Sermon Discussion Questions:
1. What was most encouraging from the sermon?
2. What were the three categories for where our feelings of despair may come from? If you were to experience these feelings, which of the three would apply to you?
3. What do you do with the thought "I hate myself"? How does the gospel apply?
4. What is God's disposition in the Bible towards the five men who ask to die? What does that reveal about God's heart towards us, and about how we should treat each other?
5. If one of the means of help God provided Moses and Elijah were other people, what does that tell us we need when we are feeling despairing? How can we be a Church that is a place of help for those struggling with despair?
One of the benefits of John Bunyanʼs classic allegory of the Christian life, Pilgrimʼs Progress,—17th century language and all—is how realistic it is about the difficulty of being a Christian. Christian, the Pilgrim we follow in the story, is beset with hardship incessantly throughout his journey towards Heaven. One of the more memorable encounters is when Christian and his friend, Hopeful, are caught by the Giant Despair and locked in the dungeon of Doubting Castle. While they are locked away, Despair beats them incessantly, starves them, and shows them the bones of other pilgrims he has killed.
Despairʼs ultimate goal, however, is for Christian and Hopeful to take their own life. He leaves in their dungeon a knife, a halter, and a vial of poison. Despair explains, “Since you are never likely to come out of this place, your only way would be to make an end of yourselves...For why should you choose Life, seeing it is attended with so much Bitterness?ˮ
Why did John Bunyan include this scene in his book? If you know Bunyanʼs story, of course, you could see behind this story a window into Bunyanʼs own struggles. For the crime of preaching the gospel without the permission of the King, John Bunyan was thrown in jail for twelve and a half years, where he wrote Pilgrimʼs Progress. But Bunyanʼs allegory was written to serve as an illustration for what all Christians endure on the Kingʼs Path, as they follow Christ to Heaven. Do all Christians endure dark seasons in the dungeon of Doubting Castle, afflicted by the Giant of Despair, confronted with the thought of ending their own life?
Christian turns to his companion, Hopeful, and asks: “Brother, what shall we do? The life that we now live is miserable! For my part, I know not whether ‘tis best to live thus, or to die out of hand...the Grave is more easy than this Dungeon. Shall we be ruled by the Giant?ˮ
Christianʼs final question there is full of possibility. It could tilt towards resignation, as if Despair has already won: shall we be ruled by the Giant? Or, it could tilt towards defiance, as if the question has real possibility of resistance behind it: shall we be ruled by the Giant? I wonder if you can, or ever have been able to, resonate with Christianʼs question. Have you ever thought: Is my life always going to be like this? I am not sure if I want to live anymore. What should a Christian do when they start feeling that way? Does the Bible have anything to say to us when we are locked in a dungeon of Despair?
Before I read the passage we will be considering today, I want to explain what my aim for this sermon is and what it is not. My aim in this sermon is to try to help those who have experience the thought I donʼt know that I want to be alive anymore, by examining what the Bible offers us. This sermon, however, is not intended to serve as the replacement for the pastoral counseling needed for someone who is experience these thoughts or actively considering ending their life. This sermon is intended only to open the door, to take the first step—the rest of the journey has to be completed through the long, patient process of counsel and care. But, if you are willing, we would encourage you to speak with someone else about these feelings—we have both men and women in this church with counseling experience who would be happy to meet with you. And if you would like to be discreet, you could email our church at info@qbc.org about wanting to set up a meeting.
Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. 2 And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. 3 But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun. (Eccl 4:1-3)
Letʼs consider How the Preacher speaks, What he says, What we do
How the Preacher Speaks
Flannery OʼConnor, the Catholic novelist who wrote jarring and unsettling stories about sin and modernity, explains why she did so: “When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.ˮ
The Preacher knows that we mostly donʼt believe what he is saying. So the book shouts at us, it speaks starkly and provocatively about the futility of life in a fallen world, about the inevitability of death, and how all the pleasures this world—if treated like Saviors—only break our hearts. So, the Preacher says things that startle us. But one way we may be startled by the book is the way it speaks about life and death. For instance:
So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind. (Eccl 2:17)
Or, A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of birth. (Ecc 7:1)
Or, a passage similar to the one we are examining: If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with lifeʼs good things, and he also has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. 4 For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. 5 Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than he. (Ecc 6:3-5)
Should Christians talk like that?
Now, we have to remember what the Preacher is doing in the book. He sometimes speak exaggeratively for emphasis. While in these sections he seems to commend death as superior to life, elsewhere in the book he says the exact opposite (cf. Eccl 9:4-6), life is better than death. When speaking with someone else, you emphasize different truths depending on the need.
Nonetheless, we are left wondering...what is the Preacher trying to tell us here? Is there a Christian way to say: it is better to be dead than alive?
