NXR Podcast - THE INTERVIEW - Death, Cremation, & Grief with Michael Foster
Aired: 2024-03-11
Duration: 53:24


=== Welcome to Theology Applied (02:17) ===

[00:00:00]  Hi, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
[00:00:02]  I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
[00:00:04]  We're glad that you're here.
[00:00:06]  Today's episode, I'm welcoming onto the show for, I don't know, third or fourth or fifth time, a regular guest, Michael Foster.
[00:00:13]  He's the senior pastor of East River Church.
[00:00:15]  We're talking about death, we're talking about the Christian response, the biblical theology and framework for how we should actually view death.
[00:00:22]  We talk about a proper biblical category of grief, but we also talk about the appropriateness of reacting towards death with anger, that Jesus was actually angry.
[00:00:34]  At Lazarus' death, there's a lot of things that we get into.
[00:00:37]  We talk about how to treat the body.
[00:00:39]  We talk about how it's not particularly Christian to cremate, but the body is significant, and we want to preserve the body because we believe in a final physical resurrection of these bodies.
[00:00:50]  We're not Gnostics.
[00:00:51]  And so, a lot of stuff dealing with death, grieving properly, being angry at death rather than angry at God, how to treat the body, what is a Christian doctrine of a funeral?
[00:01:02]  What does that look like?
[00:01:03]  Important conversation.
[00:01:05]  Death is inevitable.
[00:01:05]  We All deal with it, and we need to know how to deal with it properly from the Word of God.
[00:01:10]  So, if that interests you, tune in now.
[00:01:12]  Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
[00:01:16]  This is Theology Applied.
[00:01:24]  All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
[00:01:27]  Today, I'm privileged to have joining the show once again a friend of mine, Michael Foster.
[00:01:32]  He is the senior pastor of East River Church.
[00:01:36]  He's a faithful pastor.
[00:01:37]  He's also bivocational, working outside of the church world.
[00:01:40]  He's been involved with Podcasting and writing, and all those kinds of things.
[00:01:43]  And right now, he is focusing on many different tasks, but one of them is completing a book that focuses on the topic of grief, loss of loved ones.
[00:01:53]  And it's not just a random topic that he decided to write about, but it's deeply personal.
[00:01:58]  It's something that he's experienced, as we all have, in various degrees over the course of his life, but especially just one hit after another in these last 18 months.
[00:02:07]  So, Michael, welcome to the show.
[00:02:08]  And can you just share with our listeners, these last 18 months, whatever you're comfortable with, and then, and then we'll talk about the theology of grief, sure?

=== Grief After Losing a Child (06:57) ===

[00:02:17]  Well, the genesis of the book i'm working on was the death of a, of a child.
[00:02:22]  We had a daughter, um Nicaea, my first girl, who died on her due date.
[00:02:28]  So she was, she was fine, there's nothing wrong with her uh, and then her heart just stopped.
[00:02:33]  So she was stillborn and that was on uh, the day like the day before she was supposed to be due or something.
[00:02:40]  So uh, and that threw our life into um.
[00:02:45]  It's one of those things that changes you forever.
[00:02:47]  It really does.
[00:02:49]  And so I wrote a bunch of blog posts on it as we were processing it.
[00:02:54]  And the sort of outreach that we got was incredible.
[00:02:58]  The post went viral.
[00:03:01]  I wasn't active on Twitter back then, it was just like WordPress or something.
[00:03:06]  And so I've been meaning to turn that into a book for a long time.
[00:03:09]  Signed a contract with New Christendom Press to publish it to them.
[00:03:13]  And I was hard on it, man, like five or six chapters through.
[00:03:18]  And then things just got really intense.
[00:03:21]  So my brother died in June of 2022.
[00:03:28]  And he died of an overdose.
[00:03:32]  A couple hours before he died, we had a conversation.
[00:03:36]  He was being really aggressive.
[00:03:38]  He was a drug addict.
[00:03:40]  And I had a simple rule for him to have access to his nieces and nephews, my children, is that he'd have to be sober for six months and hold down a job of some sort.
[00:03:50]  for six months.
[00:03:51]  And when you come from a family of addicts and from a non-Christian family that has those sort of intense sins, whether it's gambling or drinking or drugs or whatever, you do have to learn how to set boundaries.
[00:04:04]  You don't want to close the door on them forever, but you do have to control how they enter into your life because it's very easy for you to get pulled back into kind of like a black hole of that destruction when you're trying to escape and start a first-generation Christian family that's faithful.
[00:04:23]  So he wanted to come to our house on the 4th of July because the 4th of July was a big deal in the Foster family.
[00:04:28]  We have like these insanely dangerous firework wars where like we shoot bottle rockets at each other's heads and Roman candles.
[00:04:36]  And so that was very a warm memory to him.
[00:04:39]  So he asked if he could come see them on the 4th of July.
[00:04:43]  And I said, no, you can't.
[00:04:44]  You can't, man.
[00:04:45]  You got to stay sober for six months.
[00:04:49]  I'd love for you to come.
[00:04:50]  I'm rooting for you.
[00:04:51]  And so he told me, like, I wasn't a real Foster, I didn't really love him.
[00:04:56]  And, to you know, go f myself and then died four hours later.
[00:05:00]  That's what happened um, in the corner of a uh, in the corner of a homeless shelter.
[00:05:08]  So then um, because of where he was at and he was homeless and all this complications, my mother and I were forced to have him cremated.
[00:05:17]  We didn't have a choice on it.
[00:05:19]  Also, his body had been in uh with the coroner for a long time because all these complications.
[00:05:26]  So that happened.
[00:05:26]  That was like really hard because he and I were quite close.
[00:05:29]  In the very last episode Of It's Good To Be A Man, episode 75, kind of explains that whole story.
[00:05:37]  Fast forward to the beginning of last year, my mom had to go in to have a tumor removed off, removed from inside her cranium that was causing her to lose sight.
[00:05:48]  It was as brain surgery goes, it was pretty simple, actually.
[00:05:52]  And so she went in, I went in with her, and the surgery was successful, but the tools that were used to Do the surgery, we were contaminated, and it led to an infection in her brain and several strokes.
[00:06:11]  And then she was fighting for her life for a long time.
[00:06:14]  We were fighting with the hospital system, and she wasn't able to talk.
[00:06:19]  So I remember I just had a I don't know where I saw this somewhere, but I had to go ahead and feed her coffee from a spoon when she was finally able to eat something.
[00:06:32]  I think I had some notes on my phone or something.
[00:06:36]  But she slowly got her ability to talk back and we got her out of the hospital and everything was looking up.
