What Does the Bible Teach About Suicide part two.
Hi, welcome to today's Little Lesson.
We're talking about a serious subject of suicide.
In our last lesson if you didn't see that stop and go watch that one because that was
part one.
This is part two and I don't want to review everything because that uses up valuable time
during this little lesson.
Okay.
But suicide is not the will of God.
And if you're contemplating suicide and most people who are contemplating it are doing
that because they think it's a solution to their problems.
My admonition is that it could get worse after you die.
And if Jesus Christ wasn't a fruitcake, nut job, but if he actually was who he claimed
to be and proved he was, the divine son of God, eternally existing, creator of the universe,
we ought to listen to him.
And he made it very plain that after we die we are going to stand before him and give
an account of our lives.
And, if we don't die forgiven of our sins then at our judgment we're going to be repaid
for our sins.
So, the only way to get forgiven of your sins is to repent of your sins, and believe in
Jesus, and then he forgives us.
He washes us clean.
He makes us into new people.
And that's the solution you ought to be thinking about as you contemplate suicide.
It's a much better solution to your problem.
And let me just say that how much I sympathize with you if you're thinking about that because
I think lots of people who have never committed suicide have thought about it.
I've thought about it at very low points in my life and as I thought about it and waited,
"Is that a good solution?"
I came up with the conclusion that it wasn't a good solution.
But many, many people, everyone has tough times in their life, most everybody, and they
face things that for some reason another ending it all seems like it might be a good alternative.
And as I mentioned you in the last little lesson about 20 to 30 times more people who
commit suicide every year attempt to commit suicide but somehow somebody finds them and
they're saved or what they did is not enough to kill them and so forth.
They jumped off a bridge and they lived and they swam to shore and said, "Boy that was
stupid."
And they don't try it again.
"Boy that was scary."
Or they take pills, and someone finds him, and they take them to hospital and pump their
stomach or whatever.
So, and those people, listen to me now, those people who survive an attempted suicide although
they probably have a greater statistical chance of attempting it again I think the large majority
of them don't attempt it again.
They think about it a little bit more.
And so, what do I mean by that?
They're glad that they didn't succeed.
Okay.
All right.
So, just think about it.
So, we were talking last time about some of the people in the Bible who committed suicide.
The majority of them, there's only about six or seven total in the Bible, and the majority
of them they knew they were going to die.
They were mortally wounded.
Like Saul, King Saul, remember him, he didn't finish well.
He started good, he didn't finish well.
And the Lord's wrapping up things in his life and three of his sons are killed in the battle
then he's mortally wounded and he tells his armor bearer to, "Kill me because I don't
want to say that these pagans, these Philistines that are everywhere is going to kill me."
I think his armor bearer was afraid to do it, if I remember the story correctly, and
so Saul fell on his own sword.
Well, he would've been dead anyways a couple of minutes or a couple of hours.
So for him, it was an alternative that made some sense.
And there is, of course, an ethical debate going on around the world about assisted suicide
where people who want to die go to the doctor and the doctor prescribe something that they
can take that will knock them out and then kill them rather painlessly.
And I personally don't believe in general that we have the right to take our own lives.
God gave us our lives and so you don't have the right to take it away.
Yet, and maybe a little bit contrary to many other genuine, sincere, respectable followers
of Christ and teachers I do think that we ought to be a little more sympathetic to people
who have terminal diseases, and are suffering greatly, and it's inevitable that they're
going to die.
And doctors face these kinds of ethical choices and families face these kind of ethical choices
all the time here in our country.
Of course we've got advanced medicine and people who would have been dead or kept alive
for a long, long time and it sometimes cost tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands
of dollars in medical intervention to keep them alive during a time when the quality
of their life is not that great.
I mean many older people like myself have signed some kind of a document, a living will,
or something and saying, "If you find me passed out on the floor and my heart's not beating
don't try to get my heart beating again.
I don't want any tubes stuck in me.
I don't want anything to try to bring me back to life.
Why?
Because, if I didn't live in this part of the world I wouldn't have that option anyways.
And if I had lived during most of human history, I wouldn't have that option would I?
No.
No."
So, if God's trying to take me I don't want to resist him trying to take me through a
bunch of machines breathing for me, and pumping my heart, and a bunch of medical specialists."
And God bless those people.
Life is precious.
But if you take that which is very common and I think something that is accepted morally
and ethically within the Christian community, Bible lovers, Bible believers all over the
place agree on that, that there's times when it's not right to prolong a life unnecessarily.
Well then just you extrapolate a little bit from that and say, "Well, here's inevitably
a person who's going to die.
Who am I to tell that person well you can't take a pill and end it all."
And again, I'm not saying that I'm encouraging that or that I'm even certain that I'm right
about that.
I'm just saying that sometimes everybody, sometimes people have these black and white
answers that seem to make sense until you find yourself in a situation where it's you
or it's your spouse and you have to make a decision about prolonging a life unnecessarily
or your own life and so forth.
And if you can sign a document that says, "Don't use any special extraordinary means
to keep me alive."
I'm just saying can you take that reasoning and just scoot it forward a little bit in
the case of where I'm very close to death and I'm suffering and I'm just causing everybody
agony who's watching me would it be okay to take my own life?
Oh boy.
I've opened a can of worms.
Just been gentle with me when you write those negative comments down below here.
I'm just trying my best.
And you may not agree with me but I still absolutely love you and respect other viewpoints.
I have more to say on this in the next little lesson.
Hope to see you then.
God bless you.