Preparing Members for Death and Heaven

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Matt McCullough
So we have overlaid a taboo on the subject, such that if you talk about death, especially among younger people, in a time that ought to be happy and fun loving, you face a little bit of shame and ostracism for it. And no one is saying that. No one is is even, maybe even self consciously thinking that. But we’re feeling that, and we’re not going there, there is a huge relief that I’ve seen people experience when you go there, when they already have it on their mind.

Matt Smethurst
Welcome friends to the everyday pastor a podcast on the nuts and bolts of ministry from the gospel coalition. I’m Matt Smethurst and I’m Luke Duncan, and we are joined today by our friend Matt McCullough, coming to us from Nashville. He pastors Edgefield church. He’s the author of some helpful books, including, Does God love everyone, which is a booklet put out in the church question series from nine marks, as well as two other books that we in particular want to think with him about today as he helps us. A few years ago, he wrote, remember death, the surprising path to living hope, and he has coming out this spring, spring of 2025

Matt Smethurst
a sequel. Remember heaven, meditations on the world to come for life. In the meantime, obviously there’s overlap, remember death and remember heaven, but they are distinct books, both of which I’ve read and benefited from, remarkably, so I’m really excited to have Matt with us today. Matt, thanks for being with us on the everyday pastor. Oh brother, it’s such a gift to be here. Just so much respect for both of you guys, and so glad you’re doing this podcast. I’ve already enjoyed it and benefited from it myself. So huge honor to be on here with you. What would you say have been legs? Top five quotes? Oh, wow.

Ligon Duncan
Stand back up here, buddy,

Matt Smethurst
Matt. In all seriousness, what I so appreciate about your work on the topic of death in heaven is that it thrusts us into the white, hot center of the purpose for human existence and the purpose of pastoral ministry, preparing people to die well, to meet their maker, and hopefully through by grace, through faith, their Savior with whom they’ll spend eternity. And I wanted to start this conversation by referencing a book I read sometime over the last year, not by a Christian. It’s called outlive, the science and art of longevity by a medical doctor named Peter Attia. Have you heard of this book, Matt? I have heard of it, but I have not read it. I do know what you’re talking about. Yeah, it’s it’s interesting. It’s not the kind of thing I would normally read, but I saw a lot of people commending it. Essentially it, it talks about nutrition, exercise, sleep, emotional health. But what interested me most was actually some of the conclusion, conclusions that Dr Attia shares at the end he had been on an obsessive, kind of desperate quest to defy death. That’s what the word longevity in the subtitle means, and it’s become quite an industry today, there’s all kinds of books on this idea of longevity, and here’s how Dr Attia concludes the book.

Matt Smethurst
He writes quote, I had long subscribed to a kind of Silicon Valley approach to longevity and health, believing it possible to hack our biology and hack it and hack it until we become these perfect little humanoids who live to be 120 years old. I used to be all about that, constantly tinkering or experimenting with new fasting protocols or sleep gadgets to maximize my own longevity. Longevity was basically an engineering problem, or so I thought. And then he says this, which coming from an unbeliever, really struck me. He writes, My obsession with longevity was really about my fear of dying. I was running away from dying as fast as I could yet at the same time, ironically, I was also avoiding actually living. The saddest part is that I wasted so much time being so detached, so miserable and so misguided, so much time pursuing an empty goal. And then he finishes by writing, I had been obsessed about longevity for the wrong reason. I was not thinking about a long, healthy life ahead. Instead, I was mourning the past. I was trapped by the pain that my past had caused and was continuing to cause. I wanted to live longer, I think only because, deep down, I knew I needed more runway to try to make things right.

Matt Smethurst
You better believe that I used that in a sermon intro.

Matt Smethurst
If you’re a preacher and you can’t.

Matt Smethurst
Use that and you maybe do need to rethink your calling, but it reminds us, of course, of what the author of Hebrews says in Hebrews two about the reality of being enslaved to the fear of death as just part of what it means to live in a fallen world. So Matt, I want to start there.

