Round the Sphere Again: Lessons from Death
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 2:57PM 
Of Lazarus
Jon Bloom (Desiring God Blog) discusses a few of the possible reasons Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus.
Of Hezekiah
Jeremy Pierce on why it might have been better for Hezekiah to die earlier rather than later.
Perhaps Hezekiah should have accepted God’s prophetic message that it was his time. Perhaps there’s even a reason why it was for Hezekiah’s own good that he die then rather than later. Perhaps it was to spare him the moral corruption that would have come had he continued on, and his refusal to accept it then led to God to give him over to that moral corruption that God would have graciously spared him from. If your life is going to end in a way that seems cut short, it might well be because of what you would do if you were to live longer. It might be a mercy.
D. A. Carson agrees (Triablogue).
But I remembered the fate of King Hezekiah (2 Kings 20; 2 Chron. 32:24-31; Isa. 38-39). When he was under sentence of death, he begged the Lord for fifteen more years, and received the extra span. And in the course of those fifteen years he blew his entire reputation for integrity in one incident prompted by foolish pride. Nor was his reputation alone at stake: the bearing his action had on the future of his nation was disastrous.
That is why I decided there are worse things than dying. I do not know how many times I have sung the words, “O let me never, never / Outlive my love for Thee,” but I mean them. I would rather die than end up unfaithful to my wife; I would rather die than deny by a profligate life what I have taught in my books; I would rather die than deny or disown the gospel. God knows there are many things in my past of which I am deeply ashamed; I would not want such shame to multiply and bring dishonor to Christ in years to come. There are worse things than dying.
Of a Sparrow
Potent Prooftexts: He Watcheth Me (The Calvinist Gadfly)
…[A]s the sparrow flies or falls only by the will and providence of its creator, so we also live, suffer, and die in his hand.
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