[00:06:41]  She was learning to move her arms again and all this.
[00:06:45]  And she was able to talk in broken sentences, but she was really positive.
[00:06:50]  Like it was incredible to see the work that the Lord did in our heart.
[00:06:52]  My mom had really been into the occult for a long time, vampires and werewolves and ghosts and all that nastiness.
[00:07:00]  And she had slowly gotten, become a more serious Christian.
[00:07:03]  But after the stroke, all she wanted to do was praise God and read scripture and her heart was full of joy and all these things.
[00:07:10]  And so things were looking up and I got a call at 5 a.m. in the morning.
[00:07:17]  And it was the nursing home that we had her, a skilled nursing facility.
[00:07:22]  And they said, hey, your mom's on the way to the hospital.
[00:07:25]  I'm calling to, you know, let you know.
[00:07:28]  And here's where she's going.
[00:07:30]  And you can always tell with their voice, like they're holding back something.
[00:07:34]  So I suspected something massive was wrong.
[00:07:39]  So then it was going to take them about an hour to get her in.
[00:07:43]  You know, get her situated.
[00:07:44]  And when you've been through this stuff before, you know, but, but, so I laid down and I told my wife what was going on.
[00:07:54]  And 45 minutes later, I got a call that she had, she had died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
[00:08:02]  It was quite shocking to all of us.
[00:08:04]  And, and so all that happened like, you know, within like 18 months, not even really like my mom and my brother died within 13 months of each other.
[00:08:16]  And it just kind of throws your life like it messes everything up.
[00:08:21]  Like Emily and I were going down to the hospital every other day switching off for four hours for like months trying to be, you have to be a patient advocate.
[00:08:31]  It was very hard on us.
[00:08:32]  I gained a bunch of weight this past year because it's this, you eat when you can eat and you exercise when you exercise and everything's crazy.
[00:08:41]  Our kids probably, we use screens too much to babysit them because what are we going to do?
[00:08:47]  Right, we got a lot of kids and these hours are very strange and uh, and then I, I was really surprised how broken I was by my mom dying, and that may seem surprising to some people to hear a son say that, but I grew up in a broken home and I had a distant relationship with both my parents until really the last decade or so and slowly uh, have have repaired it, by god's grace,

=== Why Death Is Not Good (10:36) ===

[00:09:15]  just because I grew up in a home full of alcoholism and abuse and just really being um, being exposed to lots of evil stuff on TV, you know, remember watching Nightmare On Elm Street, Three, Dream Warriors, whichever one that is, when I was like seven years old, man.
[00:09:32]  Like, that's crazy.
[00:09:34]  Like that kids were exposed to that sort of thing.
[00:09:37]  And so then, so that's, that's, was the last, last year was hard.
[00:09:44]  And I'm getting my energy back and I'm back to writing this book and all the more convinced that we need better books on grief, better books.
[00:09:55]  Thinks, a more biblical way of tackling issues like trauma.
[00:10:01]  Like people use trauma as an excuse.
[00:10:04]  But there is when something shocking happens to you the death of a loved one, especially if it's gruesome, if it's unexpected, there is some sort of almost like psychic wound that you bear.
[00:10:21]  And I've seen I've seen normal people act crazy after the death of a child, like Really, have kind of a break with reality for a long period of time.
[00:10:32]  And no one tells you about how uneven grief is.
[00:10:38]  Like you'll be numb and normal, and then suddenly something will trigger it.
[00:10:42]  You'll start crying in a very inconvenient place.
[00:10:46]  No one tells you that there are folks out there that are attracted to your grief and trauma because they've never gotten over theirs and it allows them to relive it.
[00:10:56]  So I think of them almost like lampreys on the side of a shark.
[00:10:59]  So there are some people, not all people are doing that, but there are some people like that.
[00:11:02]  They're just attracted to that.
[00:11:05]  And those sort of people can keep you stuck in a phase of grieving and keep you from moving on.
[00:11:13]  So I wanted to write a book after, there was not a good book for people that have miscarriages or stillbirths and not very many books on the death of children.
[00:11:22]  And the ones that are out there are really long, which is not helpful for you when you're in the middle of something like that.
[00:11:28]  You need something kind of condensed.
[00:11:32]  Or they're also, they're either too detached because they don't want to trigger people emotionally.
[00:11:40]  So it's almost like reading a textbook.
[00:11:43]  Or the flip side is they're very emotional and sentimental and not helpful.
[00:11:48]  So I thought, what's something I'd love to write something that is very honest about what suffering is like, how to tackle it biblically.
[00:11:59]  And to walk someone through the process of from the first chapter of the book that I have done, about five, six chapters done, first chapter is literally just how we found out she died.
[00:12:11]  And then walking all the way through the funeral, through coming to terms with it and the different ways my wife and I reacted.
[00:12:23]  And then ending with the birth of our daughter, Galilee, who is the Irish twin, right?
[00:12:28]  So Nicaea was born in in august, Gal was born in july.
[00:12:33]  So that's, that's kind of what's been going on and that's what i've been thinking about, and I just think we need better pastoral resources.
[00:12:39]  It's, uh, it's hard.
[00:12:40]  People don't.
[00:12:41]  We don't talk about death anymore, like people don't go to funerals everyone.
[00:12:44]  They don't see the bodies, they just cremate them.
[00:12:47]  You know, sometimes you have no choice um, but uh, it's important to closure and and and scripture spends a whole lot talking about death as a final enemy and uh, it's good.
[00:12:59]  It's good to be connected to death because it reminds you of The need for the resurrection, why the gospel is good news.
[00:13:08]  It also keeps you sober.
[00:13:10]  And so much of the stuff we see emphasized now doesn't really have an internal perspective to it.
[00:13:15]  So that's what I'm hoping to do.
[00:13:17]  That's what I've been thinking about a lot lately.
[00:13:20]  Yeah, that's really good.
[00:13:21]  Yeah, I appreciate that.
[00:13:23]  And I like what you were saying at the end there.
[00:13:25]  You know, I think sometimes we, one thing that we'll do is we'll ignore death.
[00:13:29]  So, I mean, our society is just, you know, I mean, even when people are near death, We remove them from society.
[00:13:37]  We don't want sickly people near death in public view.
[00:13:42]  So, whether it's taking the elderly and sequestering them, you know what I mean?
[00:13:46]  Over in a nursing home, just that classic Andrew Cuomo move, you just throw them all in a building, lock the door, and let them die, but somehow you're a champion of life.
[00:14:00]  So, you do that, you either avoid death or you try to beautify death or make it.
