I want to express my gratitude
to you all for coming. This is a blessing. The Lord, you know,
the scripture tells us that we're to bear one another's burdens. And this is an opportunity for
us to do that and to express our love and our gratitude and ask the Lord to give us a
spirit of grace to worship. And so I want to begin this service
by asking you to stand. There's some hymnals in your
pew there. And if you'd like to turn with
me to 236, this would have been one of Anne's favorite hymns. And we always sang it at our baptisms. And I remember when I baptized
Anne and how how timid she was about being baptized. But we
sure loved singing this hymn afterwards. So we're just going
to sing a cappella. I'll do my best to try to lead
you. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch
like me. I once was lost, but now I'm
found. Was blind, but now I see. "'Twas grace that taught my heart
to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear,
the hour I first believed. Through many dangers, toils,
and snares I have already come, tis grace hath brought me safe
thus far, and grace will lead me home. When we've been there 10,000
years, bright shining as the sun, We've no less days to sing
God's grace than when we first begun. Would you bow with me for a word
of prayer? Our merciful Heavenly Father, thank you for your grace. Thank you for the gift that you
have given to your people in the glorious person and accomplished
work of thy dear son. Thank you for the gift of eternal
life. Thank you, Lord, for the gift of faith. Thank you for
your Holy Spirit. Lord, we thank you for the testimony
that you gave to Anne to trust Christ for the eternal destiny
of her immortal soul. And Lord, what hope and comfort
we have to this day in believing what you have promised, even
as our dear sister has. And Lord, we ask that you would
speak hope and peace and comfort to our hearts. We ask it in Christ's
name. Amen. You may be seated. there are two passages of scripture
that came to mind immediately as I thought about what I might
try to say today about Anne. And the first one is in Proverbs
chapter 31, where Solomon asked this question. He said, who can
find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. It's a rare thing, rare thing
to find a woman of faith, a woman who is faithful. That passage
goes on to say, the heart of her husband doth trust in her. And been my privilege to be Ann
and Wayne's pastor for, my goodness, over 25 years. And I remember
how Wayne used to dote over your mom, David, and how he cared
for her and trusted in her and how she was always there for
him. That's how the Lord defines a
virtuous woman. And certainly, Ann was that. And the next verse says, her
children rise up and call her blessed. And David, your mom
loved you. Melissa, Carlin, she spoke of
y'all often. I had the great joy of being
able to visit her even when Her body had failed her these last
years. Her mind was sharp. She watched
every service and asked us questions about you all whenever we would
come visit her. And she remembered everybody
and everything and was concerned. And so, David, you were the apple
of her eye. And I know that you have expressed
to me, as you just did this afternoon, or this morning, I guess it still
is, what a blessing she was and how
thankful you are for her. And one of our purposes of being
here is to express our gratitude to one another and to God. And so that's always a good thing
to do. In 1 Peter, the other verse I
thought about in reference to Anne, in 1 Peter 3, the Lord's
speaking to women in particular who would use the outward adoring
of the flesh to appeal to men, and the Lord The Lord corrects that and he
says, let her be the hidden man of the heart in that which is
not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which
is in the sight of God a great price. A meek and quiet spirit
in the sight of God. Now how God sees things is how
they are. And whatever the Lord says is
precious in his sight is the way it is. And what a dear sister,
mother, grandmother we had in Anne as an example
of a meek and quiet spirit. Anytime we are confronted with
the reality of death, we don't ponder it as we ought. We often go about our daily lives
thinking little about it. If there's ever a time, if there's
ever a time for each of us to consider the reality of it and
the the mortality of life, this is the time. And opinions are not sufficient
in a time like this. Feelings and experiences are
not sufficient in a time like this. I would not dare try to
give you my opinion about about life and death and how it is
that God is pleased to save sinners. I'm not going to do that. It's
a time like this that we need a word from God. And a word from God is the only
word that will settle the soul and give hope and comfort and
peace. Anything else is a false hope. And so I wanted to share with
you a couple of verses of scripture. One of them is found in Psalm
116. And here's what God says. Again,
the way God sees things is the way they are. It doesn't really
