A Christian wrote earlier this week. Monday night, I, like many, received the sobering news that an artistic legend had passed from this life into eternity with the death of Robin Williams. What was more surprising to me than the tragic news of Williams death was the way in which he died. Suicide? Robin Williams, the man who seemed to have as much joy in every interview I ever saw him do, as he portrayed in the funniest roles he played on screen. I was a bit surprised and yet this is the cold hard reality. This man who seemed on the outside to most of the masses to embody a life of laughter and affluence. was dealing with a depression that would not let loose of him on the inside. It was sadness so great that he determined taking his own life would be a worthwhile alternative than to continue living with his affliction. I am deeply saddened for the family and friends that Williams leaves behind. My heart goes out to them. I am also personally sad to think of the reality of what has happened as it relates to the masses that have adored Williams. Robin Williams, in my view, is one of those rare people who were given an exceptional amount of God-given capacity to be a true pioneer and standard in their passion and career. The question has no doubt been on all of our minds. How could such a funny man be so unhappy? How can someone so wealthy and so funny end up so depressed that he takes his own life? What hope is there for me? I am not nearly as wealthy. I am not nearly as funny. I am not nearly as widely known. How will I ever make it? And Voskamp writes, dear church, cancer can be deadly and so can depression. So can the dark and the shame and the crush of a thousand skeletons, a thousand millstones, a thousand internal infernos. We could tell you what we know. That depression is like a room engulfed in flames, and you can't breathe with the sooty smoke smothering you limp and suicide is deciding there is no way but to jump straight out of the burning building. That when the unseen scorch on the inside finally sears intolerably hot, you think a desperate lunge from the flames and the land of the living seems the lesser of two unbearables. That's what you're thinking. that if you do yourself in, you'd be doing everyone a favor. I had planned mine for a Friday. You don't try to kill yourself because death's appealing, but because life's agonizing. We don't want to die, but we can't stand to be devoured. Consider with me our subject from the scriptures this morning by looking at Roman numeral one, the prevalence, the prevalence of suicide. Suicide coming from its Latin roots simply means to kill oneself. What an awful concept to kill oneself. First of all, a. suicide in our contemporary society. 2011, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 39,000 suicides reported, making suicide the 10th leading cause for death for Americans. Someone in our country is dying every 13.3 minutes. That would mean by the time this worship service is over, that some poor people will have done themselves in. More die from suicide than homicide. In 2011, the highest suicide rate was among people from age 45 to 64. The second highest rate jumps up to those who are in their 80s. But older people, though they have a higher rate of suicide, they also have a lot of other things that can knock them off. Cancer. But for middle and high school age youth, 12 to 18, suicide is the second leading cause of death. For college age, 18 to 22, suicide is the third leading cause of death. More teenagers and young adults die from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza, and chronic lung disease combined. Each day in our nation, there are over 5,400 attempts by young people to kill themselves, grades 7 to 12. For many years, The suicide rate has been higher for men, much higher for men than for women. Ladies have more attempts at it, but perhaps men reach for a more effective and more irreversible method. Of all who kill themselves, 78% are men, some 21% and change percent are women. Strikingly, the highest suicide rates are in the West, then the South, Midwest, Northeast. Those who have the highest rate of suicide, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, and Idaho. Would you have guessed that? The three states with the lowest rate of suicide, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland. All in the Northeast. Go figure. Some suggest that there is a lower rate of suicide among immigrants and the amount of immigrants in these places pulls down the average. But it's a problem. Secondly, B, suicide in the Bible. Does the Bible have anything to say about this? Listen to 1 Chronicles chapter 10. As I read concerning King Saul, he's just consulted the day before, the couple days before the witch had ended, or he's had Samuel come back from the dead and bring a message to him. The battle became fierce against Saul. The archers hit him and he was wounded by his archers. Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, draw your sword and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised men come and abuse me. But his armor-bearer would not, for he was greatly afraid. Therefore, Saul took a sword and fell on it. And when his armor bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell on his sword and died. Here is the power of a bad example. Kill me. No, I won't do it. I can't do that. But having seen Saul do it, he follows through. Ahithophel, one of David's most profound counselors, gave advice to Absalom in the rebellion. When Ahithophel saw that his advice was not followed, he saddled a donkey, arose and went home to his house, to his city, and then he put his household in order and hanged himself and died. And he was buried in his father's tomb. Ahithophel's death is not likely due to what we know as clinical depression. Yet he could see that Absalom was going to lose, even at this early point. And he