[00:14:08]  Somehow romantic and chanting, you know, or just.
[00:14:12]  Celebration of life, right?
[00:14:13]  Exactly.
[00:14:14]  And that's, I think, beautifying, but also trivializing, you know, you're minimizing death.
[00:14:18]  Oh, it's not, we're not mourning.
[00:14:20]  We're just, it's a celebration of life where it's like, and so this is helpful for me, you know, having Jesus, you know, thinking of a biblical perspective, well, one biblical text, having Jesus' perspective on death.
[00:14:33]  And did Jesus ever attend a funeral, you know?
[00:14:37]  And conveniently, he did.
[00:14:39]  Like, now he was, he was, A late attender to this funeral by design, by his choice.
[00:14:44]  He had a purpose in that.
[00:14:45]  But he shows up at Lazarus's funeral.
[00:14:48]  And I remember talking to Iskar about this, you know, with a recent project that we did.
[00:14:52]  But his position, Jesus' position, is it's the shortest verse that we have in the New Testament.
[00:14:58]  Jesus wept.
[00:14:59]  So there's grief.
[00:15:00]  But there's also, it says he was troubled in spirit.
[00:15:03]  And you go back to earlier translations of that and like King James and the way that it's rendered in the Greek there.
[00:15:10]  It's not just grief.
[00:15:11]  Grief is there.
[00:15:12]  Jesus wept.
[00:15:13]  But there's also anger.
[00:15:15]  Jesus is angry at a funeral.
[00:15:17]  And we don't think about that.
[00:15:19]  We say we should be, we're Christians.
[00:15:21]  We believe death.
[00:15:21]  I've heard guys say death isn't, death is a door, right?
[00:15:25]  Death, like, what they're saying is death is good.
[00:15:27]  It's just, it's a door into heaven.
[00:15:29]  No, no, death is not the savior from suffering and life.
[00:15:32]  Jesus is the savior.
[00:15:33]  Death is an enemy, a formidable enemy, and the last of Christ's enemies that he's going to defeat.
[00:15:39]  And he's not going to defeat it gently or kindly.
[00:15:43]  Christ hates death, and he's going to give the death blow to death, and he's going to do so violently.
[00:15:48]  And Jesus is angry.
[00:15:49]  And there are a number of reasons I think he's angry at death.
[00:15:52]  I also think he's certainly angry at their disbelief, right?
[00:15:56]  He's surrounded by a bunch of people who don't believe that he is the resurrection of the life.
[00:16:00]  So, I think he's troubled by that.
[00:16:02]  But my point is that Jesus has both grief, proper holy grief at this death scene with Lazarus, but also anger.
[00:16:11]  He does not view death as a friend.
[00:16:13]  He doesn't view death as a door.
[00:16:14]  He doesn't view death as a savior, taking us out of.
[00:16:17]  I mean, that's a.
[00:16:18]  Every cult leader that you can track all these cult leaders.
[00:16:22]  And what do they do, right?
[00:16:24]  You know, at the end of their cult legacy, they pass around the cups of Kool Aid.
[00:16:30]  And they're and they always, it's some kind of speech of like, let's just be done with it.
[00:16:33]  Aren't you tired of how the world is going to hell in a handbasket and how corrupt it is?
[00:16:39]  And life is, and they make life the enemy.
[00:16:42]  Life is so hard, life is filled with wickedness and evil.
[00:16:46]  The world is too far gone.
[00:16:49]  Um, let's just be done with it, death.
[00:16:51]  And so, so life becomes the enemy, death becomes the savior, and uh, and that's demonic.
[00:16:56]  That is literally, I mean, that's the pitch of Satan, you know, you will not surely die, you know, and and so.
[00:17:02]  Yeah, so I think that's so helpful for people to say number one, it's appropriate and right to grieve and not minimize death and say, oh, there's nothing to be sad about.
[00:17:10]  Yes, you should be sad.
[00:17:11]  And then number two, not only sad, but I think a biblical argument can be made for being angry, righteously angry, indignant.
[00:17:19]  You know, I think of the Psalms where David says, Do I not hate those who hate you?
[00:17:24]  It's good and right when we hate God's enemies, and death is one of God's enemies that God hates.
[00:17:30]  And when we hate death too, We're pledging our allegiance to Christ.
[00:17:35]  We're properly viewing death, categorizing it properly where it really belongs.
[00:17:39]  It's not our friend.
[00:17:40]  It's not a door.
[00:17:42]  It's the curse of sin.
[00:17:45]  And God's righteous, appropriate judgment, but for sin, it's an enemy of Christ and he's going to defeat it.
[00:17:52]  And that helps.
[00:17:53]  I think that helps people move on.
[00:17:55]  People don't move on as well from grief when they're counseled by pastors to cozy up to death.
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=== Anger and Biblical Closure (15:46) ===

[00:19:52]  Well, recently I had a friend die a couple weeks ago.
[00:19:56]  So he.
[00:19:59]  We go way back.
[00:20:00]  He was an atheist for a long time, then became an agnostic through reading Jordan Peterson, of all things.
[00:20:06]  And we met at a bar.
[00:20:07]  I went to some sort of celebration, and we met at this bar, and I hate loud noise.
[00:20:12]  I get really overwhelmed by music.
[00:20:14]  So I went to a corner, and he was there.
[00:20:16]  He was pretty drunk, and he started arguing with me about Christianity or whatever.
[00:20:21]  So it was funner than the party.
[00:20:23]  So I just hung out with him, and we ended up becoming friends from that.
[00:20:25]  And that was about a year or two before Obama got elected, so however long that was.
[00:20:30]  And slowly he became a good friend and he supported me in the ministry.
[00:20:37]  It was kind of funny how this happened.
[00:20:39]  He called me up and he sent me a message.
[00:20:41]  He said, hey, are you still into abortion ministry?
[00:20:44]  Are you still trying to stop abortion?
[00:20:46]  And I said, yeah, I am.
[00:20:47]  He's like, I'd like to support you in the ministry.
[00:20:49]  And I was like, okay, that's cool.
[00:20:51]  Why?
[00:20:52]  And he said, well, I went overseas and met this girl and got her pregnant.
[00:20:57]  And, you know, she's over there in Eastern Europe.
[00:21:01]  I'm over here.
[00:21:02]  And she was struggling about whether she should keep the baby or not.
[00:21:05]  And I begged her.
[00:21:07]  begged her to keep the child.
[00:21:10]  And I told her that if you keep the child, I will move over there.
[00:21:13]  I will marry you and I will raise that child.