matter what we think about it. What God says about it is the
way it is. And faith, God-given, saving faith, lines up with what
God says. That's all faith is. Faith is
believing God. You know, some people think that
faith is, well, if I believe something hard enough, I can
make it happen if I have enough faith. No, that's not faith,
that's presumption. Faith is believing what God has
said. And the Lord has spoken great word of comfort and truth
to his people in Psalm 116 when he tells us precious in the sight
of the Lord is the death of his saints. Now that word precious
means priceless and what's priceless to God I hope will be priceless
to us. And God says, this is what's
priceless to me, the death of my saints. And if we have some understanding
of what God has told us in his word, we know that he was not
just speaking of when we depart from this world. when our souls
leave behind the tabernacle of this flesh. He's not just talking
about our physical death because the scriptures are clear that
the saints of God have always been seen by God in Christ from
eternity past, from before time ever was. God elected a particular
people and he put them in his son. And the scripture says that
the Lord Jesus entered into a covenant relationship, a promise, with
his heavenly father before time, before Adam was made, before
the stars were made, before the angels were made. God the father,
God the son, and God the Holy Spirit made a covenant promise
to one another. And here's what that promise
was. God promised to give his son a bride. God the son promised
in the fullness of time to come into this world and redeem his
bride unto himself, to pay the ransom price for his bride. the
dowry, if you will, for his bride, and that's what he did on Calvary's
cross. And then God the Son entered into that covenant promise and
agreed with the Father and with the Son to make those whom the
Father had chose and those for whom the Son would redeem, he
promised to come in his power and make them willing, give them
faith, regenerate them, give them new birth. Now what God
the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit agree to
and promise must be. It must be. There's no way that
that can fail. And in that covenant of grace
the Lord Jesus is called the Lamb that was slain before the
foundation of the world. And so In Christ, before time ever was,
God's elect died in the Lord Jesus Christ, their substitute,
before the world was. And that was Anne's first death. That was her first death. Her
second death took place 2,000 years ago. when the Lord Jesus became her
surety, when he became everything that God required for the salvation
of her soul, and he went to Calvary's cross and he paid the debt for
her sins and for the sins of all of his people by shedding
his precious blood. And Paul, the Apostle Paul, writing
about that death on the cross says this, He says, I, speaking
of himself, was crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live,
I live in the flesh, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. The
life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God
who loved me and died for me. And so every one of God's people
was in Christ, In the covenant of grace, when the Lord Jesus
entered into that promise with his father to be their substitute,
the lamb slain before the foundation of the world, they died in him
then. Secondly, they died 2000 years ago when Christ bowed his
mighty head on Calvary's cross and he cried, it is finished. Everything that God required
for the salvation of His people was accomplished. The Lord Jesus
didn't come into this world to make an offer of salvation for
us to accept it or reject it. The Lord Jesus came into this
world to make Himself an offering to His Father. And the Father,
the Scripture says, saw the travail of His soul and the Father was
satisfied. And so, All of God's elect died
in Christ 2,000 years ago when he died on Calvary's cross. Anne believed that. That's where
her hope was. Her hope was not looking at an
experience or looking at a feeling or looking at her good works. It wasn't looking to any of that.
She looked in faith to what God had promised through the accomplished
work of the Lord Jesus on Calvary's cross. And I am certain, as her
pastor, that what I'm saying to you is what she would want
me to say here today. She would want you to know where
her hope was. And she would want you to have
that hope as well. Thirdly, there came a day, I
baptized Ann, I remember very well, baptized her in that baptistry
right there, over in the other building. And Anne heard about the person and
work of the Lord Jesus Christ that I just described. And she
believed it. She believed it. And that day,
she died. That's what baptism is. Buried
with Christ in baptism and raised again to walk a new life in Christ
Jesus. What is it that we die to when
we hear the gospel as the gospel? We hear about the glorious person
and the accomplished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. What do
we die to? We die to our righteousness.
