infection at home on December 13th, 1799. It killed him the next evening. John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, and Andrew Johnson all had strokes and were dead the next day. Rutherford B. Hayes had a heart attack and died two days later. Think about that. How much that has changed. And that means that knowing how to die has also changed.

Dying used to be accompanied by a collection of wisdom that was passed down generation to generation. In Europe, this was called, in Latin, the Ars Moriendi, which means the art of dying. In 1415, a book called the Ars Moriendi was published and reproduced over and over all over Europe. It was a collection of guides and prayers for family on how to die. There was a picture version that came out in the 1450s in Italy. But this was a guide—they had both a written version and a picture version to help people think about how we die.

Things like people believed that death should be accepted socially. People believed that death was a time of reaffirming your faith, of letting go of your worldly possessions, and repenting of your sins. There were guides for families on how to pray with one who's dying. They had all this kind of furniture to guide people how to die. Very helpful.

But these days, swift catastrophic illness and death—like those presidents I mentioned—is not the norm. We have no guides. We don't know how to die well. That's the vision for this series.

Blessing and Grieving

In this passage, we're going to look at the death of Moses. He's lived far beyond the life expectancy of his day—a hundred and twenty years. And we're going to look to Moses for some ars moriendi, the art of dying.

I want to look at this in two parts: one for the person who's dying, and one for the people who are left behind. It's really simply blessing and grieving. That's what we're going to look at this morning. Blessing well and grieving well.

Moses dies in the arms of God, and he dies blessed—having blessed his people and having seen the promised land and passed on authority to Joshua. The whole book of Deuteronomy is a collection of sermons that Moses gave on the Plains of Moab right before they crossed into the promised land. The whole thing could be described as his last words, but we're at the last words of his last words today. These are the last words of the last words.

Deathbed statements that people make tend to have some weight to them, don't they? Perhaps some of you in this room have stories of things that somebody in your family said on their deathbed that really marked—for good or bad—the future for your family. Or there are words that you longed to hear that you never heard. Words from a father, a mother, an important person. There's some word of benediction we want, and those who are dying want to give: "I love you. I'm sorry. I'm proud of you. I forgive you."

We can't control what other people say, but we can control what we say and we do. So we're going to look at Moses. What does Moses do here in his last words? He blesses the tribes. And this is not the first time this happens in the Bible. In fact, this harkens back to the patriarch Jacob, who gathered around him his twelve sons—whose names would become the twelve tribes. He gathers them to himself and blesses them. He pronounces a word of blessing on each of the twelve tribes. And that's what Moses is doing right here. He gathers the people, the tribes, and he blesses them.

You know, in being a pastor, I've noticed there are two regrets that people have in dying: "I never said the things I should have said," and "I never repaired the relationship." And to leave behind unfinished business is tragic. That's going to be our homework actually today. I told you every week during this series there's a piece of paper you're going to get on the way out the door. We're going to hand you a homework assignment on blessing, and we're also going to hand you a supplement of resources. Nobody's going to check your work, by the way. That's just for you.

So we're looking at Moses as a model of blessing. What does that mean? We use the word "blessed" in so many ways. When somebody sneezes, we say "bless you," which means sort of like, "I hope you're not really sick."

You know, when someone has a lot of money or a nice house or a really nice car, we say that person's got a lot of blessings from the Lord. At Thanksgiving, we ask someone to bless the meal. We have the southern version, which is highly ambiguous: "bless your heart," which could mean lots of things. But blessing in the Bible packs a heftier punch. It's a prayer. It's a wish. It's a statement of benediction. It's all of that and kind of more bound together.

So I wonder, how does Moses bless? I want you to notice these three things.

First, it requires Moses to imagine a future for Israel without him in it. To bless someone else means you have to imagine a future for someone you love without you in it. That's hard. We don't want to do that. Our first sermon of the series is about how we live so much in denial of death. But to imagine a future for someone else without you in it is really possible for the people of God. And it comes from one conviction that we hear in Moses behind all his words of blessing, throughout all of chapter 33. I didn't print out and go through all of chapter 33. I highly commend it to you. But it's this conviction: I won't be there, but God will. I won't be there, but God will. God is faithful and loving and good. So to bless someone, you have to say, I'm not gonna be there. I have to imagine a future in which I'm not there, but God is. And therefore, be able to turn and look at those you love and think that way.