What He Says
Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. (Eccl 4:1a)
The Preacher turns to examine the “oppressionsˮ that are done under the sun. Previously, the Preacher told us about the evil of wickedness standing in the place where justice should be (Eccl 3:16). Later, the Preacher will again bring up this issue of corruption and oppression and will bluntly say: “If you see...the oppression of the poor...do not be amazedˮ (Eccl 5:8). This is a tragically broken world we live in. But here, the Preacher turns and examines not only oppression in general, but specifically the pain of the oppressed.
And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. (Eccl 4:1b)
The Preacher notices the pain and the isolation of the oppressed—twice he tells us that they had none to comfort them. The suffer alone, with no one able or willing to stand up for them or help them. Why? Because the oppressors have power. They have guns, they have clubs, they have corrupt cops, judges, managers. And they use their power to take advantage of the weak. And this is what makes the Preacher conclude:
2 And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. 3 But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun. (Eccl 4:2-3)
Why are the dead more fortunate than the living? Because (1) they no longer experience oppression, or (2) they no longer have to witness oppression, and maybe even (3) they no longer perpetrate oppression. But the unborn, he has not yet been born, is best of all because they have not seen, or experienced, or perpetrated any evil deeds. The book of Ecclesiastes is about the beauty and tragedy of life. Here, the Preacher limits his gaze “under the sunˮ to examine oppression. And when he does so, it leads him to say: death is better than life.
But that now brings us to consider: If the Preacher tells us that the dead are “more fortunateˮ than the living, does that mean that the Preacher is commending us to seek out death? Should we ever take our own life to escape the “evil deeds that are done under the sunˮ?
No, we should not. Nowhere in Ecclesiastes does the Preacher encourage anyone to take their own life. If you are interested, I wrote an article this morning detailing this issue in length. But to put it simply, when the sixth commandment forbids us from murdering, that also includes self-murder as well. The Heidelberg catechism, which we recite on Sunday mornings, under the question concerning what is required of us in the sixth commandment, says “I am not to harm or recklessly endanger myself eitherˮ (Q. 105).
There are three different instances in the Bible where someone specifically asks God to take their life—to kill them: Moses (Num 11:15), Elijah (1 Kings 19:4), and Jonah (Jonah 4:3-9). These men all agree with the Preacher: death is better than life. Additionally, there are two instances in the Bible where men curse the day they were born: Job (Job 3) and Jeremiah (Jer 20:14-18). These men also agree with the Preacher: it would have been better to have never been born.
All five of these men directly or indirectly are asking God to end their life. Which, if we pause for a moment, may offer you a small beam of hope. If you are a Christian here today and have felt like you would rather be dead than alive, have thought about ending your life, and feel deeply ashamed for it—know that some of the greatest heroes of the faith have wrestled with the same things. Why did Bunyan take Christian through Doubting Castle and wrestle with ending his own life? Because it is a temptation that Christians face. You are not alone and you have no reason to be ashamed.
But, notice: despite all five of these men saying that they prefer death over life none of them take their own life. They ask God. Why? Because they all know that to end your own life is to assume a task that is reserved for God alone. God is the One who has numbered our days, He is the One who “kills and makes aliveˮ (1 Sam 2:6). When Saul commits suicide at the end of 1 Samuel, it is meant to be a final display of a faithless man trying to maintain control rather than trust God. In the Preacherʼs poem on time, remember he told us that there is a time to be born and a time to die (Ecc 3:2). And who is who controls our time? God is the One who makes all things beautiful in their time (Ecc 3:11). To take our own life is to shake a last defiant fist in the face of God, to tell Him: I do not trust You, I am in control here.
What Do We Do?
What then are we to do? If we listen to the Preacher, we should conclude with him that—in light of the oppression and evil deeds done under the sun—those who are dead are more fortunate than the living. But taking our own life is not an option for us. So what do we then do with these feelings of despair and darkness?
Diagnose their source. Let me give you three categories of where the thought I wish I was dead might come from.
(1) Sins to Repent Of
(2) Problems to Fix
(3) Pain to Endure
The five men in the Bible who ask God to take their life do so for different reasons, and we can put them in these three categories.