[00:21:16]  Right.
[00:21:16]  Wow.
[00:21:17]  And I said, well, awesome, man.
[00:21:18]  I'll be praying for you.
[00:21:19]  So he gave to, I don't know, like 15, 20 bucks or something for a long time.
[00:21:24]  And he did move over there and he did marry her and she did have the baby.
[00:21:29]  And about a year ago, I called him an agnostic and he got really mad at me.
[00:21:34]  He was like, I'm not an agnostic.
[00:21:36]  What do you mean you're not agnostic?
[00:21:37]  He's like, I believe in God.
[00:21:39]  And I said, so which one?
[00:21:41]  Like out of the bible right, and I was like all right, all right, but he wasn't really going to church or anything.
[00:21:46]  So then um, a couple months ago, he um, he says hey, i'm coming to the States and um, and i'd like to get baptized.
[00:21:58]  And I was like, all right well, let me know when you're coming.
[00:22:01]  So, um.
[00:22:03]  So then it turns out he's got cancer, so he's got a form of cancer, but things are looking up like like they had uh, they thought they could have it tackled, or whatever.
[00:22:13]  So he um, flies into town.
[00:22:14]  I'm helping him find a church over there.
[00:22:16]  I get special permission from my elders.
[00:22:18]  Like, here's what I'd like to do.
[00:22:20]  We have a small service at his mom's house because he's in a lot of pain.
[00:22:24]  And he came back home to do fundraising and have money for his cancer treatment.
[00:22:30]  So we do a baptism service, all the words that you'd use from like a traditional Presbyterian service.
[00:22:37]  He cries.
[00:22:37]  His mom cries.
[00:22:38]  His dad cries.
[00:22:39]  We all cry.
[00:22:40]  Some of our friends there cry.
[00:22:41]  He gets baptized and pray for him, you know.
[00:22:45]  And so then he flies home.
[00:22:48]  He flies home.
[00:22:50]  And dies like within days, right?
[00:22:53]  The cancer was just way worse than everyone realized, and that's that.
[00:22:57]  Um, so then his mom uh called me up last week and just was crying on the phone, and she's like, Is it right for me to be angry with God?
[00:23:11]  And I said, It's right to be angry, but not angry at God, right?
[00:23:16]  It's understandable why you're angry at God.
[00:23:19]  That's a lot of people feel that way.
[00:23:22]  But had your son died months ago, he would be in hell.
[00:23:29]  But God, in his kindness, changed your son's heart.
[00:23:32]  And now he's having a better time than we are, right?
[00:23:36]  So we should be angry at death and we should be happy that God called him to himself.
[00:23:41]  And we should remember that we are happy to receive God's blessings, but we also have to deal with.
[00:23:48]  With his severe mercies, and that the tests and trials he brings into our life is for our good and his glory, and it's difficult to understand it.
[00:23:57]  So, I think your point about anger is good.
[00:24:00]  It just, and people say it's okay to be angry with God, it's understandable, but no, God is good.
[00:24:06]  It's good, yeah, I'm sympathetic, but it's not permissible, yeah, exactly.
[00:24:09]  Yeah, so people are angry when, and that's why I bring it up is one, because I think we have a good biblical example, but two, um, you know, from Christ himself, but two.
[00:24:19]  Grief is not the only emotion.
[00:24:21]  I think it's one of the deepest.
[00:24:22]  I think the anger a lot of times stems out.
[00:24:24]  It's a result of the grief, and the grief is more of the underlining deeper emotion.
[00:24:28]  But still, the point is grief is usually not the singular, monolithic feeling that's going on when someone experiences loss and death.
[00:24:37]  I think anger is part of that too.
[00:24:38]  So, for us to be able to have a biblical perspective on anger and to be able to, instead of just saying, don't be angry, or like a lot of pop psychology today would say, Sadly, evangelicals have largely adopted.
[00:24:51]  They would say, Oh, you know, like you go, girl, slay queen, you know, or you go, boy.
[00:24:56]  Like you're, oh, yeah, of course you're angry and you're justified in every ounce of your anger.
[00:25:02]  No, it's neither of those options.
[00:25:05]  It's not stop being angry.
[00:25:07]  And it's also not, oh, yeah, just lean into your anger and you're totally justified to be.
[00:25:12]  No, it's the anger makes sense and the anger can be righteous, but it needs to be righteously directed.
[00:25:19]  Who are you angry at?
[00:25:21]  What are you angry at?
[00:25:22]  And so I think that to be able to have a book, you know, and a testimony to be able to help people know what to do with the anger side of loss and not only grief, I think is really helpful.
[00:25:33]  And then the last thing, because I know you'll have to go here in just a moment, but I would love, you know, we were talking a little bit offline before we started recording.
[00:25:39]  This is something that you've spoken to recently and I've spoken to a couple of years ago in one of my podcasts, and a lot of guys have spoken to.
[00:25:47]  John Piper's talked about it, and I agree with John Piper's position, actually.
[00:25:50]  I think.
[00:25:51]  He gets it right.
[00:25:52]  I don't agree with everything with Piper, but I think he gets this one right.
[00:25:55]  So, you and I, you're not the first.
[00:25:57]  I'm not the first.
[00:25:57]  Nobody's the first.
[00:25:59]  Well, somebody might be.
[00:26:00]  But the point is what about the body, right?
[00:26:03]  So, with grief, we're talking about the relationship, the sense of loss, a proper view of death, grief, anger.
[00:26:09]  But in terms of the physical body, you mentioned multiple times now in your own story in regards to your brother, you mentioned very quick in passing, but you said, you know, we cremated him.
[00:26:22]  And I know that's not a coincidence that you mentioned that detail.
[00:26:25]  And you also mentioned along with it, it wasn't our choice.
[00:26:27]  We didn't want to cremate him.
[00:26:29]  So, why did you not want to cremate your brother?
[00:26:32]  Why does a burial matter, a physical, literal burial?
[00:26:36]  So, let me give you kind of an odd analogy.
[00:26:42]  So, I did abortion ministry for many years, as I've already mentioned.
[00:26:47]  And how that the form that took is that when I was engaged in trying to change the law, In South Carolina, but we also went down to the Greenville Women's Clinic, which is just, you know, a slaughterhouse.
[00:27:00]  We stood out front, and almost no one, it's very difficult to get people to, by the way, it's designed, you can't get people to stop and talk to you very often.
[00:27:09]  It's got this huge wall that goes all around it.
[00:27:11]  You can't really talk to people.
[00:27:12]  It's really well tucked back.
