My Grandmother's Funeral

For those of you who were not already aware - my grandmother passed away on Tuesday morning. My family requested that I officiate her funeral, so I have spent the past two days furiously studying, scribbling and otherwise preparing for the delivery of the Funeral Message. I seem to recall my homiletics professor giving us the expositer's rule of thumb: "one hour of study & preparation for every two minutes in the pulpit." That seems true to form for me. Anyway, I am fairly pleased with the way this sermon turned out on paper-we'll see how it communicates from the pulpit. This is only my second time to preach from manuscript (I typically preach from notes instead, and you'd be suprized at the difference it actually makes); what can I say, I'm still but a novice. Pray for me, as I will be sharing the Gospel.

The message is taken fro Ephesians 2:1-10


INTRODUCTION

“O, that day when, freed from sinning, I shall see Thy lovely face! Lavished then in blood-washed linen, I shall sing Thy sovereign grace! Come, my Lord, no longer tarry! Take my ransomed soul away! Grace abounding! Thou shalt carry me until that glorious day!” This is a powerful verse; it bears exceeding truth… Sunday afternoon, after I had left church, I had an opportunity to visit with Grandmom in the hospital. It is difficult to explain, but, that afternoon Grandmom’s countenance had completely changed – she seemed to know that her hours left on this earth were dwindling, and, while she was enraptured with scenes of glory, she was also desperate to convey testimony to Christ’s power and atonement. Human words could hardly express what she knew to be truth, but through her stammering tongue, she bore the great confession to all of us that were present. Out of her excitement and disorientation, a few wonderful truths were spoken with resounding clarity; “Jesus is the Great Physician”, “Place your trust in the Good Book”, “God is love”, and, greatest of all, “Your works won’t save you – only grace alone, by faith alone, in Christ alone.”

For those of you who were there to hear Grandmom’s sermon, for TWELVE HOURS, I apologize, but you are about to hear it again. I pray that I will do it justice.


INVOCATION

Most gracious God, our heavenly Father, in Whom dwells all fullness of light and wisdom: Illuminate our minds by Your Holy Spirit, in the true understanding of Your Word. Give us grace that we may receive it with reverence and humility. May it lead us to put our whole trust in You alone; and so to serve and honor You – that we may glorify Your holy name, and proclaim a bold testimony to the World. And since it has pleased You, O Lord, to assemble us in this place; help us to pay You the love and reverence, of which you are most worthy, our Father and Lord. We ask this for the sake of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

CONTEXT

The passage, which we will be looking to this morning, comes from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and all of the surrounding churches in the Roman Province of Asia. We will be looking specifically at chapter two, verses one through ten. If you have a copy of scripture with you, I would invite you to turn there with me, if not, the text is printed in your programme. We know, from Luke’s account in Acts, that Paul had played some role in the founding of the Church in Ephesus, while returning to Antioch, at the end of his second missionary journey. During his brief visit, Paul preached the gospel in the synagogues, and elected to leave his friends Acquila and Priscilla in his absence, promising to return soon. During his third missionary journey, Paul fulfilled that promise and stayed for a period of no less than three years. As a major metropolis, surrounded by more than 200 independent communities, Paul undoubtedly saw the strategic potential of Ephesus for spreading the Gospel to the entire province – a goal, which would have been accomplished within Paul’s own lifetime (although not by Paul himself).

As I have already stated, this letter was most certainly written to all of the churches in the Roman province of Asia, although addressed specifically to the church in Ephesus, where Paul had ministered for so long. We know that Paul was imprisoned while writing this letter, and he undoubtedly desired to clarify the message of the Gospel, which was spreading like wildfire throughout the province. Since he could not go himself, he would send a letter. Here, Paul’s mind was free for one supreme exposition, non-controversial, positive, fundamental of the great doctrine of his life—that doctrine into which he had been advancing year by year under the discipline of his unique circumstances—the doctrine of the unity of mankind in Christ and the purposes of God for the world through the Church.

BY NATURE: DEATH

If this epistle had to be summarized in one word, that word would have to be “unity.” The first chapter describes the unity within the Holy Trinity in the process of salvation: it is the Father who chose men, and gave them to His Son, it is the Son who shed blood, redeeming sinners, and it is the Holy Spirit who regenerates and seals men unto the Father. Verse 14 claims that the Holy Spirit “is the guarantee [or down payment] of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His Glory” –what a great assurance we have of God’s faithfulness to complete in us what He begins! The first half of the second chapter of this letter describes the unity with Christ for those who have been redeemed, and what follows to the end of the book is a comprehensive explanation of the already present, but not fully complete unity of all of mankind because of Christ. For our purposes today, I would like to look specifically at that second point of unity.