Matt Smethurst
How is

Matt Smethurst
this idea of longevity and trying to hack away at beating death something that, rather than as believers resisting, we should lead our people to actually embrace the reality that we are going to die, and though that’s a tragic thing, it’s something that we don’t have to run away from. I think maybe the best place to start, certainly a foundational place for me, as I’ve thought about these issues over the years, is Psalm 90,

Matt McCullough
because it hits the two notes that I want to I want to hit. I want to hit more than these two notes, but I always want to at least hit these notes with my people in my ministry to them, and that is the note of wisdom and the note of hope, both of which are affected by Death awareness. So

Matt McCullough
you know, the prayer at the at the conclusion of Psalm 90 is a prayer that the Lord will help us to number our days so that we can gain a heart of wisdom.

Matt McCullough
I think what the the author that you quoted was actually realizing from hard won experience is that he lived a life of foolishness because he had not numbered his days in the way that that psalm is praying for you know, honesty about the world is foundational for life of wisdom foolishness is living in denial, and nobody lives forever. Let’s say he got what he had wanted, and he had, he had figured out how to hack the engineering problem that was life that lasted 120 years. I mean, we’re now living 80 years instead of 40 on average compared to 100 years ago. Do you think anybody’s really getting a whole lot more out of those 40 years that in the grand scheme of thinking, 40 extra is going to do much good. No, if it ends in death, as it does for everybody, you got to confront it sooner rather than later, if you want to live a life of wisdom. And then I mean the glory of it for us as believers is that wisdom never leaves us despairing, but guides us on into the love of God. That’s where Psalm 90 ends, satisfying me in the morning with your steadfast love that teaching me to number my days, to live with an awareness that I’m not going to live forever, is meant to drive us into the only thing that does last, the only hope for a life beyond the grave, and that’s the love of the Lord that that never runs out, and that gave us our lives in the first place. So I want to use Death awareness to sort of push over all sorts of false hopes that interfere with and compete with the one and only hope that there is Camus compared the big things we tend to lean on in our lives for meaning and substance as nothing more than set pieces on a stage. When viewed in light of death, like from a distance, they look they look solid, they look beautiful, they look like, Oh, that’s okay. I got that. That would be a good life to live. And death just just pushes them over, one by one by one, when you shine the light of the truth onto them, and I’m okay with that. I actually think that’s a good thing, because I want the last man standing to be Jesus, and he is. I want one and only one comfort in life and death that I’m not my own. At one point in your book, remember death. You you write, once we’ve learned to see the shadow of death, we’ll be able to apply the light of Christ, which implies that if we’re not aware of Death’s shadow, then we’re actually minimizing the glory that is available to us and enjoying who Jesus is for us. And Matt, I want to hear from LIG in a moment, but just talk a little bit more about as you’ve been a pastor, how have you seen an emphasis on death and preparing well for it actually help your people.

Matt McCullough
Yeah,

Matt McCullough
that’s, you know, that can be a tough question to answer, in part, because the fruit that we’re laboring for is going to show up over the long haul. And I mean, ultimately, I think I’ll be able to answer that question when I stand before the Lord

Matt McCullough
with them

Matt McCullough
and see them survive the day of judgment. That’s what I’m thinking of, that’s what I’m longing for. That’s what all this is meant to do. And so I won’t know fully until then. Also, pastor of young ish congregation always have some of the death book really came out of realizing that most of the friends that I was pastoring were in the early years of their life, first couple of decades of their adult lives, always climbing, always always training, establishing families, doing the things that you do to set yourself up for the life.

Matt McCullough
That you, that you hope to have.

Matt McCullough
And so what I’m hoping is that, at least for this, this phase of my life as a pastor, it’s been mostly with with younger people that that they are less stressed out than they otherwise would be by the the work of trying to establish themselves, that they are more aware than otherwise they would be of why Jesus is so relevant, even though he doesn’t promise them the things they spend a lot of their time trying to achieve, it’s these are things that you have to keep reminding people of always, every day, every week, every year, from now till till the end. So it’s not like they got there. And I can say there’s a person who’s fully aware of the fact that their life is not going to last forever, and therefore, fully at home in the in the love of Jesus as their only hope and life and death. I hope they’re hanging on in hope and growing in that from the fact that I won’t let them off the hook. And I just go there all the time.

