Psalm 116:15 "Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints."
I admit a part of me wanted to skip past this verse this morning. I had
to stop and ask the Lord what am I to see in this verse and I also asked Him
why did I want to skip past it. The human side of me, and maybe others as well,
only see one word in this verse. If we are honest with ourselves the only word
we see is the word, death. That word conjures many emotions within us.
For some it brings fear, for others it brings sadness, for some it brings hope
of complete healing. Whatever we think when we see that word, it always stirs
some sort of emotion within us because it brings separation.
So, Lord, what do you want us to see in this passage today? When I asked Him to
show me, the very first word that stuck out to me was the word,
"sight". That tells me that there is more than one way to look
at death. I wrote of three ways in the first paragraph, but there is another
way that is the true manner of looking at death and that is God's way of seeing
it. This verse looks at death from God's perspective. Judy used to do
cross stitching. From my viewpoint, I would see a tangled mess. There were
loose ends everywhere and it was tangled and I could make no sense of it. She
would turn it around and show me what she had finished to that point. When I
could see it from her viewpoint, it made perfect sense and was becoming a
beautiful picture. Could it be that when we look at death, it is tangled and
has many loose ends and often makes no sense to us whatsoever. But if we could
see it from God's perspective, we could see the beauty of God working all
things together for our good.
"Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints."
The death of God's saints is precious. Who is this speaking about? The
saints are those for whom Christ shed His righteous and holy blood. Look at the
last phrase of the first paragraph: "It (death) brings separation."
For the saints of God, the death of Jesus Christ brought a separation for us
from the condemnation of sin through the blood of Jesus Christ.
"There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ
Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." (Romans
8:1) By God's grace, we "died" in Christ; that is, our sin debt
was eradicated, or separated from us. In another sense, for the saints of
God, death brings a final separation from this old body that is prone to
weakness and disease. The death of the body means the liberation of our true
life which is found in Christ. Remember back in Psalm 90:10 where the Lord
tells us that at that moment of death, "we fly away".
"Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints."
Why is it precious? When I read this verse of Scripture, I think of another
time when the word, precious, is used. The rugged fisherman named Peter used
this word to describe something. In 1 Peter 1:19, he tells us that we were
redeemed "with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish
and without spot." So why is the death of God's saints precious in His
sight? With each instance, it shows the absolute efficacy and efficiency
of the cleansing of the blood of Jesus Christ. With each death, I believe there
is a scene that takes place. When the Lord comes to take us home and as we
arrive before the Father, we will hear these words: "Behold I and the
children which God hath given me." (Hebrews 2:13)
What a day, glorious day, that will be !! Yes, from that side of the
cloth of our lives, we will make perfect sense of the beauty of God's wonderful
plan for each of us.