evidently thought, better to die quietly at home than to be executed as a traitor once King David comes back into town. And he will be coming back into town because he didn't follow, Absalom didn't follow my advice. Suicide is a matter of perceived convenience. Judas Iscariot, Acts 1, verse 18. Now this man purchased a field with the wages of iniquity and falling. Headlong he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out and it became known to all those dwelling in Jerusalem. How did he kill himself? With some kind of rope around him and he jumps off a cliff. There's something very violent that happened. And we look at Judas and we say, what have we learned from this? Is there any connection between guilt over sin and having a sense of overwhelming despair? There's no hope. There's no reason for me living. No matter what your sin is, I hold out to you the gospel hope. Even though sin may have abounded in your life, grace has abounded much more. Suicide in the Bible, can you think of another? What about Job being advised by his wife And he took a potsherd, a broken piece of potter, with which to scrape himself while he sat in the midst of his ashes. Then his wife said to him, do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die. But he said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and shall we not accept adversity? In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. Job and his wife found themselves in a completely overwhelming swirl of difficult circumstances. All your kids, all your possessions, Friends who come and don't exactly help, but in the midst of the overwhelming difficulty, Job chose to trust God. He did not choose to trust God. He did not perfectly trust God, yet really, from the heart, God showed Himself to be a God of hope. a restore of good. Is there another? Well, let me close with the Philippian jailer, Acts chapter 16, 26. And here in Acts 16, of course, we've got Paul and Silas singing. Meanwhile, the jailer's been asleep. Suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were loose. And the keeper of the prison, awakening from sleep, seeing the prison doors open, supposing the prisoners had fled, drew his sword and was about to kill himself. But Paul called with a loud voice saying, do yourself no harm for we are all here. Then he, the keeper, called for a light, ran in and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. And he brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? So they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household. There's a part of me that would like to work through these passages in a more inductive way, like we sometimes do in Sunday school, or like we do down in the prayer meeting room, read a passage, ask the question, draw out from it. What stands out in this passage that speaks of suicide? Well, one thing that stands out is how quickly the man moves from being at the door of jumping into a Christless eternity and then moving so quickly to the point of, sirs, what must I do to be saved? And believing, and in a matter of hours having great delight that he's believed in the gospel, he's been baptized, and all of his family members have had the gospel preached to them, and they have believed, and they're having a party! A party over the grace of God. How can you move that quickly from there to there? What's another thing that we learn from the Philippian jailer? things may not be as bad as what you think they are. Doors are open, all the chains have been loosened, and it's a fair assumption, is it not? That everybody's gone and your neck's going to be rolling, your head is going to be rolling here very soon. you may as well, out of convenience, go ahead and take action yourself. In our contemporary society in the Bible, thirdly, see a suicide in church history. There's a man, you probably haven't heard of him, John Gifford. He lived in a place called Bedford. He became something in his life of a public scandal. He hated and persecuted Christians reducing himself in the meantime through begging, drink, and gambling to the point of suicide. Do you think we'll ever hear anything about this guy again? Well, this John Gifford was later converted. He didn't commit suicide. And he became the pastor who exerted a great influence on John Bunyan. So that John Bunyan writes, about this time I began to tell my mind to these poor people, those ladies, those cleaning ladies, and to tell them of my condition, which they, when they had heard, told Mr. Gifford of me. At that time also I sat under the ministry of holy Mr. Gifford, whose doctrine by the grace of God was much for my stability. The same man, Once at the door of death, and now saved and by the grace of God, ministering to the church at Bedford, John Gifford turns out to be the evangelist, in fact, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Bunyan himself is the man in rags with a burden on his back, and Gifford the evangelist who points him to yonder wicked gate. A man who is there in no hope. There's no reason for living. There was no light. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel does not end. It's a cave. No, it's not. The grace of God can work. Secondly, William Cooper. C-O-W-P-E-R. Truly one of the great hymn writers of the church. We've got six of his hymns in our hymnal. Would it strike you as a little bit odd that we would take the hymnody of someone who at least three times tried to kill himself and we're going to let him lead us in worship to the throne of grace? He suffered from this deep depression almost his entire life, and some circumstances would come and make those even worse. But he hung on. He's the one who wrote God Moves in a Mysterious Way. Originally, he called it Light Shining Out of Darkness. God moves in a mysterious way as wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm. You fearful saints, fresh courage take. The clouds you so much dread are big with mercy and shall break with blessings on your head. