There is another, actually several
more stanzas to that hymn. One of them, I cannot remember
all of it, but it's most fitting for a situation such as we have
gathered today. It speaks of the resurrection
of the coming of the Lord, I believe it comes right before what we
normally think of as the last stanza. But it has a line in
it that says, the sky, not the grave, is our goal. What a blessing thought. What a wonderful thing to contemplate.
that despite the unavoidable reality, that everyone here shall
someday die. For the believer in Christ Jesus,
the grave is not his end. The Lord himself, says the scriptures,
shall descend from heaven with a shout and with the voice of the archangel
and the trump of God. There's a lot of power represented
in that. The Lord who called the world
into existence shall come with a shout. The archangel which means a chief
angel, which some consider simply to be another one of the titles
of our Lord Jesus. The voice of the archangel and
the trump of God, which since those words were written by a
Jewish man, he would have been thinking not of these fancy brass
trumpets that we think of in our day, But that Hebrew trumpet
called the shofar, a ram's horn. And on the day when the jubilee
year began, they would sound that trumpet.
And every slave would go free. And everything that had been
lost would be returned to him who lost it. and the people and the land would
have rest. The dead in Christ shall rise
first. Then we who are alive and remain,
I said everybody here will die someday, who knows? Some of us
may remain until the coming of the Lord. I wouldn't mind being among those.
I will be perfectly satisfied to skip my funeral. But even if we do not die, even
if we don't go through the process that everyone since Adam has
gone through, we must be changed. Because these bodies, such as
they are, are not fit. They are not fit for the kingdom
of God. They are not fit. to be in the
presence of God. It says He's gonna change these
vile bodies to be like His glorious body. Do you remember the story
of the transfiguration? And there was Moses and Elijah
and our Lord Jesus. And all of them shone with glory. It particularly mentions the
Lord Jesus, but all of them did. Why? Brethren, that's what we
shall be. Most glorious person in this
world. Oh, how we celebrate beauty,
don't we? We put a whole lot of effort into looking good,
though I've kind of given up. But we put a lot of effort into
looking good. The most beautiful person in this world is nothing
compared to the saints of God perfected to be like Christ. That is not what I intended to
preach. A little bit of extra comes free of charge. Funerals are solemn times. That
doesn't mean that we cannot smile on funeral days. It doesn't
mean that there's nothing about them. It doesn't bring a bit
of joy to us, though you normally wouldn't associate joy with a
funeral. But whatever other emotions we
may experience at a funeral, this State of mind should be
upon all of us. Solemn. It's a solemn occasion
to consider death. At funerals, we are confronted
with real loss, irrecoverable loss. In the last few years,
our area has experienced some unusual floods. And there's been
some loss. I don't think anybody died from
them. But some homes got flooded in 2014. The basement of our
church got flooded. And I just about lived in the
basement for the rest of the summer, along with another man
from our church, as we tried to fix things and get them back
in order. Yes, there was some loss. None of it was irrevocable.
Everything lost could be replaced. Such losses as that are an inconvenience. In 2002, we had a house fire. Maybe I ought to be a little
bit more honest. I accidentally set my house on
fire. We lost it. We lost some stuff. We spent six months living in
town in a rented house. And it was during that time my
children decided it was time to fly the coop. We started August
of 2002 with three kids in the home. At the end of August, it
was just Bonnie and me. And our six months of insurance
said they'd pay for rent was over. Our new house was nearly
built, so we went out, moved into our camper. We lived there
for five weeks. All of this was inconvenient,
but every loss we experienced was replaceable. but not at a funeral. When someone's gone, they're
gone. And they're not coming back. And they cannot be replaced by
someone else. It's true that some relationships
can be filled by someone else. Those who have lost spouses can
remarry. But that'll be a new relationship.
It won't be a resumption of the old relationship. Death is real. It's as real a thing as we ever
confront. We're confronted with real and
irrecoverable loss, but more unsettling than this, every time
we have a funeral, if we're paying attention, we are confronted
with the inescapable reality of our own mortality. Lloyd's Coffins out there in
the foyer. Probably most of you stopped, at least for a little
bit, to look. Maybe the last time you'll ever
see his face. But you know what that tells
us? Each one of us is going to have
our turn to be in the box and the people and people to walk
by and look at what's left of us and see our face for the last
time. And for all the craftsmanship,
even artistry of the mortician, they cannot hide the reality
that the person is dead. And when it comes our turn, there's
nobody in earth that will be able to change the fact that
we are gone. Wise men do not seek to soften
the blow of the truth. You know, most funeral arrangements,
and I'm talking about worldwide now, because every culture has
their way of dealing with death. Every one of them. There's ceremonies
and rituals, and all of them are designed with at least some
of this in mind to blunt the force that it has upon us. to
take the edge off of it. Even in our culture, and I'm
not saying this is altogether a bad thing, but just understand
what I mean here. They'll often say, well, we're
not having a funeral, we're having a celebration of life. And I'm
thinking, I'm sorry. We could have celebrated someone's
life long before they died. We're not here. Because Lloyd lived. We're here
because Lloyd died. And it won't do us any good to
try to ignore that. And it won't do us any good to
try to have a service this morning that somehow or another takes
the edge off the truth that we're gonna die. When I went online to look at
the obituary for Lloyd, I looked at his birthday. He was born
three days before my wife was born. And I'm thinking he's already
gone. Now let me tell you this, I never met Lloyd that I can
remember. I don't know that I was ever
in the same room with him at the same time. But it's a sobering thing to
think of. Here's a man, very close to the
same age as my wife, and I'm not that much older than her.