Second, imagine a future good for those you love without you in it. When we think of the future without us in it, it's negative. How can they go on without me? I'm gonna miss out on everything. But Moses imagined a future good for his people without him in it. If you read carefully in chapter 33, the substance of Moses's blessings on the people are all a pronouncement of different parts of God's character on them. He prays in chapter 33. Every blessing he has for the twelve tribes takes a part of God's character and prays it over the people. It's fascinating.

He makes three big statements, and the people in the class back there could make these statements: God is for you. God is with you. God loves you. That's really what he prays over the tribes. That's the backbone of the prayers. And that's so different from wishing, isn't it? Blessing someone is not just empty wishing. It's not just hoping they have a good future. It's saying over that person a theological truth that imagines God's goodness poured out in their life. God is for you. God is with you. God loves you.

But finally, this is the kicker. You have to say it. A blessing is communicated. It's not kept to yourself. It's not left in a drawer in your desk. It's not left on the desktop of your computer. It is said. It's pronounced. It's not assumed. They know how you feel about them? No. No. No. There's a huge difference when someone says the words over you, looks you in the eye and says, this is who you are. This is what I feel about you. This is what I pray for you. It's powerful.

I know there are people in this room who suffer for words that were not said. But will we say them? I know imagining saying a blessing to someone that way is the weirdest thing you can think of. You're like, Bradford, seriously? That's just weird. But you will never regret a weird conversation where you say words of gospel hope over those you love. You will regret not saying it. You will not regret blessing those who have poured into your life, people who have been there for you and cared for you, and saying over them not only thank you, but the Lord bless you. You will not regret those words.

Don't wait. I know some of you are 18 or 26 or 35 or 41 or 55, and I have been all of those ages. I may have more ahead of me. But at no time at any one of those ages have I ever felt like, oh, I think this is my last year, or this is my last month. We all live as if we have an endless pile of dates ahead of us, an endless stream of days ahead. No one, whether you're 18 or 81, is promised tomorrow. You know this. You know it's true, but we don't live this way. So bless.

Grieving

Second, grieving. For those left behind, look at this little verse:

The Israelites wept for Moses in the Plains of Moab thirty days. Then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses came to an end. — Deuteronomy 34:8

So much in so little words. They wept and mourned for thirty days.

Here's a couple of insights. One, grieving is godly. Grieving is godly. Maybe the most obvious observation I can make: grieving someone is right and good.

There is no indication anywhere in scripture that you should not cry, that you should not be sad, that you should stuff down feelings. So honesty time, I'm not a model for this. Okay? Lost my dad in 2023. I've had to learn how to cry. My whole life, I've associated shame with tears. I still leave the room when I cry. I'm not good at this, and I'm not pretending to be. So don't be like me, but this is something I'm learning to do.

Even the psychology world is realizing that this needs to be codified in some way. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the DSM-five, is put out by the American Psychiatry Association. They've included a category now on grief. There's something called complicated grief disorder. And that's both kind of good and bad. On the one hand, they're saying grief is real. It's legit. On the other side, they're kind of pathologizing that, which is not so great. But even the psychology world is like, this is a thing. But it's not just this is normal. This is godly.

Grief Has Shape

Israel warned Moses. Second, grieving has an end, a middle, and a beginning. And you may think I'm going to say beginning, middle, end, but that's not how grief works because it's not straightforward or linear, and it starts with an end. It starts with an end of someone you love. And then it goes into this nebulous middle period for who knows how long. There's no fixed timeline. The Israelites here grieve thirty days. Now that's not a prescribed thing. I think that's descriptive. For thirty days, they've wept over Moses. Grief is not a linear process. It's not like steps on a journey.

This year, I read a memoir by Joan Didion, who wrote a book called The Year of Magical Thinking. She describes losing her husband and how the magical thinking part was all the sort of childlike illogical thoughts she had about that. She said, I would keep his shoes by the door, thinking if he needs them, he'll come back and get them. Or I didn't want people to come over to the house because I was like, he won't come back if anybody's here. I put off the funeral, supposedly for my daughter's sake, her sickness, but really because I wasn't ready for it. She meticulously reviews the events coming up to the death. It's not linear. It doesn't make any sense.

In our society, we have a philosophy of grief that a lot of you probably heard of: the five stages of grief. Anybody heard of this? It was by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, which are denial—this can't be happening—anger—why me?—bargaining—the what-ifs, what if I'd done this, what if I'd done that?—depression, which is an anguish that sets in—and then finally, acceptance.