Matt McCullough
I think some of the fruit is probably the fact that I get picked on it for it a lot. You know, if you go there, if you talk about death a lot, in a death denying culture, you’re going to seem pretty strange. You’re the death guy. I thought it was odd enough. I thought it was odd enough to be the deacons guy, but you’re the death

Matt Smethurst
I’ll trade you. Man, I love how you put it that you’re wanting to prepare people to view the future as their friend, not their enemy leg. What would you add?

Ligon Duncan
Well, I mean, I just something that Matt just said, death denying culture. I’d love for you to talk about Nashville. I know I’ve met that in Mississippi. I was actually surprised by it. It may have been something that I missed in South Carolina growing up. It may be the same way. I grew up in South Carolina, went off to Missouri for graduate school, went off to Scotland, came to Mississippi, and was surprised at the number of people who tried to cope with death by denial. Yeah. And so I did find that one of my, one of the one of the most pastoral roles I could play is naming the elephant in the room with people when they didn’t feel like they either had the psychological nerve to do it, or whether their coping mechanism was to trying to pretend like it wasn’t there. If I could just sort of puncture that balloon and just say, Hey, we’re all here, and this is a reality I felt, I think actually people, once they got over that hump, they could get comforted. But have you seen that in Nashville, too? Matt, 100%

Matt McCullough
I mean, let me, let me say first I speak directly to what you just said, that there is a huge relief that I’ve seen people experience when you go there when they already have it on their mind, because part of our death nine culture, I’m convinced that their sociological work has really helped me see this, that we have overlaid a taboo on the subject in the West, especially in our country and certainly in my city, such that if you Talk about death, especially among younger people, in a time that ought to be happy and fun loving, you face a little bit of shame and ostracism for it. And no one is saying that. No one is even, maybe even self consciously thinking that. But we’re feeling that, and we’re not going there. So when someone does, yeah, it can sometimes just open a floodgate of relief and of thoughtfulness that people seem to really appreciate. But I definitely see the death denial as a huge force in my city, especially in the places where I have worked and lived since living here, been here almost 20 years now, came here for grad school at Vandy. Most of my years as early years as a pastor. We’re right off of Andy campus. So I’m in the city center. I’m in a place that’s that’s really connected to training and to, you know, ladder climbing and to a lot of the future, working towards a better and better future and a larger and larger slice of life in this world. And I think in that setting, compared to the rural Alabama where I grow up, there are a lot of structural things in play that make it easier to deny that death calls into question what you’re living for. You know, back home,

Matt McCullough
we had funerals a lot. There was a small rural community. The First Baptist Church was my my church, and there was a lot of intergenerational relationships in that church. It was just always just routine to be going to funeral or visiting the hospital people who are near death here in my churches that I’ve been part of in Nashville, almost never, mostly younger people. They’re it’s very transient. They’re moving on here for a few years and then gone. And so we don’t see that full arc of life as often, and have to face it at the end as well. So I mean, it’s ton of factors we could go into here, but I definitely think death denial is a huge, a huge force here. I think to Matt the the more shocking a death is, it can promote.

Ligon Duncan
Different kinds of initial responses. So I’m thinking right now of

Ligon Duncan
a family that lost a father. He would have been midlife, you know, late 40s, early 50s, and nobody was prepared for it. And there were some circumstances around it that made it more shocking, and the family really had, they struggled to come to grips with it, even to the point of not wanting to tell the children. And I had to convince them, you’ve got to tell the children, because the one thing that your children have right now is trust in adults, and if you don’t tell them this, which is going to be the up to this point in their lives, this is going to be the most significant thing that’s happened to them, other than being born, they won’t be able to trust you on the other side. And the family was so traumatized by what they were going through, they said, Well, you tell them. And so I had the privilege of holding those children my arms and telling them that their dad was never going to come home again. And but once that happened, the family then they, they then clicked in. And, you know, aunts and uncles and grandparents and all of that started surrounding those kids. But they, I just don’t think they could take the first step. And sometimes pastors, you know, it’s a word to pastors listening to it today, there may be some things that you need to do to help your people. Then click into those instinctive totally. They care one another in situations like this, totally. And I would say too, one of the main things we need to do as pastors is try to get upstream of those shocking deaths and help people reconnect with death as a force that no one outruns. The reason those shocking deaths can be so provocative is that no one’s looking for them, right. There’s out of nowhere. The downside of the fact that that can be one of the only times we actually talk about death is that it can make death seem like something that’s rare and tragic and not normal and universal. We can’t let people live with that deception. So we’ve got to help them connect with their own mortality, even when it seems like a far off rumor, because it’s not time flies.