It is important that I first express than man was created in a state of unity – unity with God, unity with man, a unity which reflected the unity between the Trinity itself. When we look to Genesis and see that man was created in God’s image, we can understand this to refer to the fact that mankind was created for community – just as the Triune God is mysteriously a community in Himself. The first man, our father Adam, was created into a covenant community with God, having been told, “you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Adam could be certain of an unending life in paradise, in communion with God, under the simple condition that he not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—this is known as the “Covenant of Creation.” God’s condition could not be simpler, nor could the promise of punishment for breaking with the covenant. In Biblical Hebrew, the repetition of words acts as a diacritical mark, and here we see Yahweh use the expression “Mot TaMot” – you will REALLY die. As surely as we sit here today, we know that Adam broke his covenant with Yahweh.

“And you were DEAD.” Paul does not beat about the bush here. In breaking the covenant of creation, Adam condemned himself and all of his posterity to the drawn-out affair of physical death, as well as the immediate state of spiritual death. In His letter to the Romans, Paul tells us, “just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death has spread to all men.” As we are all the sons of Adam, we are all born into this curse of death. When I preach I always attempt to sneak in some sort of statistics from George Barna, or other researchers who comment on our contemporary culture – for instance, did you realize that 39% of all people in America, who claim to be “Christians” do not believe that they will have eternal life because of their reliance upon the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ? For this message today, I didn’t have to search any websites or annual census reports, I simply had to implore the scriptures to discover that 100% of all people born will in fact die.

Setting aside our inheritance in Adam, we have each earned our own death sentence -yes, even without our forefather’s help. Paul tells us that we “were dead in the trespasses and sins in which [we] once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.” Because of all these things, we “were by nature children of wrath.” This simple phrase contains a very strong statement. By nature, because of our covenant-breaking inheritance in Adam, because of our own transgressions, we are condemned to spiritual death from conception, to the eventuality of physical death, and now, finally, we see that we are condemned to an eternal death as objects of God’s eternal wrath. As God is an entirely holy, eternal being, our sins stand as an offence to Him for eternity, and thus His holy wrath burns against us for eternity.

Entire sermon series have been preached upon the doctrines of God’s wrath, particularly on the unpleasant truth of Hell. Many preachers have communicated with boldness and clarity the terrible day of God’s wrath; they have done so in ways my stammering tongue and feeble mind could never [of its own devices] express. For the purpose of precision and brevity, I would like to quote from the great awakening preacher, Jonathan Edwards, in his famous sermon, “Sinners in the hands of an angry God”:

“The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, until an outlet is given. The longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course when at last it is let loose. It is true that judgment against your evil works has not yet been executed; the floods of God’s vengeance have been withheld. Nevertheless, your guilt, in the meantime, is constantly increasing, and you are every day storing up more wrath for yourself. The waters are constantly rising and waxing mightier and mightier; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God to hold back the waters that press hard to go forward and are unwilling to be stopped. If God were only to withdraw His hand from the floodgate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power. Think of it! If your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is—if it were ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell—it would be nothing to withstand or endure the wrath of God.”

BY GRACE: WITH CHRIST

As we arrive at verse four of our passage, we stand as a people without hope. And then, there it is… BUT! – never has there been, in the entire history of human literature, a sweeter, more profound and awe inspiring conjunction! Lifting us from the very depths of hell, we read, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, EVEN WHEN WE WERE DEAD IN OUR TRESPASSES, made us ALIVE together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.” At this junction, it is important that I draw your attention to Paul’s usage of the literary device, known as contrast. In verse three we see that we are, by nature, children of God’s wrath, but in verse five we are told that, by grace, we are saved. By nature we are the sons of Adam, and the heirs of his curse. By Grace we find salvation from penalty and are made the sons of a second Adam – Jesus Christ. This salvation includes three aspects, according to our author, who uses a play-on-words in the original Greek. We have three phrases used back-to-back, all containing the prefix, “syn,” meaning, “with.” Synezoôpoiêsen; Synêgeiren; Synekathisen. First, we have been made alive with Christ. Salvation by grace begins with spiritual regeneration—where there was no life, God has given a living spirit. Second, We have been raised up with Christ. Just as Christ defeated the grave, we are promised the resurrection. Finally, we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places. The saints are promised an inheritance as the sons of the second Adam, Jesus Christ, and will one day reign with Him. Viewing the large picture in the story of salvation we find the grand contrast: where the covenant of creation promised surety of complete Death—Spiritual, Physical and Eschatological—the covenant of grace in Christ promises the surety of complete Life.