And he is gone. And while none of us here probably
are thinking that we will die today, Well, there might be less of
us tonight than there are this morning. I graduated high school
in 1973. It was a day in June. I can't remember
which day, but we had our graduation ceremony at the Memorial Fieldhouse
in Huntington, West Virginia. 350 of us about in our graduating
class. held in the evening in celebration of the graduation
of one of my classmates named Gary Roach. His parents had given
him a brand new car. Now he was a, I didn't know him
well, but he was a pretty good kid. Not wild in any way. But he got in that car that evening. He wasn't being careless. He
wasn't driving drunk or anything like that. But somebody else
was. And on the night he graduated
high school, 18 years old, he left this world. Death is real. Truth is truth whether or not
we confront it. And it doesn't do us any good
to try to put it out of mind. I realize we don't want to spend
our lives in a constant morose contemplation of our mortality.
But we need to think about it once in a while, don't we? The psalmist said, teach us to
number our days. that we may apply our hearts
to wisdom. Why do we number our days? Because
we know there's a limit to the number. When Lloyd came into this world,
they could have, I know we don't do this, but you'll understand
my point, that day, they could have gone out and bought his
tombstone and filled nearly all of it out. They could have put
his name on it, and they could have put the date of his birth,
and then leave blank the date of his death. Not because there would be any
doubt that he would die. They just didn't know when. You've
seen those headstones where one spouse dies, and so they get
a headstone large enough for the graves of both of them, even
though one of them is not dead. And so you have both their names
on there, and they will have already engraved the birth and
death date of the one who has passed away, but the other one's
got a name, it's got a birth date, and a blank spot. But of
this, we can be sure someday that blank spot's gonna be filled
in. they're gonna know the date and they'll be gone. All of us
someday die, we try to put that truth out of mind. But the only
thing certain that we can say about anyone who comes into this
world is that someday they're going to leave it. That's the only certain thing. In our church, We have, it's
just a small church. We got 50, 60 people on a big
Sunday. We got people in that church.
We got a little girl born in February. Seven or eight weeks
old, somewhere in that neighborhood. With all the bad weather we've
had, having this past Sunday was the first time the parents
were able to bring her to church. I was a delight to see that little
one. And we got a couple in our church, both of them were in
their 90s. Now statistically speaking, we
figure that the folks in their 90s are gonna die before this
new little baby. It's not a certain thing, but
statistically speaking, we're pretty sure of that. But you
wanna know something? The death of the 90-year-olds is no more
certain than the death of that brand new little baby. The question is never if. The
question is only when. I look at this little group gathered
here this morning. Someone rocking a baby in the
back. There's older people here. There's children. 100 years from now, none of us
will be here. Not in any likelihood. And 100 years, friends, is not
nearly so long as we think it is. I remember 50 years ago quite
easily, and that's half of 100. 50 years ago, I was coming to
the end of the eighth grade. That summer, they had Woodstock. I believe it was 69 when they
had Woodstock. That might be something to be
good to forget, but I don't. I remember it. I remember our family vacation.
We went to Texas to visit with one of my dad's old Navy buddies. My sister graduated high school. Had another sister, two years
younger. Oddly enough, she was the first
one to go. She passed away a year ago, last February. 50 years,
though. And it seems to me like a blink
of an eye. I moved here to Iowa, and understand,
I'm at West Virginia Hillbilly. And you can't think of any place
more different than West Virginia than Northwest Iowa. At least
I can't imagine anything that would be more different. The lay of the land, the kind of plants there are,
and the culture. I'll be honest with you, I like
it here. This is a good place to live. But I moved here feeling quite
alien. But as I mentioned to the family
beforehand, I am now at just about the point I've lived half
of my life in Iowa. And I moved here with three little
children. My oldest one just turned 40. And it seems like I just got
here. Time moves much more quickly
than you think. I see some young boys on the front
here. I'm not trying to terrify anybody, but you fellas are going
to be grown-ups before you know it. Really, you are. I've got a step-granddaughter. Hard for me to believe in just
four years she'll be the age my wife was when my wife married
me. She seemed like such a young
girl to be within earshot of marriage, but there she is. Time
keeps clicking by, folks. I remember the first time that
I had this truth of my mortality really impressed on me. I believe it was when I was eight
or nine years old. As I recall it, though I can't
be sure, it was in one of two churches. Which church it was
depends on my age. We changed churches when I was
nine years old, so it could have been either one of those two
churches, but it was about that time. And I remember, as was
my custom, and probably the custom of many of the kids here, I was
kind of half dozing while the preacher was preaching. I slept a lot in church. And I was in that kinda hazy
area between being awake and being asleep. And like a thunderbolt,
it hit me. Someday, I'm gonna die. And it wasn't because anything
the preacher said. I have no clue what the preacher was preaching
on. I wasn't listening to him. And I woke up, and I mean, of
course, that made me fully awake. Shot me full of adrenaline. And there I was at 8, 9, 10 years
old. Frightened. Shook up over this
reality. Someday I'm going to die. And here I am 54 or more years
later. And it's still true. Someday,
I'm going to die. And if you go by statistics,
it's not that far off. This area being the conservative
area that it is, and I mean conservative in virtually every respect, financially
conservative. Most people work hard. Most people in this area pay
attention to the way they spend their money and they set some
aside because they know someday they want to retire. And there's
got to be some money somewhere to take care of them because,
well, Social Security is just not going to cover all the bills.