Matt Smethurst
And I think I mean, we can look at our death insulated culture and lament it, but it’s also a unique opportunity for the church, probably more than at any other time in human history. Because the reality is, everyone is not just going to face death themselves, but is going to have funerals in their life times where they’re sort of yanked back to reality, forced to reckon with mortality. Where are they going to turn for help and hope in a death averse age, the church is one of the sole remaining bastions that can act, that can stare at reality, name it for what it is, but also point beyond it to a better world to come. Hey, man, this is our territory. Man, this is we have good news for this situation.

Ligon Duncan
No for that, for that very reason, Matt, I, I came to love preaching funeral sermons. I’ve I preached about 30 funeral sermons a year, at first, prayers. It allows us to say all the things we want to say about Christ, about the gospel, to reorient life, to keep people from coping with the loss, by talking about how wonderful the person was. And you know, and I had some wonderful people that I could have very honestly talked about how wonderful they are, but they would have gotten up, you know, if they could have, they would have gotten up out of the casket and said, Logan, you preach the gospel. Don’t, don’t talk about how wonderful before they died. Who said you better not get up there and talk about how you better get up there and talk about Jesus in the in the Gospel, which I appreciate, but that just gives you such freedom. You know, when you’re going into a funeral message, but we all because, I’m sure all of us, Richmond, Nashville, Jackson, we have communities that have tons of unbelievers as a part of the believers lives, and so you get a lot of unbelievers in that setting, it’s a great opportunity for us to talk about what the gospel teaches and what we’re what we’re all about. And so I came to look forward to those opportunities. I can definitely see why you came to love them. You know, I had not preached a funeral sermon

Matt McCullough
for someone in my congregation when I wrote the book, remember, yes, I’d actually talk about this in the book that I that I was writing for a different audience than that one. This is an audit, a book to people who think of death as somebody else’s problem, to help them see. It’s not since then,

Matt McCullough
I have had the opportunity to preach funeral.

Matt McCullough
Of people in my church, we are more age diverse than we used to be, and it is, it is heartbreaking and yet so beautiful when they’ve died in faith and and honestly, besides just celebrating their faith and holding that up as a model for others, it is an incredible mental Mori type opportunity to have a call, have a coffin in front of you, and point that to that coffin, to the room full of people, including many unbelievers, often from their families, and say, this is where it ends for all of us. Are you ready for that? Yeah, they were. Are you Yeah? And that, that Latin phrase, Memento Mori, you talk about that quite a bit. Can you unpack that a bit, Matt and Yeah, talk about why that’s a useful thing for ordinary believers to

Matt McCullough
to meditate on. Yeah, yeah. So the Latin phrase basically means, remember death, one of two branches of reflection and meditation in the Christian tradition that relate to death. The other one would be how to die? Well, the R is more e Indy,

Matt McCullough
that one’s about like, when you get there, how’s it going to go down? Are you ready for the moment if you know that you’re dying, if you’re sick near the end of your life? The one that I’m working with, or work with in the book, is on bringing consciousness of death, the fact of mortality into daily life as a as a way of seeing the truth about the world and your desperate need for Jesus that that mortality is something that ought to be an everyday presence in in our thinking, in our hearts, both for the wisdom, but also for the hope. I find that