Sins to Repent Of
When Jonah asks God to take his life, it comes in the form of outrage that God would dare to forgive Jonahʼs enemies, the Assyrians. When the nation of Assyria actually listens to Jonahʼs warning of destruction, the entire nation remarkably repents and turns to God. But Jonah is furious:
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2 And he prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. 3 Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.ˮ 4 And the LORD said, “Do you do well to be angry?ˮ (Jon 4:1-4)
The Assyrians had killed Jonahʼs countrymen, had oppressed them—the Assyrians were the ones who had power on their side! And yet, God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love—God can save the bad guys! And Jonah hates that! He would rather die than see his mortal enemies experience Godʼs blessing. And Godʼs response to Jonah is both gentle and corrective. Like the Father in the story of the Prodigal Son, who patiently seeks out the pouty older brother who is angry that the Father has welcomed back the prodigal, God here patiently corrects Jonah. I see that you are very angry, Jonah —but is your anger right? When Godʼs good plans enrage you to the point where you would rather die than live, then that is a sin to be repented of.
Jonahʼs anger is fueled by bitterness and resentment towards his enemies. Bitterness may sour a Christian to a point where they long for death. Maybe you hate someone so deeply that to see them flourish or experience Godʼs blessing is deeply painful to you. Maybe you fantasize about your own death as a way to punish other people who have taken you for granted or have hurt you. Or, if you are honest, you think of it as a way to punish God. It is a way to say to God: if You donʼt want to play by my rules God, Iʼll just take my ball and go home. This experience of longing for death is then a sin to be repented of.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Eph 4:31-32)
Problems to Fix
Moses and Elijahʼs request to die came from problems to fix. Moses was singularly responsible for leading all of Israel and they were constantly rebelling and failing to trust God. Elijah seemed to be the sole prophet willing to address the rampant wickedness in the kingdom of Israel. They both were burnt out and overwhelmed with the responsibilities that God had given them. They were not sinning, but they did need a slight correction. Listen to both of their requests:
Moses asks God: “I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me. 15 If you will treat me like this, kill me at once, if I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness.ˮ (Num 11:14-15)
“But [Elijah] went a dayʼs journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.ˮ (1 Kings 19:4)
Do you notice what is common to both of them? Not only have both of these men shouldered an incredibly heavy burden, but it leads both of them to illegitimately blame their own sinfulness for why they feel like failures. Moses says, God kill me that I may not see my wretchedness. Elijah says, God, Iʼm no better than my fathers. Moses and Elijah, at the end of their rope and longing for death, assume that the reason they are burnt out and unsuccessful is their own moral failure. Satan has two speeds—he either makes us blind to our sin, or tries to blind us to anything but our sin. And it is no different when we are in the pit of despair. Everything is either everyone elseʼs fault, or everything is yours.
But in both instances God does not agree with their evaluation and look for a replacement who is not so wretched. Instead, in both he...
1. He offers practical help for current needs. The nation of Israel were asking Moses for meat, and God provides. Elijah was exhausted, so God has him do nothing but sleep and provides for him food to sleep and eat for several days before he does anything else.
2. He gives them people. In both instances God takes these men who are burning themselves out by themselves and God provides additional persons to help (see Num 11:16ff and 1 Kings 19:9-19).
The problem wasnʼt that Moses and Elijah were just too wretched to do the job—it was just that they are only human beings, creatures who are limited and cannot do everything on their own. They need God to speak to them, they need God to provide for their basic needs, and they need God to provide a community of others around them to help. One reason Christians may feel like “I just want to dieˮ isnʼt because they are in sin, but just because they are overextended, sleep- deprived, and emotionally burnt out. You may be trying to do more than you should and then when you fall short you blame yourself, hate yourself, why am I not better at this? And, in time, you will slowly begin to believe that the world might just be better off without you. What do you do with that?
First, you remind yourself that the answer to your wretchedness is not to punish yourself, the answer is found in the punishment for your sins in Jesus Christ; the answer is not your own death, it is the death of Christ which has made a full atonement for all your wretchedness! When Satan tries to blind you of anything else but your sin, in faith you stab back: that sin has been paid for!
What though the vile accuser roar
Of sins that I have done;
I know them well, and thousands more;
My God, He knoweth none
Second, you remind yourself that you are not God. You cannot do everything. You need rest, you need sleep, you need limits, you need friends, you need a Church. As Christians, we should have lofty ambitions: we should strive to do everything to the glory of God and so do everything excellently. We should be excellent employees, parents, children, friends, citizens, church members. But when we find ourselves hitting our limits we trust that whatever gap remains between our ambitions and reality is to be trusted with the Lord.
Pain to Endure
Lastly, the life of Job and Jeremiah show us that sometimes you experience the feelings of I wish I was dead, not because you are in sin, not because you have any problems that can be fixed, but just because God has willed that your life be marked by pain to endure. Jobʼs story makes some sense to us because we have the prologue to the book that explains Satanʼs interaction with God and the reason for Jobʼs testing. But Job is never clued into this heavenly dialogue. Job has black sack put over his head, and he is kicked in the teeth by the circumstances of life. He loses his wealth, he loses his children, he loses his own health, and finally he loses the respect of his friends.