Because by nature, we come into this world, we come into this
world by nature believing that we have some righteousness that
earns us favor with God. That's just our natural state.
That's our natural fallen state. We believe that we're gonna be
able to present something to God that will give us entrance
into heaven. And most people spend their whole
lives trying to earn their way to heaven. And when the Lord
teaches you the gospel and reveals Christ to you, you realize for
the first time in your life that all of your righteousnesses are
as filthy rags before God. The Bible says that man at his
very best state is altogether vanity. He is empty. He's devoid. of any righteousness
in the sight of God. And it's a work of grace, it's
amazing grace that the Lord would bring a sinner to the place of
realizing that everything about them is sinful in the sight of
God and they have no righteousness before God. Most people think that sin is
just bad behavior And most people will say, well, yeah, I've sinned,
I've committed some things, I've done some wrong things in my
life. That's not how the Bible defines sin. The Bible defines
sin as what we are. We commit acts of sin because
we are by nature sinners. Everything about us is sinful.
And there's only one, there's only one who himself is holy,
harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, higher than the
heavens. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
only one who can stand in the presence of God without sin. And God made him sin for us that
we might be made the righteousness of God in him. That's what Ann
believed. And she died that day. She died
spiritually. Just as she had died spiritually
in Christ as the lamb slain before the foundation of the world,
just as she died spiritually in her substitute when he hung
on Calvary's cross, she died that day. God caused her to see
that the only hope of standing in the presence of a holy God
was to have a sin-bearer, a substitute, one who could stand in her stead
and be her righteousness before God. And by God's grace, she
confessed that she died. That was her third death. Her fourth death is the death
that every believer experiences every day because the ugly head
of our flesh rears itself up all the time. You see, the new
birth doesn't change the old man. It gives him a new man.
It gives him a new nature in Christ. It gives him a righteousness
before God. The scripture says, as he is,
so are we in Christ. In the Lord Jesus Christ, we're
perfect before God, but we live out our lives in this world as
sinners. We live out our lives in this
world. And Paul put it like this, I die daily, daily. And so faith requires and accomplishes
in the hearts of God's people a daily daily dying oh Romans chapter 6 says reckon
reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin but alive unto
God through Jesus Christ that reckoning is a daily reckoning
it's a daily reckoning So this spiritual death that every child
of God goes through is a daily experience that we come before
God and say, Lord, I have no life in me apart from Christ. I have no righteousness in me
apart from Christ. Lord, I am left to myself outside
of Christ. I am hell deserving and hell
bent. Lord, I need a savior. And that's
a daily dying. and what Anne experienced last
Wednesday was her final battle with death. It's the last enemy,
the Bible says. And for the believer, it is their
graduation to glory. When this corruptible is made
incorruptible and this mortal body is made immortal and we
see him in the fullness of his glory and we're made like him.
Oh, you know I hear people talk sometimes at funerals and I understand,
especially a person who doesn't really understand the scriptures,
understand what God says, I understand that in grief it does seem to
give a person a sense of hope and comfort when they think about
their deceased loved one looking down from heaven. That cannot be. Heaven would
not be heaven if anyone there was able to look down into this
world. Trust me, you don't want your
loved one looking down from heaven. Their eyes are fixed on the Lord
Jesus Christ and this world is not even a memory to them. They
have no thoughts of this world. They have no memory of this world. That's what makes heaven heaven. The Lord said, let not your heart
be troubled. You believe in God, believe also
in me. For in my father's house are
many mansions. If it were not so, I would have
told you. I go and prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare
a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself
that where I am there you may be also. And what did the Lord
Jesus have to do to prepare a place for his people? Be received back
into glory. Take his rightful, place at the
right hand of the majesty on high. The father said to the
Lord Jesus, sit down here at my right hand until I make all
thine enemies thy footstool. We come into this world at enmity
with God. And by the power of the Holy
Spirit, breathing life into us in the new birth, we find ourselves
sitting at his footstool. The Lord Jesus when he entered
back into, the Bible says that God's word has never returned
to him void. It always accomplishes the purpose
for which he sent it. And we as preachers take great
comfort in that promise every time we stand to declare God's
word because we know that God will make it effectual as he
sees fit. It won't return to him void. But here's the glorious truth.