Matt McCullough
in my own heart and certainly among my friends that I pastor like the kinds of things Jesus talks about and promises to us just seem so otherworldly, sometimes so remote and detached from the kinds of things we’re really invested in here and now. And I, I’m just completely convinced that’s because death feels remote and otherworldly, that if, if death is some sort of distant room or somebody else’s problem, Jesus is going to seem like somebody else’s savior. But if, if you can get acquainted with death on a daily basis, then you’re, you’re bringing Jesus into your daily life too, because his promises make sense against that backdrop. Okay, when you say acquainting yourself with death on a daily basis. What does that look like, practically for a healthy believer? I think it means not avoiding the subject when it comes up, because it will so you’ll see you’ll see things in your own life. You’ll see things in in media. You’ll see things in the scriptures that that point you to the fact that life is over, and our temptation is going to be to distract ourselves or to just back out to avoid the subject because it’s unpleasant, and so part of memento mori is just refusing to do that. If where I see it as such a basic human reality that is there all around me, I’m going to look closer and not look away. I’m going to press in and not pull back. Um, you know, for me, this is just like a couple of practical tidbits you got. I’m going to reveal to you how morbid I guess I really am, but

Matt McCullough
I actually keep, uh,

Matt McCullough
a rubbing from a Puritan gravestone, chalk rubbing from a Puritan gravestone above my desk.

Matt McCullough
I got it.

Matt McCullough
I got it at an estate sale of a Vanderbilt history professor who had collected that rubbing himself on like a trip up to New England or something. It’s just a picture of looking at it right now, a picture of a of a skull with wings above an hourglass, and it says, Memento Mori, and the hour comes or Time flies.

Matt McCullough
I I don’t look at that thing five times a day by any I don’t have scheduled times where I look at it, but I’ll tell you what, sometimes I look up there and I see it when I’m when I’m stressing over a sermon I’m trying to write that I wish was better than it is, and living with the illusion that somebody’s going to remember it 100 years from now, they’re not going to remember me 100 years going to remember me. 100 years from now, they certainly aren’t going to remember this sermon. So lighten up and preach Christ that that that skull up there tells me to do

Matt Smethurst
that. So that’s just a practical thing that I’ve done just to try to bring that, that awareness into what my, what my to do list for today is going to include before we move on to talking about heaven. Obviously, we’ve already touched a little bit on the hope that awaits believers. What was the other Latin phrase you mentioned that you don’t focus on as much Ars moriendi Focus on dying? Well, when it gets to that point, that actually reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from John Newton in one of his letters, he’s writing to a woman named Mrs. Talbot in 1777

Matt Smethurst
not long after her husband has tragically died, and she’s struggling with the fact that he must have really suffered and must have struggled in his faith near.

Matt Smethurst
The End she’s fearing that was the case, though she doesn’t have any reason necessarily to believe so. And Newton writes,

Matt Smethurst
though our frames and perceptions may vary, the report of faith concerning the time of death is the same. The Lord usually reserves dying strength for the dying hour. You have nothing to fear from death, for Jesus, by dying, has disarmed it of its sting, has perfumed the grave and opened the gates of glory for his believing people. Satan, so far as he is permitted, will assault our peace, but he is a vanquished enemy. Our Lord holds him in a chain and sets him bounds which he cannot pass. He provides for us likewise, the whole armor of God and has promised to cover our heads himself in the day of battle, to bring us honorably through every skirmish and to make us more than conquerors. At last, I just love that little phrase that the Lord reserves dying strength for the dying hour or something. I try to remind my church members as not just for the dying hour, but but He reserves grace to suffer well for the suffering hour, whatever life is going to throw your way this coming week, you don’t necessarily have the grace to face it yet, and that’s okay. The Lord is is never late.

Matt Smethurst
Amen. Leg, when you were pastoring for so many years. How did you cultivate heavenly mindedness among your people?