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace. Behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face. deep and unfathomable mind of never failing skill. He treasures up his bright design and works his sovereign will. Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan his work in vain. God is his own interpreter and he will make it plain. Gifford, Cooper, Ferguson. On one Sabbath morning I preached from the text, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And though I did not say so publicly, yet I preached my own experience. I heard my own chains clank while I tried to preach to my fellow prisoners in the dark. But I could not tell why I was brought into such an awful horror of darkness for which I condemned myself. On the following Monday evening, a man came to see me who bore all the marks of despair on his face. His hair seemed to stand upright. His eyes were ready to jump from their sockets. He said to me after a little interaction, I never before in my life heard any man speak who seemed to know my heart. Mine is a terrible case, but on Sunday morning you painted my life and preached as if you had been inside my soul by God's grace. I was God's instrument to save that man from suicide and led him into gospel light and liberty. But I know I could not have done it if I had not myself been confined in the dungeon in which he lay." And he goes on to say that perfect people will find fault with his sermon. But he says, that's all right. the prevalence of suicide. We can see it in our contemporary society. We can see it in our Bibles. We can see it in church history. Roman numeral two, the wrongness. The wrongness of suicide. First of all, a self-murder is against God. Self-murder is against God. God is the one who said, let us make man in our image. God is the one who formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being. God gives you life. Are you then going to extinguish the life that God gives to you. God uniquely authors our existence. But further, God uniquely numbers our days. We're familiar with this, but think of the concept. Psalm 139, 16, Your eyes, O Jehovah, saw my substance being yet unformed. And in Your book, They are all written. The days fashioned for me. God not only gives you and me life, when He looks at our unformed substance yet in our mother's womb, He knows all of the days that He has fashioned. Therefore, Job can speak. If a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my hard service, I will wait till my change comes. All the days of my hard service, I will wait till my change comes. Paul can say in his last writing, 2 Timothy chapter 4, I'm already being poured out as a drink offering and the time of my departure is at hand. But listen, as he approaches the end of life, what he has done, and then the confidence that he has in light of how God has helped him. He says, 2 Timothy 4 verse 7, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that day. If you want the crown of righteousness on that day, then I suggest that you believe now in the Lord Jesus Christ and then that you fight the good fight and you finish the race. The race that consists of all the days that God has fashioned for you. Thirdly, under self-murder is against God. God offers our existence. God uniquely numbers our days and He calls it the race. But thirdly, God uniquely teaches us the sanctity of human life when He says very plainly, you shall not murder. It's kind of hard to get around that, isn't it? What are the duties required in the sixth commandment? The duties required in the sixth commandment are all careful studies and lawful endeavors to preserve the life of ourselves and others by resisting all thoughts and subduing all passions and avoiding all occasions, temptations and practices which tend to the unjust taking away of the life of any. What are the duties? What are the sins forbidden? The sins forbidden in the sixth commandment are all taking away the life of ourselves or of others. except in the case of public justice, lawful war, or necessary defense. God speaks to Cain concerning the murder of his brother. And He says, the voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. If we are tempted to extinguish our own lives We better deal with a passage like this to make sure that the voice of my own blood isn't crying out to God against me. James 2 and verse 11. Do not commit adultery. That same one said do not murder. Now, if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. And surely, We ought not want to leave this life and come to face God with the reality that we have just been involved in the heinous sin of extinguishing our own lives. Hey, self-murder is against God, but self-murder is against human nature. Whoever sheds man's blood by his blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God he made man. There's a dignity in man. And suicide is a sin against who we are. Listen to Samuel Miller, writing on this topic back in 1805. Human nature has not changed that much. If there is a crime that may be called unnatural, This is emphatically that crime. Suicide offers violence to the principle of self-preservation, which is innate and universal. It is an outrage on the dignity of those faculties with which the author of our nature has endowed us. And suicide is inconsistent with the virtues of fortitude and self-command, which so highly exalt and adorn human character. Thirdly, see, self-murder is against society. None of us lives to himself. No one dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord. And if we die, we die to the Lord. And this passage is going to have a primary emphasis of how we as believers are connected to our Lord in the actions that we live out. But when Samuel, I'm sorry, when recorded in Samuel, King Saul commits suicide, there are