To prevent any misunderstanding, Paul offers us the precise dynamics of this salvation by grace—look with me at verse eight. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Centuries of debate has surrounded these two sentences. When Paul claims, “this is not your own doing”, is he referring to grace or faith? The best answer in honesty is, “yes.” The words “grace” and “faith” are both feminine in the original Greek. The word for “this” is neuter. Some have used this lack of agreement to say that the gift here is not faith, but such an argument ignores the implication of verse 5: “even when you were dead!” Grace is grace because it saved us even when we were spiritually dead and incapable of faith. The adjective “this” refers to the whole event of salvation by grace through faith, and therefore does include faith as a gift.” We find evidence of saving faith as being a gift from God in many places in Scripture: in the Gospel account of Peter’s good confession, Jesus tells Peter, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father, Who is in heaven.” In Luke’s account of the acts of the apostles, verse twenty-seven of chapter eighteen, we read that when Apollos arrived in Achaia he “greatly helped those who through grace had believed.” And the Author of Hebrews exhorts us to “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith.”

Here, in our passage, Paul is reminding us that we owe our salvation entirely to the undeserved favor of God. Grace is at once the objective, operative, and instrumental cause. He expands this statement by adding that the subjective medium, or cause, of salvation is faith, which is also its necessary condition. Faith, however, is not a quality, a virtue, or a faculty. It is not something man can produce. It is simply a trustful response that is itself evoked by the Holy Spirit. Lest faith should be in any way misinterpreted as man’s contribution to his own salvation, Paul immediately adds a rider to explain that nothing is of our own doing but everything is in the gift of God. What an AWESOME God we serve. Amen.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Those of us who were present with Grandmom over her last few days on this earth can joyfully bear testimony to the power and the fullness of God’s grace in her life. Her greatest concern at her death-bed was for the salvation of lost souls. We who are in Christ know that God’s Word is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. No creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to Whom we must give an account. I would ask you to search the fruits of your life – do you bear the fruit of death or the fruit of life? Is the Spirit drawing you to repentence? Are you asking yourself, “how might I be saved?” Repent. Believe on Christ. Confess your need of His gift of salvation.

Today you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day where Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open, and stands calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners. Many are flocking to Him, and pressing into the kingdom of God. Many are daily coming to him—many, who were very recently object of God’s holy wrath, are now in a happy state, with their hearts filled with love for Him Who has loved them and washed them from their sins in His own blood. We trust that while my grandmother is away from her body, she is present with Christ, rejoicing with the angels… Would you take hold of such hope? Let us pray:

Almighty and most merciful God, our heavenly Father, the consolation of the sorrowful and the support of the stricken, Who does not willingly afflict the children of men, look in pity, we beseech You, on all upon Whom You have laid Your afflicting hand, and, in the multitude of Your tender mercies, be pleased to uphold and comfort them in the day of their trial and distress. Grant us all grace that we may lay to heart the lesson of this solemn providence, and work while the day lasts, knowing that the night comes, when no man can work; and that we may set our affections on things that are in heaven, and not on things that are on the earth. Enable us to live by faith in the Son of God, that when Christ, Who is our life, shall appear, we also may appear with Him in glory.

O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world, to whom shall we go but to You? You have the words of eternal life. You, Who were a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief, have pity upon those who cry unto You. When our eyes grow dim in the shadows of death, and we pass through the deep waters, by Your agony and bloody sweat, and by Your death on Calvary, we beseech You to remember us. O You, Who have saved us, forsake us not in the trying hour; You, Who has vanquished death, give us the victory, and bring us to Your own everlasting rest in the assembly of Your saints on high.

O God, the Holy Ghost, author of light and life and truth, inspire our souls with hope through the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, imparting the benefits of His atonement, and the power of His all-sufficient grace. Release us from our sins; fill us with the fruits of Your own indwelling, and form us anew in the image of God. Help us now, O blessed Comforter; heal our wounded spirits and do not despise our broken and contrite hearts.

O God, the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, Triune Yahweh, have mercy upon us, Your servants, as we wait before You: and hear our prayer. Be pleased graciously to attend to our humble requests, and to do for us all that we need, glorifying Yourself by us bot5h in this present world, and in that which is to come: all of which we ask through Jesus Christ the Lord. Amen.