Ligon Duncan
Well, I, you know, very frankly, I would use the shorter catechism questions about the benefits of Christ at you know, what are the benefits of Christ at death. What are the benefits of Christ at the resurrection? And use that as a framework to help people meditate upon the hope of heaven, and then to use that hope as a motivating force for living now, not as an escape from now, but as an engine for now. So it’s not that we’re so heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good. It’s because we’re heavenly minded, we’re the most earthly good possible, because our hopes don’t rest on the short term effect of all our good efforts. Here

Ligon Duncan
what we do for the Lord, however it is prospered by his hand in the here and now is of eternal value to him and and as John tells us in Revelation, our works follow us. So what, no matter what happens here, what we do for the Lord will matter in the way that he wants it to matter. And nothing here can rob us of the glory of that world of love that awaits us and so and thankfully. I mean, just just, just like Matt was pointing us to the Puritans and how they even things they put on their gravestones to remind them about this thing. You know, funerals are, we always say funerals are for the living. And back then, graveyard graveyards were for the living because they knew the living would go to graveyards to visit the places where their loved ones had been laid to rest. And they wanted those people who were living to think about the future, one day you will be here. Well, in the same way, we want to remind our people there, there is a there is an eternity of the new heavens and the new earth for which we were created in which we will enjoy, and that that that just fuels the the Christian life. And the the Puritans wrote a lot about that on a saint everlasting rest, and we could go down wonderful books that they wrote for their people on this to help them live the Christian life, but preaching, we’ll link to these in the show notes. Oh, great, great. You know great texts of Scripture allow you to do this. It’s so interesting that Christ wants his disciples to meditate upon this, and will draw attention to this in his teaching from time to time. And then you have great passages in the New Testament, whether it’s in Thessalonians, or whether it’s in the book of Revelation or elsewhere, that will point believers to what is ahead. That God is the Lord of everything, all of time, all of history, but he’s going to be God, not only now, but forever more. And so Paul in First Corinthians 15 would say, you know, if this is all there is, then we’re, of all people, more most miserable. But because this is not all there is, then no misery or trial in the present life can rob us of the joy and the hope and the and the energy to serve God. Now that’s one of the glorious things that we get to do, not just at funerals, but in just the in the normal rhythms of pastoral life. Just remind people of that. And you’re both right. I think not only our culture, but the technology of our culture, and the relentless 24 sevenness of our culture.

Ligon Duncan
Think previous generations had more space to sit around and think about these things, and now we can fill up all the space of reflection with scrolling Yes, or, you know, with with music, you know, in our earbuds all the time, and we squeeze out those times that we have to come face to face with these things. And so pastors get the, get the privilege of interjecting this into the regular conversations of life and in ministerial visitations and conversations over the over the church, dinner or, you know, whatever, whatever it might be, as well as the pulpit.

Matt McCullough
Yeah, I mean, if I could jump in here Matt on that, with a hearty Amen and and a sense that I’ve gotten, especially in the last few years as I’ve thought more and more on this, that one of my main jobs in ministry has got to be a voice crying in the wilderness of our of our time and our place, that this world is not everything, because there are algorithms out there hunting for my people all week long, they are hunting for them, and the only thing they’re offering as bait is this growing sense that the real problem in your life is that your slice of life in this world is not big enough. We can help you with that. Yeah, I don’t know of an algorithm out there that’s going to tell them to remember heaven and that everything ends there, so it’s okay, it’s all right. Focus on what matters more. That’s my job. And man, I’m trying to take every eyes looking just said, I’m trying to take every opportunity, especially in the pulpit, but but also just in basic friendships and in counseling ministry, to remind people of of where this is all headed and why it’s such good news for them.

Matt McCullough
What are some of the misconceptions about heaven, or some of the more difficult questions about the afterlife that that you’ve received as pastors, I’ll say that one of the inspirations to me, anyway, for writing the book, was, was my sense that at least the folks that I’ve been pastoring, I think, are dealing less with misconceptions than with just a lack of conception of heaven, just a lack of awareness of it, Not not a lot of attention to it. That is certainly how I think I lived for far too long in my Christian life. So maybe I’m just preaching to me but, but I want to raise the questions that heaven answers,

