Pastor Dave Ginter
 
Alcohol…Question # 3 (11/17/09)
Atheism, Intelligent Atheist…(9/12/09)
Bible’s Accuracy: Does John 8’s story of the Adulterous Woman belong in the Bible?...(3/13/10)
Birth Control…Question # 16 (12/23/09)
Christmas Around The World Quiz…12/23/09)
Christmas, The Real Meaning…Observation # 5 (12/14/09)
Church And Politics…1/25/10Church – What Kind Of Church Throws Birthday Parties For Prostitutes?... (1/5/10)
Cleansing The Temple: How Many Times And What Does It Mean?...(3/15/10)
Creation Views…Question # 11 (12/11/09)
Cultural Title: Immanuel…Question # 1 (11/04/09)
Death: How could a loving God allow us to die? …(4/3/10)
Death and Prayer…(3/11/10)
Disagreements; How to Make Them Evaporate…(1/4/09)
Disasters: How Do We Respond To Them?...2/3/10
Doubt, Dealing With Times God Doesn’t Make Sense…Observation # 6 (12/23/09)
Doubts About Death: How Can I Know What Happens To Me After I Die?...1/30/10
Festival Celebrations, Old Testament…Question # 8 (12/04/09)
Forgiveness: Going Beyond Forgiveness To Restoration… (1/5/09)
Forgiveness: How do I do it?…Question # 15…(12/17/09)
God: All Knowing and Wise? Really?...(1/11/10)
God: Ever-Present…so what!...(2/5/10)
God: Why Am I Scared Of The Creator?...(2/13/10)
God: Why Do Some People Choke On Faith?...(2/20/10)
Guilt, How To Deal With It…Question #16 (1/1/10)
Islam, Differences…Question # 10 (12/09/09
Jesus’ Genealogies: Why are there Some Inconsistent Details? (2/24/10)
Jesus Is Both God And Human? So What? John 1:1-18…(2/16/10)
Life, Accountability…Question # 4 (11/17/09)
Manhattan Declaration…Question # 7 (11/28/09)
Mary, The Mother Of Jesus…Observation 3 (12/12/09)
Masturbation…Question # 9 (12/08/09)
Money, The Church, And Changing The World (2/9/10)
“Naked Gospel” Critique…Observation # 1 (10/08/09)
Prayers: Why Do Some Seem Unheard?...(3/26/10)
Reincarnation…Question # 2 (11/10/09)
Sin is Civil War Against God…(2/12/10)
Stealing’s Causes: Economic Injustice And Brokenness …(3/19/10)
Stress: How To Thrive Under It…(2/6/10)
Tattoos…Question # 17 (1/2/10)
Timing: Why does God’s Timing Seem So Slow To Me?...(2/19/10)
Tithing…Question # 6 (11/28/09)
Wit…Observation # 2 (11/21/09)
Women in Church Leadership…(9/28/09)
Worldviews…Question # 14 (12/14/09)
Worship That is Real And Acceptable To God…1/29/10
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  The Tragedy Of Death: Why we die
How could a loving God allow us to die?  Isn’t God supposedly in control of all things? If so, I want to know why part of God’s “Blessed Plan” includes my death!  How can God claim to love us while God permit our death?

                                Our personal responsibility in our own deaths 
The Bible doesn’t side-step this life-and-death issue. Rather, from the beginning of the Book, it provides clear responses to questions about death. First off, the Bible makes it clear that death was not part of God’s original plan. Genesis 1-3 tells of God’s purpose in providing a rich and lushly abundant environment where God’s creation, including people, could have a blast while finding eternal fulfillment. There, in the Garden, death held no claim. Eden was a place of abundant life! All people had to do was choose to live.

But as all good parents will tell you, so long as you make all the choices for your children, never providing them the opportunity to grow by making decisions for themselves, there is no growth. Unless your children have an opportunity to choose good over evil, there is no choice. For God to be loving, God had to provide us free will to make a personal choice. Why? Because for love to be personal, it must be a choice we make. That’s why we read in Genesis 2:16-17:

16But the LORD God warned…“You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden 17—except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.”                              

Wisely, God’s plan for creation included the freedom to choose love, demonstrated by appreciative obedience. But people chose to ignore God and listen to evil (has anything really changed much down through humanity’s sad history?)

                                God’s reason for allowing death
The decision, then, to die, was in a real sense our own decision. People were the ones who said God didn’t know what the heck He was talking about! We wanted to know as much (maybe more) than God. So we reached out, took a bite of the fruit, and died. Now what was God supposed to do? Look at the crisis facing God (as recorded in Genesis 3:22-24):

22Then the LORD God said, “Look, the human beings have become like us, knowing both good and evil. What if they reach out, take fruit from the tree of life, and eat it? Then they will live forever!”  23So the LORD God banished them from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made.  24After sending them out, the LORD God stationed mighty cherubim to the east of the Garden of Eden. And he placed a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. 

Yes, God could have intervened and allowed us to eat from the tree of life, thus living forever in a fallen condition. But precisely because we were now fallen, that’s the reason a loving God could not opt for such a scenario. We were never designed to understand evil. Why? Because unfortunately, people  tend to embrace the evil they understand over the good humanity desires. The moment the juice from the forbidden fruit trickled down our throats, we partly became the evil we desired to know. Suddenly, instead of humanity embracing an amazing future with nothing but good ahead, we embraced the ability for great good and great evil, at the same time. The decision was suddenly ours. But our ability to embrace evil destroyed our ability to consistently embrace good. This is what the Bible calls “sin”, a falling short of God’s target ideals for humanity.

So what was God to do? Sure, there was still plenty of goodness in God’s creation. Of course there was great beauty in the world. But now there was unacceptable ugliness too. Could a loving God allow the pinnacle of creation to live forever in a damaged world with broken bodies, disease, unbridled anger, jealousy and murderous intents? Could a God who loves us also allow us to live forever reincarnated back into a hell-hole of war and violence, evil ambition and fear?

                                God’s plan to eliminate death
So God embarked on a plan to rescue the entire universe. Through coming to earth and paying the price, God would redeem fallen humanity. When Jesus died, He invited us to trust His death to pay the price for our place in a restored creation. This new world provides the perfect environment, freed from destruction, violence and evil. This pristine world will embrace the Nations and provide them safe harbor; the world will recover from sickness. We will be restored to our dignity at the apex of creation.  Revelation 22:2, 14 describes the scene for us:

2(The river) flowed down the center of the main street (of the New Jerusalem – Christ’s Body – the Church). On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations…14Blessed are those who wash their robes. They will be permitted to enter through the gates of the city and eat the fruit from the tree of life. 

God bookmarks our story, the history of humanity recorded in the Bible, with the tree of life. First in Genesis, the tree is removed to safeguard us from an eternity of never-ending evil. Then in the last book of the Bible, we are provided this tree’s life-giving fruit. This assures us of a never-ending future in a place so amazing that we can’t even begin to fathom what it will be like. That is how God’s plan demonstrates God’s love for humanity.

This Easter weekend, as you worship at the beach, maybe you ought to spend time worshiping with others in a House dedicated to that purpose, thanking God for such incredible love. That love is seen most clearly at the cross of Jesus Christ, the one who paid the price for us to live forever in a place redeemed from all brokenness.
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