implications that come from the whole, for the whole nation of Israel. The whole nation that is under God has got to deal with the reality, thou shalt not commit murder, And now our king, in a rough spot in heart, went ahead and extinguished his own life. Well, does that mean that when I get in a rough spot, that it's okay for me to extinguish my own life? Think of Saul's example in his death. One of the authors speaks of how one of the causes, one of the proximate, one of the closer causes of suicide is the fact that somebody else has committed suicide, and you start thinking about that, and you start, well, why not me? Is there something of this where Saul's armor bearer will not kill him, but then after he witnesses his master falling on his own sword, he grabs his sword and says, me too. You'd like him to give it a little bit more thought. Samuel Miller again. We may go further. Besides the injury done to society in general, he who destroys his own life seldom fails to inflict the deepest wounds on all who stand immediately related to him in domestic and social life. Say, miserable man, you who are contemplating the crime of self-murder, have you no parent who in the evening of his or her days by this crime would be embittered or whose gray hairs would be brought down with sorrow to the grave? Have you no amiable partner of your life who would be caused by this step into the deepest affliction? Have you no tender babes who by your desertion would be left fatherless and exposed to all the dangers of an unpitying world? Have you no brothers or sisters to share in this grief and the disgrace of your unworthy conduct? Are there no friends who love you who would weep over your folly and sin and feel themselves wounded by your fall? What did we learn? Fourthly, D, lessons. We learn that as God speaks to Christians, your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own. For you have been bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body. And Paul is talking in that Corinthian context of glorifying your body in regard to immorality, sexual immorality. But surely if my body belongs to God, I'm to glorify God in my body in every other sphere as well. And I am not to become my own executioner. There is in our contemporary culture a growing belief that each human being has control over his own life. This belief is seen in its purest form in the push for the legalization of suicide. Many want suicide to be a respected and legally sanctioned act. From the perspective of scripture, however, which sees God as our creator, Suicide is the ultimate expression of belief in self-sovereignty. It is the plainest example of denying that we live at the pleasure of God. Suicide is a means of renouncing God as the Creator. It is yet another outcome of man's suppression of his knowledge of God. If someone can sit here with us this morning in your mid-nineties, despite the troubles of a sin-cursed world, then I think you can live through your twenties. The prevalence, the wrongness, the causes. The causes of suicide. There are proximate causes. Oh, big word, proximate. Immediately preceding. The door that is proximate to me is right around the corner over there. So these proximate causes, the ones closer, but it's closer causes as opposed to ultimate causes, or we might say surface causes and root causes. From the research, one has written the strongest risk factors for attempted suicide in adults are depression, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, especially cocaine, and separation or divorce. The strongest risk factors for attempted suicide in youth are depression, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and aggressive or antisocial behavior. I'm going to go in and shoot 20 people and then I'm going to shoot myself. Typically, There is some sense of an unendurable pain due to a loss. It may be a psychological pain or it may be a physical pain that is perceived to be ruining one's life. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. Why? It's not even a tunnel. There's no way through this. It just goes into a mountain. A couple of key words for those who are facing suicide would be hopelessness. It is absolutely hopeless. There's no fix to this. Another key word is, I can't. I can't fix these problems. There's nothing I can do. I am overwhelmed by this problem. And different from 1805, we live in a day in which medications are much more widely prescribed than what was happening back in 1805. So a current voice would urge us to consider the abuse of medications and other substances as being extremely dangerous in our day. Listen to Pastor Bill Shisco, Presbyterian out on Long Island. There is no way that we can warn people enough of the danger of this abuse. People try to cope with problems by way of medication and then this approach does not fully work. Then people abuse prescription or non-prescription medications and or illegal drugs and or alcohol. This self-medicating mix is a lethal combination. The doctor knows I'm taking this, but the doctor doesn't know that I'm adding a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a little bit of the other, and I'm medicating myself. I know what helps. There is an extreme danger of the mood-altering mix of medications and or alcohol. The person brought into an unnaturally low mood is obviously more vulnerable to suicide. Now please don't misinterpret my words that I said quit taking medicine if your doctor has told you to take medicine. I did not say that. My caution is to have that medicine and then either go off of it quickly or to have that medicine and then start mixing in other stuff with it. Other closer or proximate causes. Pastor Schisco again. Severe financial crisis. Serious health issues of an individual or a family member of the individual. Unresolved grief at the loss of a family member. Tragic life events like a rape or a divorce. Or