[00:27:15]  And so one of the reasons you're out there is not just to save babies and preach the gospel.
[00:27:22]  That's certainly one of the reasons.
[00:27:24]  But another reason is to be a public testimony to something horrible is happening here, right?
[00:27:30]  And you stand out front with the signs, people honk their horns.
[00:27:33]  We can't, you know, these things are always tucked in these beautiful looking buildings and whatever.
[00:27:39]  But it's a horror house, right?
[00:27:41]  And to have people out front to testify to that's good.
[00:27:44]  Right.
[00:27:44]  It's being salt.
[00:27:45]  It's being light.
[00:27:46]  It's a good public testimony.
[00:27:48]  Burial, in a similar way, is a public testimony, but a public testimony of something for the righteous, for those that have been born again, that is wonderful, which is the resurrection at the end of the age, right?
[00:28:03]  That we all will be resurrected to life forever, or if we don't know Christ, to death forever.
[00:28:09]  So when you go to a graveyard, it's a reminder.
[00:28:18]  That you shall rise again.
[00:28:20]  So, my mom's gravestone, I just put until the resurrection.
[00:28:24]  You know, I'd never seen that inscription, but I've seen things like that before.
[00:28:28]  And I want to go when I go to, I mean, it is if you ever, it is weird when you go to a cemetery and you are tempted to talk to your dead loved ones.
[00:28:40]  You just are.
[00:28:40]  It's strange.
[00:28:41]  They can't hear you and it's not good.
[00:28:44]  Right.
[00:28:44]  But there's something about that you feel connected to them.
[00:28:50]  And part of it's because their body's there.
[00:28:52]  And it's a natural desire, and it's a reminder if you have the right way of looking at it.
[00:28:57]  It's a reminder that if they are in Christ, I will be with them again because of the resurrection.
[00:29:02]  So, cremation, the destruction of the body down to ash, is something that doesn't align with the normative practice in Scripture.
[00:29:12]  So, throughout Scripture, the destruction of the body down to particles, but purposely, is seen as something as judgment, as something barbaric.
[00:29:24]  So Amos chapter 2, verse 1 makes a big deal that they burn the king of Moab's bones to lime down to nothing.
[00:29:33]  And that was Amos saying, this is terrible.
[00:29:35]  You don't treat your loved ones this way.
[00:29:37]  Calvin's got some really helpful comments on that.
[00:29:40]  Think about Jezebel, her body being ripped up by all the animals and spread everywhere.
[00:29:43]  So she didn't have the dignity of a burial.
[00:29:45]  So, of course, she'll still be resurrected.
[00:29:48]  God can pull all those.
[00:29:49]  She'll be resurrected to death.
[00:29:51]  All those particles can be pulled together.
[00:29:54]  That's not the point.
[00:29:55]  The point is that burial is the norm, and part of burial is to testify to the world that there is a judgment coming of the righteous and unrighteous.
[00:30:08]  There is going to be a separating of goats and sheep, and there's going to be this thing for us, which is the blessed hope that we look forward to.
[00:30:17]  And so it's a way to testify that burial.
[00:30:19]  And Jesus was buried, the patriarchs were buried.
[00:30:22]  Think about how important it was for the patriarchs.
[00:30:26]  To not be buried in some foreign land.
[00:30:29]  It's a big deal about, like, even carrying the bones of Joseph out of Egypt back into the promised land.
[00:30:35]  And so, burial is something that is really important.
[00:30:38]  The other reason.
[00:30:39]  Real quick, even angels arguing over the body of Moses.
[00:30:44]  Over the body of Moses.
[00:30:45]  So, even angels have this perspective that, yeah, well, Moses is dead.
[00:30:50]  His spirit at that point was, you know, in Abraham's bosom, this paradise, you know, and shield, but.
[00:30:57]  His body still mattered.
[00:30:58]  It wasn't inconsequential.
[00:31:01]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:31:02]  Yeah, I hadn't even thought about that connection.
[00:31:06]  And the other thing that is important is at funerals.
[00:31:12]  So I was preparing my children for their mother's funeral.
[00:31:15]  I preached my mom's own funeral, most intense thing I've ever done in my life so far in terms of a sermon.
[00:31:20]  I kept it together somehow.
[00:31:23]  But I told my sons, I said, look, your grandma, when you see her body, it will be as clear as possible that humans have souls.
[00:31:34]  You'll look at the body and the body will not look like a person.
[00:31:37]  It just won't.
[00:31:38]  It'll barely look like your grandma.
[00:31:40]  It'll look something like a wax figure, too.
[00:31:43]  And I said, that's because it's only part of her.
[00:31:45]  It's her body.
[00:31:46]  You know, man is a spirit-body composite, and her spirit's departing, too.
[00:31:51]  You know, when you die, you're with the Lord immediately.
[00:31:54]  And so I told him that, and then they came, and my one son, Athanasius, he said, Dad, you're right.
[00:32:03]  It doesn't even look like her.
[00:32:05]  And I said, well, it's part of her.
[00:32:07]  It's just not the whole person right, and when you have, when you go through like the proper processes of burying someone, you get to see their body.
[00:32:17]  It brings a a sort of closure to it.
[00:32:19]  That's very important.
[00:32:21]  Um, so my grandmother, who I was very close to, she died and I was still a teenager.
[00:32:27]  I wasn't able to make it to her funeral.
[00:32:28]  They kind of rushed it and I never saw that she.
[00:32:32]  I never saw her body and I can remember calling her, like trying to call her for months, and i'm like oh, she's not alive.
[00:32:38]  She's not alive.
[00:32:40]  Uh, I think we need to see the body.
[00:32:43]  We need to go through.
[00:32:44]  Sometimes we can't do that.
[00:32:46]  One guy in my church, after I preached on cremation recently, he told me that his dad died in a plane crash and there was just no way to have.
[00:32:53]  It really didn't make sense to do the burial the way they ended up cremating him and he never got to sell the body.
[00:33:00]  And with my brother, it didn't make any sense.
[00:33:06]  But there's incredible pressure put on feudal directors to do cremation.
[00:33:11]  because it's a higher profit margin.
[00:33:16]  And then I think there's, it delays the pain.
[00:33:23]  It's good to lean into the pain, to have the wake or something like it, visitation, whatever you want to call it, have that open casket if you can, let people say their goodbyes, lower them down into the ground if you can, you know, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, right?
[00:33:41]  Do all that stuff.
[00:33:42]  And in doing that, it it brings a sobriety to your life and a connection with death and the need for the gospel that changes you.
[00:33:54]  What I see on Twitter, and like, take all this stuff about getting in shape, right?
