This is why when I do a funeral sermon at my church, there's two things I always want to say because people are always going to come to me and say we don't want to cry.

We just want to have a joyful celebration. We want to remember the good and all this. So in almost every

funeral sermon I will say something to the effect of Ecclesiasties 3, there's a time for mourning

and that's today. This is exactly why we're here. We're to weep and mourn over the death of this person.

Like Jesus did it. Just like Jesus did with Lazarus. And very often Lazarus is the text I will be preaching on. But like Jesus with Lazarus, we do not

mourn today without hope, right? Because this is a person for whom the Lord Jesus Christ

has died. And so we then get to the resurrection and the hope that we have. But mourning, and Mike, you said it kind of passing earlier, but this is so crucial, mourning is real. The only answer to our mourning is the resurrection which means we are waiting and we will mourn while we wait and the cry of the scriptures is

How long oh Lord that's what faithful morning sounds like it's not woe is me and it's not there is no hope left for us but it's rather turning to God and I think that's the key to

a lot of this stuff turning to God and saying how long will you let this go on

because you've promised to be good and I don't see the good you've promised to raise the dead and there's a

corpse in the casket so lord modern church.

This is Whitehorse Sin, a weekly roundtable discussion about theology and culture. Eccles the Estes Chapter 3 versus 1 to 8 are often quoted verses in scripture that

highlight the highs and lows of life on this earth.

Versus 1 through 5 they remind us, for everything there's a season, and a time for every matter under the sun.

A time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what was planted.

A time to kill and a time to heal.

A time to break down and a time to build up.

A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together.

When I interpreted this passage in the past, I tended to minimize the first half of each couplet because it was more somber than the second.

Because my assumption was that the purpose of each couplet was to crescendo from the negative to the positive as quickly as possible.

As time marched on it became evident that I was blinded to the meaning of the passage.

...