But what's funny about those, and a Christian counselor named David Paulison talks about this, is that there's no grief in the five stages of grief, which is weird. And they're not stages. Even Kübler-Ross herself said these probably shouldn't be called stages, but everybody calls them stages. It's as if grief was a train line with different stations. Instead, grief is like a swamp you go into. It's got an end, and it's got a middle. And that middle is like a swamp. It's messy. It doesn't make sense.

After my dad died in 2023, I still do this. It doesn't make any sense. I'm driving along a road on a beautiful day, and my dad was always outside in his garden or blowing leaves. And I just pick up my phone to call my dad. And I'm like, I know he's gone. Or something happens in the family. My dad always liked funny stories about our boys. I'm like, pick up my phone. He's not here. But there's no logic because we're in the middle. We're in the swamp.

Someday you get to a beginning, but beginning doesn't mean you get over grief. You never get over someone you love. Thank goodness. I have this picture. People think that grief is like the top part, that you're the jar and over time the ball, which is your grief, gets smaller. But the reality is, if you really love someone, what happens in grief is that it's always with you. It doesn't go away, really. It's that by God's grace, if you engage the Lord with it, your soul can expand to carry it, and it doesn't just fill up your whole life. It has an end and a middle and beginning.

Grieving with Grace

Third, grieving with grace. Notice the Israelites, how they grieved Moses. Look at these verses from 34:10 through 12. This is an obituary somebody wrote about Moses. I mean, Moses didn't write this himself. He can't have. Listen to this:

— Deuteronomy 34:10-12

No prophet has ever arisen again in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He didn't write that. He was unparalleled for all the signs and wonders the Lord sent him to do against the land of Egypt, to pharaoh, to all his officials, to all his land, for all the mighty acts of power and terrifying deeds that Moses performed in the sight of Israel.

Now that's a statement. That's a life interpreted by grace. We walked through Numbers a couple years ago. Moses was a mess, y'all. He got angry. He struck the rock twice. He didn't want to be a leader. I mean, all the failures of Moses, none of them are mentioned now. Now that's not because they're glossed over. Nobody's pretending. Nobody's like, Moses, he was great in every way all the time. But it's a life interpreted by grace. This is a man whom God loved and used. Amen. They remember the good.

Jesus makes it possible for us to be people who bless and grieve, and I want you to really think about this. In John 11, Jesus is called to the home of his friends Mary and Martha and gets the news. Our brother—the brother has died. Lazarus has died. And Jesus had stayed away on purpose in order for this to happen. And he shows up, and he doesn't just run up to the tomb and let's go resurrection time. It's remarkable the way that Jesus grieves. He grieves with the sisters. He comes to the tomb and weeps. And watching the tears of our savior is a way that we can enter in to grieving, to being people who also grieve.

There's a story from the C.S. Lewis series, the Narnia series, The Magician's Nephew, about a little boy who's brought into the land of Narnia. It's a magical country with a magical lion—he's in the godlike character. And back home in England, his mom is dying. And nobody in that Narnia place knows about it. But this is what it says, and we have this to put on the screen:

Up until then, the boy, Digory, he had been looking at the lion's great feet and its huge claws on them. And now in his despair, he looked up at the face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and wonder of wonders, great shining tears stood in the lion's eyes. They were such big bright tears compared to Diggory's own that for a moment he felt as if the lion must really be sorrier about his mother than he was himself.

This is who our God is. He knows your grief. A man acquainted with sorrows. You can grieve. You can also bless.

We saw a baptism this morning. At Jesus' baptism, which made no sense to anybody, especially the guy doing it, Jesus comes to the Jordan River, and there's his cousin John. And John's like, why are we doing this? And Jesus says, this is to fulfill all righteousness. Jesus had no sin, and yet he comes and publicly identifies himself with sinners. And he goes into the water, and the water of cleansing is poured on him. And there's a voice that comes down from heaven that says:

This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased.

You who are Christians, there has been a great exchange in your life. You've taken your sin to Jesus for him to receive on the cross, the punishment for sin. And you are given the blessing of God. You are called his sons and daughters. His benediction is on your life. And those words—this is my son with whom I am well pleased—these are words you maybe wanted to hear from somebody else in your life, your whole life. God the Father says them over you. As people who have been blessed, we can bless. Go and do likewise. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your word. There's nothing like your word. And, Lord, this touches very tender places in us. We pray, Father, Lord, would you please be gentle with us? Help us, Father. We know that there are deaths in this congregation in the last weeks, and this is very tender. And, Father, some of us are dealing with prognosis and diagnosis that are not good. Lord, help us to number our days aright that we might have a heart of wisdom. Help us to turn toward you. Lord, hear your voice, see your tears. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.