[00:34:01]  Let's not be fat.
[00:34:02]  I agree.
[00:34:03]  I don't want to be fat.
[00:34:05]  It makes you think about yourself too much.
[00:34:06]  It's hard to buy clothes, it's not good for you.
[00:34:09]  You shorten your life, but you will die.
[00:34:11]  You will die, and you may live 10 years longer.
[00:34:15]  Than a person that hasn't taken care of themselves, because that's the power of death right now.
[00:34:22]  That's the sting of death, that we are, the world is under a curse.
[00:34:26]  And when I see people talking about optimizing and all the time they spend in the gym, while I think it's good, all this stuff needs to be disciplined by the fact that we are falling apart, by the fact that our testosterone is going to decline regardless.
[00:34:45]  The amount that it's at is not good.
[00:34:47]  Your HDH is going to decline.
[00:34:49]  You're going to die, dude.
[00:34:51]  Right.
[00:34:51]  No matter you can't stop it.
[00:34:53]  And some of this I see as coping with not wanting to face down mortality and death.
[00:35:02]  Like Baldi is helpful, right?
[00:35:04]  Baldians, no dude wants to go bald, right?
[00:35:08]  But it's helpful.
[00:35:08]  You are dying, right?
[00:35:10]  Looking in the mirror and seeing all those wrinkles, especially for a woman, it's very hard.
[00:35:15]  She smiles a lot.
[00:35:16]  She'll have all those wrinkles from her smiles.
[00:35:19]  If you've had lots of kids, you'll have stretch marks on your stomach, you know.
[00:35:25]  You are dying.
[00:35:27]  You are getting closer to being with them every day.
[00:35:30]  And the significance of that is incredible.
[00:35:36]  And death is all around.

=== Resurrection Against Annihilation (17:46) ===

[00:35:38]  Matter of fact, just why we're doing this, I just got a text message that a pastor I know last night, like I watched it go across my screen while I'm talking to you, him and two of his sons died last night in a house fire.
[00:35:51]  Death is everywhere, guys.
[00:35:53]  And so when you start being, I say, bring your kids to funerals.
[00:36:00]  Don't be weird about it, don't be morbid.
[00:36:03]  But I remember that we went to this funeral.
[00:36:06]  This little boy in our church, he was.
[00:36:11]  18 months old or something, maybe two years old.
[00:36:14]  He had some sort of convulsion.
[00:36:16]  Mom came in, blood was coming out of his mouth and all this stuff and he died, right?
[00:36:20]  She was in our small group.
[00:36:22]  And so we went, we went to the funeral.
[00:36:25]  I took a little tiny casket and I took my three boys and Hudson or Athens, I can't remember which one, said, is Nicaea going to die?
[00:36:36]  Because Emily was pregnant with Nicaea about six months at the time.
[00:36:40]  I said, no, no, no, she's not going to die.
[00:36:42]  She's fine, right?
[00:36:43]  And she died.
[00:36:44]  She died.
[00:36:45]  And going to that funeral did prep my kids for that reality.
[00:36:51]  And so we hide death, right?
[00:36:55]  We worship health, right?
[00:36:57]  Like there is a real risk of worshiping health and fitness and youth, but that's not a justification to not care about the body, right?
[00:37:07]  Like it's just the body's precious.
[00:37:10]  That's why we take care of it.
[00:37:12]  And that's why at the end of the age, we're not going to be little spirits with harps flying all around.
[00:37:18]  We will be what we were always meant to be, which is a body spirit composite.
[00:37:22]  I think it's beautiful.
[00:37:23]  So, burial gives us all the benefits of coming to closure, but also this public testimony we shall rise again.
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[00:38:40]  Yeah.
[00:38:41]  Amen.
[00:38:41]  Yeah, the body matters.
[00:38:43]  And I think what, you know, a lot of the guys who are advocating for, because the common denominator I think right now is over the last 60 years, and there's been 2,000 years of this, of heresy.
[00:38:53]  But over the last 60 years, there were a lot of battles, I think, that evangelicals were facing when it came to doctrine and orthodoxy, right?
[00:39:00]  So the battle for inerrancy of scripture, right?
[00:39:02]  Battle for the hypostatic union, the deity of Christ, the humanity of Christ, all those kinds of things, the virgin birth.
[00:39:10]  And right now, it seems like in this given moment, it's actually shifted in a lot of ways that the attacks levied on the church are from guys who would say, you know, I'm Orthodox and affirm the Nicene Creed, but they're a sodomite.
[00:39:25]  I affirm the Nicene Creed, but they're, you know, for transing kids, you know, or I affirm the Nicene Creed, but they're pro abortion.
[00:39:34]  So, right now, I think there's an attack, not so much on some of the dogma, creedal dogma, but there's an attack on nature.
[00:39:43]  And so, I think that's part of it guys, you know, in your camp and my camp, and I know you would agree with this, they're coming out and saying, no, no, no, nature matters, right?
[00:39:50]  Grace, you know, Stephen Wolfe has regularly reminded and continued to beat the drum.
[00:39:56]  Grace does not eradicate or erase nature, but it elevates nature.
[00:40:01]  And exactly what you're saying, we're not going to be eternally spirits playing harps on clouds.
[00:40:05]  In the 17th dimension, in some ethereal plane, we will be in a physical place with physical bodies, namely these physical bodies.
[00:40:13]  We're going to have to wait for that resurrection.
[00:40:15]  So there will be an intermediate period.
[00:40:18]  I don't believe in just a sleep.
[00:40:21]  I believe that to be absent in the body is that day to be present with the Lord.
[00:40:25]  As Jesus said to the thief on the cross, today you will be with me in paradise.
[00:40:29]  And so there's an immediate presence with the Lord that is spiritual as the body is waiting that resurrection, but eternally speaking, Eventually, that body will rise again and a rejoining of spirit and body for an eternal physical existence.
[00:40:45]  So, to say the body matters and I want to, all it is is proper stewardship.
[00:40:50]  Now, you can err on, there's two ditches on either side of the road.
[00:40:53]  So, you can err in vanity and too much appreciation for the body where it actually becomes idolatry.
[00:41:01]  But I think part of what we're seeing is just, you know, the gospel coalition is, you know, well, family is an idol, church can be an idol, theology can be an idol.
[00:41:09]  The body health can be, and I think what we're seeing is just a reaction to that and saying, Stop calling every single good, positive thing an idol.
[00:41:16]  We're sick of it.
[00:41:17]  You know, calling things an idol can be an idol, the gospel coalition, you know, so like just the gospel coalition's idol.