the example of a suicide of someone you know that will prey on you. Prey on your mind. Saul's armor-bearer, looking at Saul. A string of failures. The student pushed to succeed. They don't measure up. They're not making the soccer team. The public disgraced for the exposure due to illegal or immoral activity. Even a life-dominating desire for even lawful things that can lead, in its frustration, to hopelessness. Yet none of these, none of these is the ultimate or the root cause of suicide. Job experienced quite a string of very deep disappointments, but that, going through that, did not automatically guarantee that Job was going to kill himself. Even as his wife advised, he chose to trust God in the darkness. Secondly B, we looked at the approximate, the closer causes. Consider with me now the ultimate or root cause of suicide is man's sin. God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. God told man, in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. And this curse of death affects man in many ways. In pain, you shall bring forth your children. Curse be the ground for your sakes. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Suicide is a profound problem of the human heart. And it is the root cause that goes back to God's curse on Adam and Eve for their sin. But a heart deceived, a heart misled, a heart that wants to control, suicide is a profound problem of the human heart. Pastor Sisko is going to tell us there are four things that this breaks down into. First of all, there is a profound loss of gospel grace, mercy, and saving power. For someone to commit suicide, they are locking God out of the room. If they let any thought of God come into the room, it is a God of vengeance and not a God of mercy, not a God of forgiveness. Such, in their depressed state, can only pick out the warnings of the Bible. But one of the most important things that we can do is come and bring God with us, the God of mercy, the God of hope, the God of forgiveness, and bring Him into the discussion. Secondly, in this problem of the heart, there is a profound self-centeredness. The one who is committing suicide is concerned not for those who are left behind who have to pick up the pieces. But there is a concern only for myself. There is a tunnel vision. The Philippian jailer thinks, oh no, all of the prisoners are gone. They're going to cut my head off. That's not going to be pleasant. That's going to be shameful. Let me go ahead and kill myself. What if the Philippian jailer had done that? What if Paul had not called out in time? That we're all here, do yourself no harm. Would that man have been able to utter the words, what must I do to be saved? Would that man have been able to go home to his family? and go home to his family, bringing the gospel with him? Would he have been able to witness the gospel being preached to this one, that one, and the other one, and to see them believe one after another, and see them all baptized, and move into a feast of delight over the gospel? No. Because in his tunnel vision, he would have only been thinking about himself. What a huge difference it would have meant to the jailer's family as to whether or not he did come home or he did not come home. Thirdly, there is a profound resistance to the Spirit's work. The Holy Spirit restrains in the world, not only in the believer, But the ministry of the Spirit is resisted in believer and unbeliever alike. As believers, we know that we are bought with a price and we are to glorify God in our bodies. The non-Christian knows with the work of the law written on his heart that it's wrong to kill. Fourthly, there is a profoundly misguided act of supposed autonomy White Americans, white American males commit far more of the suicides, more than the other races. Some would speculate That this desire to control our destinies has taken a deeper root in our white culture. I am the captain of my soul, master of my destiny, and that's why I'm going to plan my own death. And that's why Ernest Hemingway is going to go down in the basement and empty both barrels in through his neck. And that's why Jack Kevorkian is the suicide doctor who got a hearing. The prevalence, the wrongness, the causes. Now, finally, this morning, a biblical response. A biblical response to suicide. What do we say? Well, in addition to the things that have been said, we must say, first of all, A, suicide is not the end. Suicide is not the end. It's very common for it to be announced that such and such an individual in their melancholy hour put an end to his existence. No, he didn't. He put an end to his existence here. But he has simply moved from this realm into the eternal realm. The Bible makes it very plain that dust will return to earth as it was, and the Spirit will return to the God who gave it. Solomon makes it plain that God, He has put eternity in their hearts, and that God requires an account of what has passed. You pass from this world, that doesn't mean that you're done with this world. You're still in existence and you have to give an account of this world. Hebrews 9, 27, it is appointed for men to die once, but after this, the judgment. Suicide is not the end. Secondly, B. Suicide does not guarantee damnation. may be too graphic of a term for you, but I think it conveys the message. Roman Catholicism teaches that since there is no opportunity for last rites, one of the sacraments in suicide, that all who kill themselves are damned. Others teach that there is no opportunity to repent of this particular sin once you've killed yourself. And therefore, you've got unrepented sin and such will suffer eternal death. Our voice from the past, Samuel Miller. Perhaps it will be asked, can we entertain no hope of the final salvation of one who destroys his own life? This is a question which it will, it will become a blind and erring mortal to decide. It is possible that a child of God may be so far under the power of mental derangement as to rush unbidden into the presence of his father. I believe that instances of this kind have sometimes occurred, and if so, concerning the salvation of such persons, no doubt can be entertained. But But it may be questioned, on very solid ground, whether a real Christian, in the exercise of his reason, ever became his own executioner. Pastor Shishko, it is absolutely wrong to say that if one commits suicide, then he must be in hell. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine a sin with more serious consequences than for one to take his own life. If you would have a more favorable opinion of self-murderers, then listen to 1 John. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. It's reason for pause. Don't do it. It doesn't glorify God, for sure. And when we think of King Saul, Ahithophel, or Judas, can we find anything about their eternal states that would encourage us to become self-murderers? I think not. Thirdly, C, what is our biblical response? Suicide does not guarantee bliss. does not guarantee heaven if you like. Are you sure that the fire outside of the building of your present life is not worse than the fire that is within the building of your life? And Boskamp again. That depression is like a room engulfed in flames. And you can't breathe for the sooty smoke smothering you limp. And suicide is deciding there is no way but to jump straight out of the burning building. That when the unseen scorch on the inside finally sears intolerably hot, you think of desperate lunge from the flames and the land of the living seems the lesser of two unbearables. That's what you're thinking. That if you do yourself in, you'd be doing everyone a favor. I had mine planned for a Friday. That Friday, the flames would be licking right up to the strain of my throat. You don't try to kill yourself because death's appealing, but because life is agonizing. We don't want to die, but we can't stand to be devoured. So I made this plan, and I wrote this note, and I remember the wild agony of no way out, and how the stars looked endless and forever, and your mind can feel like it's burning up all the edges. And there's never going to be any way to stop the flame. Miller writes, he pleads, pause, oh man, and recollect before the irreversible step is taken. Recollect that you are to exist beyond the grave. Are you then prepared to die? Are you sure? Miserable as your present state may be, are you sure that death will not land you in a still greater misery? In that prison of eternal despair where the worm dies not and the fire is not quenched and where the heaviest calamities of this life will sink into nothing? compared with that torment, the smoke of which ascends forever and ever." Fourthly D, what do we say? What's the biblical response? We say those considering suicide need a Savior. Let me die the death of the righteous. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. Oh, death, where is your sting? Oh, Hades, where is your victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. We are confident yet, yes, well-pleased rather to be absent from the body to be present with the Lord. Therefore, we make it our aim whether present or absent, to be well-pleasing to Him. You want to have the confidence that being absent from your body is to be present with the Lord, then you better be desirous of being well-pleasing to Him. Present in the body and absent from the body is murdering yourself. well-pleasing to the Lord. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. And I remember the wild agony, Boskamp again. No way out. Like it's burning up all the edges and there's never going to be any way to stop the flame. Don't bother telling us not to jump unless you've felt the heat, unless you bear the scars of the singe. Don't only turn up the praise songs, but turn to Lamentations and Job and be a place of lament and tenderly unveil the God who does just that, who wears the scars of the singe. A God who bears his scars and reaches through the fire to grab us, saying, come, escape into me. Don't jump from the inferno of your life into the inferno of eternal destruction. But jump into life which is found in Jesus Christ. He who believes in the Son has everlasting life. And he who does not believe the Son shall not see life. But the wrath of God abides on him. Jump by escaping into Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Blessed Father, we thank you once again for the sufficiency of your holy scriptures. When something happens that is so noteworthy in the world as the passing of Robin Williams from this realm into the next, and we ask ourselves, how am I supposed to think as a Christian? We don't look for something to come to us in a dream. We don't look for some new information, some new revelation. But we open, O Father, that blessed book that is all that we need. And we look back and we see that such a theme is dealt with in your Holy Scriptures. You very plainly lay out for us the wrongness of it. And we can understand some of the causes and how we get there. How there is an overwhelming guilt and despair that can come. And we see, O Lord God, You speaking to us through Your Word. Suicide is not the end. It does not guarantee damnation. It does not guarantee bliss. and those considering suicide need a Savior. Oh, our God, we pray that You would use Your all-sufficient Word, and we pray that You would guide some needy soul, that You would cause someone to look at the Philippian jailer and be filled with hope, moving from suicide and a Christless eternity to becoming a believer in Jesus Christ who is having a gospel feast with his family in their newfound gospel, their newfound faith, their newfound baptism. What a transition. Repeat it over, we pray, by the power of your Holy Spirit, the power of your gospel. We ask it in Christ's mighty name. Amen.