Matt McCullough
because I don’t often run into people who have a lot of questions of their own. When I do. I think that a couple of the biggest misconceptions that I’ve seen are the boring heavens going to be boring. One, and it’s all about seeing my loved ones again. One, I mean, the heaven that’s going to be boring. One, it comes from just a lot of misconceptions about the nature of heaven, this that it’s disembodied, or that it’s somehow a constriction of the things we love about this world rather than expansion of them. I read someone who said that our ancestors used to be afraid of hell and we’re afraid of heaven, yeah. And I think there’s a little truth to that, yeah. And then I do think it’s where I do have where I do see people interested in heaven and talking about it. It’s often in the with the hope of seeing loved ones again, which is awesome. It’s core. It’s important, but it is not the center. Yeah, yeah, I think I would agree with you. I see one. I see a lot of people with no conceptions, and a lot of that is because,

Ligon Duncan
you know, we have lived through a sort of an interesting period where evangelicalism has been influenced by some of the anti other worldliness of contemporary forms of Christian theology that’s that have sort of attacked heaven and saying, oh, you know, we have this platonic idea that’s been foisted on Christians. And so there’s been a lot of here and now stuff. Forget the pie in the sky, by and by and so I think that’s dialed that. I think that scared some evangelical pastors, and they’ve, they’ve responded to a fear, oh yeah, we’re talking too much about heaven. We’re not really helping people in the here and now. So consequently, you got a lot of people that just don’t have any conception at all. So I would agree with you on that. Here’s one I would add. I think their fears. I love the fact that you talked about, not only remember death, but you know, prepare to die well, because I know a lot of people who have a strong trust in Christ. They have a as much as they can, have a certainty that they will be with Christ, but they’re afraid at the process of getting there. So they’re actually afraid of the process of dying, and sometimes that’s because of what they’ve seen. They’ve had maybe a parent who died hard, and they’re afraid of the process of dying, or you have people.

Ligon Duncan
Or you know you have dementia.

Ligon Duncan
You know patients, and they they don’t know you anymore, and they don’t know themselves anymore. I watched one of my former elders who is out at at a, at a, at a home for the elderly, at the Memory Care Unit One Sunday afternoon, not long ago, tenderly caring for his wife, who, who has long ago for has no idea who he is, has no idea who she is, and he’s tenderly caring for his wife. And I just want to say, oh, you know, oh, that she could see how this man loves her, and she doesn’t know who he is, and he’s tenderly, can’t. And that, you know, if you see, if you’re his 30 something year old son, yeah, you’re scared. Oh, my heavens. What would it be like if I had to go through that with my wife or my children or or whatever. So I think some people are afraid of the process of getting there, and I think that just helping people through that, talking about the process, not just about death and then the afterlife, but the process of getting there, is a big deal. And I think what you just said as well about will I will I see my loved ones in heaven, well, I recognize my loved ones in heaven, and then being able to

Ligon Duncan
emphasize that as one of the blessings, but not the central thing, that’s definitely a part of it. I think people have questions, what? What are our resurrection bodies going to be like? You know, what? What age am I going to be? Am I still have 70 extra pounds? Am I finally going to be at my ideal what’s my resurrection body going to be like? I think there are a lot of

Ligon Duncan
questions that let you know that people haven’t studied what we can know from the scriptures, and I do think allowing the scriptures to set the table of the priorities saying, Okay, that’s a question. That’s a legitimate question, but it’s interesting that Scripture is most interested in this question, and most wants to point us to this thing to think about and find to think about that theologians have thought about that. I can point you to books where they’ve thought about that, but these are the things that scripture mostly wants us to think about. That’s a privilege, too, as a pastor, to be able to I always tell people, it’s it’s the very often people say, oh, Jesus asked a lot of questions in in his ministry. And that’s true, but very often the questions he asked were effectively saying, your question isn’t very good. Let me give you a better

Ligon Duncan
right? So let Jesus in the Bible get you asking the most important questions, especially in this area, because there’s every kind of crazy speculation out there in popular literature that your people can get a hold of. And so that’s, I think, a part of helping people process this. Yeah, 100%

Matt McCullough
I mean, one of the things that I try to say in the introduction to my book on heaven is that my goal here is not to tell you everything you might want to know. It is not a systematic breakdown, even of everything the Bible has to say.