[00:41:23]  Exactly.
[00:41:24]  So just cut it out.
[00:41:25]  And so some of the young guys may be overreacting, but perhaps, but I think that's in terms of, you know, the sons of Issachar, they knew the times.
[00:41:33]  And I think, you know, recognizing the time that we're in right now, I think, if anything, by and large, the tendency within the church, not within the culture, so the culture.
[00:41:41]  I think vanity is the way they lean.
[00:41:44]  Ignoring death, beautifying death, sweeping death under the rug, and pretending as though, you know, like, you know, we're young, we're never going to die.
[00:41:52]  You know, like, that I think is the culture's problem.
[00:41:55]  But within the evangelical church, especially within the reformed world, I think there is a Gnostic kind of tendency to say, oh, of course we're going to die.
[00:42:04]  And because we're going to die, the body is of little to no consequence.
[00:42:08]  And the reality is the truth is somewhere in between, which I hate every time that.
[00:42:12]  turns out to be true because I feel like Tim Keller, you know, but sometimes it really is somewhere in between.
[00:42:16]  Oh, yeah.
[00:42:16]  I hate that because of we're not allowed to have a moderate position or a third way because of it's been abused.
[00:42:23]  I think the point I just want to emphasize is that I think once all you got to do is discipline your doctrine of fitness with the doctrine of death.
[00:42:36]  And you get pretty close to a healthy view, which is what in a simple, Paul was like, I'm going to stick around as long as I can.
[00:42:44]  Even though it's better to be with the Lord, because I want to, like, for example, this Emily's due, we have a baby due April 28th, right?
[00:42:54]  So I'm 43, I'll be 44 when that baby's born.
[00:42:57]  That means when that baby's 18, right, I'm going to be, what's that make me 64, I guess?
[00:43:03]  I can't.
[00:43:04]  62.
[00:43:05]  62.
[00:43:06]  And so I'll be 62.
[00:43:07]  That's crazy.
[00:43:09]  I would really like to meet her husband.
[00:43:12]  I'd really like to be around.
[00:43:13]  And so that means you got to drop the pounds or whatever.
[00:43:18]  But also what it does when it brings focus to why am I living?
[00:43:27]  Why do I want?
[00:43:27]  So Paul is like, it's better to stay for your good, right?
[00:43:31]  Right.
[00:43:32]  And so, death, the fact that death is right around the door means, like, hey, I got to, God, teach me to number my days and to make every minute count.
[00:43:42]  And what's hilarious to me is these guys that are anti fitness will get less done for the gospel in this life.
[00:43:50]  They will pass away sooner.
[00:43:51]  They'll just have heart attacks.
[00:43:52]  You know, that's what kills people heart disease.
[00:43:55]  That's like the number one killer in America.
[00:43:57]  It's not, you know, I don't know what else even comes close to it.
[00:44:02]  It's going to get worse too as these, You know, vaccines help people along.
[00:44:06]  But, um, yeah, but yeah, so I just think a good doctrine of death right now is needed.
[00:44:13]  Uh, also because people have been shielded from it, they're not ready to deal with it emotionally.
[00:44:19]  I'm, I've got tons of friends.
[00:44:21]  I've got a really good support system and I've got a great marriage, and God has been very kind to me.
[00:44:29]  And it was, it was hard, man.
[00:44:30]  Last year was hard.
[00:44:31]  It was a really hard year.
[00:44:32]  It was like harder than I thought it was going to be.
[00:44:35]  And I think about these people who grew up in broken families and these people who have not had a good church that they've been part of.
[00:44:42]  And I think about what they're facing down right now.
[00:44:44]  And as they age and they move in, you know, people start dying a lot as you get to your upper 30s and 40s.
[00:44:50]  Car accident, you know, whatever.
[00:44:53]  Like I knew someone who was driving down the road and a tree fell on them, killed them.
[00:44:57]  They're just driving somewhere.
[00:44:58]  A tree fell for no reason.
[00:45:00]  Right.
[00:45:01]  You know, these crazy things are someone that brought their kid to the, To an airport, and this kid got crushed while they're waiting for somebody in between this cart thing that pulled carts together, and the kid got stuck in there.
[00:45:14]  You know, these are things that happen that are horrific besides just the normal death.
[00:45:20]  And if we don't have a teaching on death and a teaching on grief, and the other thing, again, trauma, is that I'm pretty good at like little phrases county before country, it's good to be a man or whatever.
[00:45:37]  I thought, man, there's something to this.
[00:45:40]  Obsession with trauma.
[00:45:41]  So I tweeted out, like, you are not your trauma, just because it felt like something.
[00:45:47]  I was like curious where this would go.
[00:45:49]  And it got a ton of attention.
[00:45:51]  Like, well, how dare you?
[00:45:53]  You know?
[00:45:56]  And I think we don't know how to help people through that.
[00:45:59]  Makes us one to one reject trauma as a category because it's like the sacred cow and I'm not allowed to challenge you on it.
[00:46:07]  But I do think it's a real thing where.
[00:46:10]  you can get like something's not right.
[00:46:13]  And so these are areas that as a church, we need to rediscover good biblical teaching.
[00:46:18]  We need to expand on it.
[00:46:19]  I think areas, anthropology, technology, these are two areas where we really, technology, we don't have a good doctorate at all.
[00:46:27]  Someone needs to write a lot on that.
[00:46:29]  With AI, all this stuff coming, we need to be more thoughtful.
[00:46:33]  With anthropology, we've lost some.
[00:46:34]  There's like one book's called God's Light on a Dark Cloud.
[00:46:38]  That's by.
[00:46:42]  Can't remember his last name.
[00:46:42]  Kyler.
[00:46:43]  Kyler.
[00:46:43]  C U Y L E R.
[00:46:47]  And that's a good book.
[00:46:48]  It's free on Grace Gems.
[00:46:49]  You can get a little version of it off Amazon.
[00:46:54]  But there's still not a lot of stuff for our world today for people that are coming from total broken families that have been absorbed in Instagram fitness culture and haven't seen any death.
[00:47:04]  Right.
[00:47:05]  Right.
[00:47:05]  And so I think as pastors, it's our job to start engaging these issues without becoming morbid, without becoming weird about it, but also introducing and prepping people for the reality of how difficult life gets as you move through it.
[00:47:20]  Yeah.
[00:47:21]  Really helpful.
[00:47:22]  Well, thank you, Michael.
[00:47:23]  I really appreciate it.
[00:47:25]  The only other thing I was going to say in terms of going back to the burial with the body versus cremation is one reason why we bury is because we're saying the body's not done.