Jeremiah is faithful to speak Godʼs word to Godʼs people, to warn them of the coming destruction if they do not repent. No one listens to him. And he sees his people be slaughtered by the nation of Babylon for refusing to heed his warnings. But, before that, the people of Judah, rather than listening, persecute Jeremiah and try to have him killed.
Sometimes the circumstances of your life, unlike Moses and Elijah, cannot be changed. Maybe, like Job, you have lost your health, lost your money, lost loved ones, or have lost the respect of others. And, from what you can see, it would appear that there is no way to have those back. And life as you currently experience is so oppressive that death seems preferable. What do you do then?
Grieve in Hope (1 Thess 4:13)
Grieve.
Christianity is not Buddhism or Stoicism. The remedy to the pain of this world is not transform our hearts into a slab of marble that feels nothing. The Marlboro man who shrugs his shoulders at whatever comes is not the model of Christian maturity. Jesus is. And what do we see in Jesus? When Jesus sees the hardness of hearts in the Pharisees, Mark says that he is angry and “grievedˮ (Mark 3:5). When Jesus looks over unbelieving Jerusalem, he laments and weeps (Luke 19:41). And when Jesusʼ friend Lazarus dies, when He sees the pain on the faces of Lazarusʼ sisters Jesus is “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubledˮ and Jesus weeps (John 11:33-36). If God weeps at the pain of this world, we should too. When we look at the oppression done under the sun, when we see the brokenness of our bodies, the pain of shattered relationships, when we come to the unfixable things in life, we alongside Jesus, grieve and weep and say, It shouldnʼt be this way!
But maybe you are thinking If God is so heart broken by it, then why doesnʼt He do something about it?
And that makes the story of Lazarus even more pertinent. We grieve, but we grieve in hope.
Hope.
John tells us that Jesus knew well in advance that Lazarus was ill—even tells us that Jesus and Lazarus, and his two sisters Martha and Mary, were close friends (John 11:1-4). Yet, John tells us “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.ˮ (John 11:5-6). The verse provocatively is telling us that one way that Jesus demonstrated his love for Martha and Mary was by intentionally not showing up when Lazarus was ill. Even more provocatively, after Lazarus dies, Jesus tells his disciples: “Lazarus has died, 15 and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.ˮ (John 11:14-15)
Why is Jesus glad? Because Jesus sees something that the disciples cannot see, that Martha and Mary cannot see, that Lazarus cannot see. The miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead is going to produce more good than there would be created by Jesus instantly rushing to Lazarusʼ side and preventing his death. He knows he's going to raise Lazarus from the dead, and therefore, he is glad.
Why? He's not glad at the evil itself. When he comes face to face with death, he weeps, he laments, he's greatly troubled.
He hates death. He's come to fix death, to remedy death. He is glad that he is a wise and sovereign God who can take the ugliness of death and fold it into something more beautiful, something better than there would be if death did not occur.
Have you ever thought about what Jesus' crown is made of on the cross? What's it made of? Thorns.
What is the sign of the curse? Thorns.
The ugliest and most horrific act ever perpetrated in the history of mankind is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
The most wonderful, life-giving, beautiful, exceptional event that has ever happened in the history of mankind is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Thorns are ugly. Thorns have no beauty.
They stab you. They hurt you. They produce nothing. Yet when wound together, they can become a crown.
All suffering is a question of trust. Taking our own life is a way of us saying: I do not trust that you have a plan. I do not trust that this pain has any purpose.
Christianʼs escape from Doubting Castle comes from a flash of insight where he suddenly remembers: “I have a key in my bosom, called Promise, that will I am persuaded open any lock in Doubting Castle.ˮ What brings Christian out of Doubting Castle are the promises of God that he has stored in his heart. Let's end by reading one of those promises:
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Cor 4:16-18)
The light and momentary afflictions that feel heavy and forever. Christian, you're not walking through those, just gritting your teeth to endure it, and then finally you'll collapse into heaven, and you'll just get to forget about all that pain. No, the pain itself is actually accentuating and enhancing the glory.
It's not pointless. It's not purposeless. Your pain, your sorrow, your sadness, your loss, it's not just blind chance being thrown at you.
You don't have a sack over your head, just getting kicked around by the chaos of the world. There is a God, a God who is superintending over the storm in your life, and he is only bringing what will deepen your joy. Lazarus couldn't see that.
Martha, Mary, the disciples couldn't see that, and you can't see it either. And so all suffering is just a question of trust. It's light, it's momentary, and it is not worth comparing with the eternal weight of glory that it is preparing for us.
So, Christian, do not lose heart, do not fix your eyes on what can be seen, but on what is unseen.