The Lord Jesus is called the word of God. In the beginning
was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. And when the word of God, the
Lord Jesus, ascended back into glory, he did not go back void. He took with him the names of
those for whom he lived and died, and he took his rightful place
at the right hand of the majesty on high, and the Bible says that
he ever lives, making intercession for his people. Oh, what hope. What hope. That was Anne's hope. That was Anne's hope. And when
she closed her eyes in death this past Wednesday, she opened them in the presence
of her Savior. And never all of her, you know,
when we leave this world, the Bible says that the that God
made us from the dust of the earth and that which is dust
returns to the dust. And we don't take anything, anything
from this world with us. Scripture says in the book of
Revelation, and all things are made new. Oh, this is not, this
is not just the opinions of a man, we could find no comfort in that. This is not a subjective experience
or feeling that somebody might have. This is the infallible
Word of God. And faith comes by hearing and
hearing comes by the Word of God. God gives us faith, we just
believe God. We believe God. The believers in the church at
Thessalonica, as all believers have ever done,
anticipated daily the coming of the Lord Jesus, the second
coming of him. And now some of their fellow
brothers and sisters were departing from this world in death before
the Lord returned. And so they asked the apostle
Paul, how do we understand this? And so, under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, Paul writes to that church, and he says to
them, I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren. By nature,
we are ignorant. By nature, we're without knowledge. Without knowledge, that's what
ignorant means. God has to give us understanding. He does that
by his word. I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren,
concerning them which are asleep. The Lord's calling death, asleep. And that you sorrow not, even
as others who have no hope. We sorrow. In the passing of
a loved one, we sorrow. It's, you know, we, We love them,
we enjoy being with them, and the thought of living out our
lives without them is a sorrowful thing. But not as those who have
no hope. Our sorrow is mitigated, if you
will, by hope. For if we believe that Jesus
died and rose again, Even so, also, them which sleep in Jesus
will God bring with him." There's the promise of God. We believe
that when Christ died, he put away the sins of his people,
and when he rose from the dead, He rose as the positive proof
that God was satisfied with what he accomplished. The father would
not allow his holy one to see corruption. The father raised
him from the dead as the proof that God was satisfied. They're not satisfied with you
or me. Anything we do is satisfied with
Christ. For this we say unto you by the
word of the Lord. Paul's speaking word of truth
and hope and comfort to these believers who are grieving. And
he says, we bring this to you from the word of the Lord, that
we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall
not prevent them which are asleep. They've gone on before us. And
we're not gonna prevent them from entering into glory. For
the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with
the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, and the
dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain
shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with
the Lord. Comfort ye one another with these
words. Yes, it's good and it's profitable. for us to recount our memories
and our love and thoughts and encouragement to one another
in the death of mother, grandmother, our sister in Christ. But none of those things really
speak to the soul, to the heart in terms of giving hope. Only
God's Word does. God's Word. And our hope and
prayer is that the Lord will take His Word and make it effectual
to our hearts. The Bible puts it like this,
let him who has ears to hear, hear what the Spirit saith unto
the churches. Now the hearing ear is from God. And I would encourage you, to
ask God to give you ears to hear. Lord, help me to believe what
Ann believed. I need that, oh. Our Heavenly Father, thank you
for the testimony of our dear sister. Thank you for the work
of grace that you accomplished for her in the covenant of grace
on Calvary's cross, in her new birth, in her daily walk of faith,
and now in her leaving the tabernacle of her flesh in this world and
entering into your presence. Lord, comfort Your people, as
you promised, we ask it in Christ's name. Amen. All right. This will conclude this service.
Men, if you'd like to come, ask the gentleman to come and remove
the casket. I guess we're going to do that
first. Normally, I guess that's the