[00:47:34]  It's going to be resurrected.
[00:47:35]  The body matters.
[00:47:36]  We're not Gnostics.
[00:47:37]  But then another is I think that at some level, and I know Christians have done cremation, so I'm not trying to accuse them.
[00:47:45]  It could just be they were ignorant, theologically ignorant on this particular point.
[00:47:50]  They hadn't read Calvin.
[00:47:51]  They just didn't have a theology of burial.
[00:47:54]  So I'm not accusing.
[00:47:55]  But I do think that one of the reasons is.
[00:47:58]  Not just the Gnostic factor, because some of them, they're not Gnostics.
[00:48:02]  They know the body's going to be resurrected.
[00:48:05]  But at least for outside of Christians, non Christians who would opt towards cremation, it's because very much for them, the cremation signifies annihilation, the end, a final end.
[00:48:18]  And as Christians, we're saying, no, no, no, no, this is not the end.
[00:48:23]  Death is not our friend, but death is also not a finality.
[00:48:27]  Death is not the end of the story.
[00:48:29]  And so.
[00:48:30]  1 Corinthians 15, man, where does that sting, death?
[00:48:33]  Right.
[00:48:33]  Amen.
[00:48:34]  Right.
[00:48:34]  Exactly.
[00:48:34]  So death is not defeated.
[00:48:36]  It will be.
[00:48:37]  But the sting is defeated.
[00:48:38]  The sting of death is defeated now for those who are in Christ Jesus.
[00:48:42]  And when we bury, rather than cremation, we're saying the body matters.
[00:48:46]  We're giving it significance.
[00:48:48]  We're avoiding the Gnostic heresy.
[00:48:50]  But we're also tipping the hat to eternity.
[00:48:54]  We're saying cremation is kind of like, and it's over.
[00:48:59]  No, it's not over.
[00:49:01]  This is not the end of the story.
[00:49:03]  It's not annihilation.
[00:49:04]  And, you know, And that gets, you know, you start pulling on that thread and, you know, without opening a can of worms because we need to land the plane, but you begin to ask questions.
[00:49:13]  Okay, now not just looking to the physical body, but also now looking to the physical earth.
[00:49:19]  Is that a biblical doctrine of annihilationism?
[00:49:22]  Is, you know, does hell, I mean, human John's thought, sadly, you know, kind of embraced.
[00:49:27]  So is hell, is there an annihilation for the damned?
[00:49:31]  Do they cease at some point?
[00:49:33]  Is there annihilation for this world?
[00:49:34]  Do you know what the Puritans taught on that?
[00:49:36]  So the Puritans, few of them taught.
[00:49:39]  That so, in resurrection, in a glorified body, um, it's the same, it's the self same body, would be the language that the confessions would use, but it has different qualities, right?
[00:49:51]  So, apparently, the ability maybe to even phase through matter or whatever the body is different.
[00:49:56]  The spiritual body is a body that can be in a heavenly realm and somehow still exist in the presence of God.
[00:50:02]  So, uh, some of the Puritans, it may have been Ryle, so very late, right?
[00:50:08]  Kind of the last of them, but I'm trying to think who it is.
[00:50:11]  that taught this, but they taught that not only will the righteous have their bodies go through a change, but so will the unrighteous, and that the unrighteous' bodies will be resurrected in such a way that it can experience destruction forever.
[00:50:27]  Isn't that intense?
[00:50:28]  So when you go to our sort of Puritan Protestant forefathers, not only do they reject being annihilated, so like a flame being extinguished, they would say, well, actually the body goes through such a change that it can be in eternal death forever.
[00:50:45]  So, yeah, where the worm, you know, the worm is not destroyed, the fire is not quenched.
[00:50:50]  And, but, but part of that is not just the context, the fire, the worm, but the body is, is, is undergoes a change in such a way that it can be tormented forever and never, it's never done.
[00:51:01]  So, the damned, there's no annihilation.
[00:51:03]  For the righteous, there's certainly no annihilation, there's no end.
[00:51:08]  And, and then even when you think beyond just people and their bodies, you know, and you think about the world, is, is the new heavens and new earth, is it a new earth in the sense that it is another, Earth, another rock that God's going to create, and that's going to be the new heavens come to a new earth, or is it this earth made new?
[00:51:28]  And I, you know, creation groaning with eager expectations for the sons of God to be revealed.
[00:51:32]  There are guys within the Reformed camp, unfortunately, that would say the groan of creation is that they want the sons of God to be revealed.
[00:51:38]  Trees and rocks and rivers and mountains want the sons of God to be revealed because in the revealing of the sons of God will be their mercy killing.
[00:51:46]  They'll be put down.
[00:51:47]  You know, they're groaning and suffering because sin entered the world, and what they want is, is.
[00:51:51]  To be annihilated.
[00:51:53]  And in the revealing of the sons of God, God will mercifully go ahead and put the creation out of its misery.
[00:51:59]  Whereas we say, no, they're groaning, the creation itself, so not just human bodies, but even creation outside of humanity is groaning because in the revealing of the sons of God, in their restoration, the creation itself will be also restored.
[00:52:12]  And so to have this big picture of the Bible doesn't teach annihilation at any level, that the physical world, the world is on one hand, we're not Darwinian, we're not materialist, the world is not just stuff.
[00:52:26]  There is a spiritual dynamic and it's significant and it plays into our everyday lives.
[00:52:31]  So we don't need to just be, you know, secular humanist.
[00:52:35]  But at the same time, the world is not just stuff, the world also is stuff.
[00:52:39]  It's not just stuff, but it is stuff.
[00:52:42]  It is material.
[00:52:43]  It is flesh.
[00:52:44]  It is dirt.
[00:52:45]  It is rock.
[00:52:47]  And the dirt and the rocks and the flesh and the bones, it matters.
[00:52:51]  So much so that angels argue over the body of Moses.
[00:52:54]  So much so that Jesus says, the rocks.
[00:52:56]  Will cry out if the suns don't praise me.
[00:52:59]  And like the earth sings, the skies, Psalm 19, pour forth speech.
[00:53:05]  God is a most pure spirit without body parts and passions, but he cares about bodies and parts.
[00:53:13]  So he is the most pure spirit, but he created a physical world with physical people.
[00:53:18]  And he said it's good.
[00:53:19]  He said it's good.
[00:53:20]  So, all right, Michael, thank you so much for coming on the show.
[00:53:22]  Appreciate it.
[00:53:23]  Always a pleasure, man.
[00:53:23]  Thanks.