Matt McCullough
What I’m trying to do is help you to see how the Bible applies the hope of heaven to the Christian life. Because most of the time when the scriptures go there, it isn’t to answer our speculative questions. It’s to help us to see what we’re dealing with in the right way and not the wrong way. Yeah, priority is key.

Matt Smethurst
That’s so good, and all of these things converge around the common denominator of trusting the heart and character of God. It’s it’s finally trusting God that’s going to help us to face the scary prospect of death, even those final days and hours, knowing that he’ll be with us to bring us across the the River Jordan. But it’s also trusting his revelation in Scripture that it’s sufficient that all of the questions we may want asked answered, uh, if they’re not answered for us in Scripture, it’s because we don’t need to know that right now. I love how you put it like I think one of the best things we can do as pastors is to train our people to trust Christ that his revelation is enough and that there’s more than enough there for us to chew on, to feed on, and to galvanize our hearts to be ready to face death with courage and with hope. I think maybe the last thing I’ll say, just because this is a podcast for other pastors, and

Matt McCullough
they might be helped by this, as I have been, it has been so helpful to me to let the perspective of Heaven fall.

Matt McCullough
Uh, as as where this is all going to end for us and for our people.

Matt McCullough
Drive my sense of urgency in the work that I’m doing here and now.

Matt McCullough
I try to imagine, not just so much, what’s heaven going to be like, but being able to rejoice and God having come through on his promises with the people that I love. One of my favorite images for heaven. Is Isaiah 25 this this feast spread for all peoples on the mountain, where death gets swallowed up as a as part of the menu.

Matt McCullough
But I love the way it ends, because it ends with with Israel looking around at one another, saying he’s here like we have waited for him. It’s communal scene, right, where we’re friends with knowing looks at one another, knowing what their joys and their sorrows have been, what their doubts have been, knowing what the Lord had to carry them through to get them to this point. Look at each other and say, we waited for him, and he’s here. He’s here.

Matt McCullough
I’m just longing for that. I’m longing for the vindication of our hope that we’ll get to share with one another and and it just helps to put in perspective some of the stuff about ministry that can get me down or can can can annoy me. You know, I put up with whatever kind of emails I got to put up with, or misjudgments or misunderstandings or or whatever, if it ends there.

Matt McCullough
So let’s be that voice crying in the wilderness until until he comes back to make all things new. Yeah,

Matt Smethurst
and it’s not just help for the pastor in terms of how we view our members. It’s also help for them and how they view one another. Hey, brothers, sisters, that other church member that you struggle to do,

Matt Smethurst
guess what one day, if you could just get a glimpse of what they will look like in 10,000 years, you would be tempted to fall down and worship them. In other words, it’s, it’s going to be such a,

Matt Smethurst
such a glorious reality that our little minds right now can’t even comprehend as we get to enjoy Christ together forever. And what a what a way to put our current struggles, frustrations, even conflicts and divisions, into perspective as we long for that day when Jesus splits the skies to return and make all things new. Amen. And one, one final thing I just want to mention is so much of what we talked about reminds me of the book of Ecclesiastes that would be a practical thing to consider. Is preaching through the book of Ecclesiastes. I know it may seem intimidating, but in our cultural moment, I think there’s some really powerful fodder for reaching not just skeptics, but also death averse, death insulated, believers. And there’s, there’s a new book by our friend Bobby Jameson called Everything is never enough. In fact, it was dedicated in part to you, Matt. And it’s, it’s a wonderful meditation on death heaven from the perspective of someone who had it all under the sun, but found that even that was not enough. And so there are, of course, other David Gibson and other wonderful resources out there on Ecclesiastes, but lean into that book, pastor, and I think you’ll actually find more hope, joy and opportunities to preach gospel grace than you may at first think,

Matt Smethurst
thanks for joining us for this conversation on the everyday pastor, Matt, it’s been great to have you with us and listeners. Thank you for tuning in. We hope it’s been useful to you, even in stirring your own heart afresh in gratitude for what Jesus has accomplished for us and what awaits us in the World to Come. Please do take a moment to leave a rating or review so that we can help other pastors find fresh joy in the work of ministry.