It's not going to enable them to live at the level they want
to. And so you make preparations.
And you know, and I'm not speaking a word against that. That's good. But do you realize when you prepare
for your retirement, you're preparing for something you're not certain
you're ever going to reach. And people will put a lot of
effort into preparing for things that they have no guarantee they
will ever possess. And yet seem to spend so little
time preparing for the one thing they know they cannot escape.
And that is their death. You say, well, preacher, we go
to church every Sunday. Do you realize how many, just
imagine in your mind, if you think about it, how many folks
do you think are going to church trying to ignore death? Trying
to get a nice fuzzy feeling inside that everything's okay? They find a preacher that'll
tell them that God's not that strict. They're
not that bad. And they go away thinking they
can ignore the truth of death because in the end, it'll be
all right. Me and God, we're tight. It's
all good. That's not true. Not in the way that I described
it. I'll tell you, God's strict. God is stricter than you can
imagine. You know what he told Moses? He says, I will by no
means clear the guilty. That puts you and me in a serious
predicament. And I don't know about you, well
I do know about you, but that's just a way of saying, introducing
the statement. I don't know about you, I'm guilty. Matter of fact it's so are you.
You came into the world that way. You came into that world having
charged to you a sin committed by a man that lived thousands
of years before you did. By the sin of one man, all were made sinners. And death came by that sin. People like to say, well, this
or that person, he died because of this kind of sinfulness he
was involved in. Do you realize every one of us
will die, and we're not going to die because of any sin we
committed. We're going to die because of
a sin one man committed in the Garden of Eden. As in Adam, all
die. That's one of the reasons that
trying to live good enough in order to obtain life isn't going
to work. Well, first hand, it's not going to work because we
can't ever live good enough. But even if we did, that doesn't
change the fact that we are connected to Adam, our father, and his
sin is charged to us as though we did it. And we can't go back
and change the history of it. Can we? And God says that we're guilty
by virtue of what Adam has done, and he will not under any circumstances
clear the guilty. You say, oh, well, you know,
you can't take those things at face value, then why did God
write it? Why did God tell Moses that? Why did he make that? Moses' question was, show me
your glory. And that's part of what God told
him when he was showing Moses his glory. One of the aspects
of his glory is his inflexible righteousness and justice, which
means he will by no means clear the guilty. And then some of
them will say, well, what about the cross? God does not clear the guilty
by the cross. Now you hang on a minute and
I'll explain that. But you look at the cross. There hangs a man
who never did anything wrong. And he's God's beloved son. But the Lord had laid on him
the iniquity of all his wandering sheep. And there hangs the Lord
Jesus, who never did anything wrong, but the wrongs of others
are charged to Him. Did God clear Him? Did God hold back in the least
in the punishment of Him for the sins that He bore, even though
they were not His in the doing of them? Did God, the judge of
all, say, well, that is my son. I realize those sins weren't
really done by him, so I'm just going to kind of give him a token
punishment. No, God visited upon the Lord
Jesus Christ the fullness of all that God can do to the wicked. I don't know what hell is, but
whatever it is, that's what Christ endured there on the cross. Whatever
God said would be the punishment for sin. Jesus Christ bore the
full weight of it. In Isaiah, chapter 45, verse
22, I asked the question, what are we gonna do about this? We
know we're sinners. We know we're gonna die. And
we know that after we die, it's written, it's appointed on the
man who wants to die, and after this, the judgment. That's what
really terrifies us. Because all of us kind of have
a gut level realization, that's not going to go well. What can we do about it? Well, if it weren't for God,
there wouldn't be anything could be done about it. We would be
born. We would live our lives and we
would die. And for the rest of eternity,
we would experience whatever it was that called our Lord to
say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But listen to the word of God
through the prophet. Verse 22 of Isaiah 45, look unto
me. and be ye saved all the ends
of the earth for I am God and there is none else the very one who said I will
by no means clear the guilty also said look unto me all ye
ends of the earth and be Ye saved, for I am God, and beside me there
is no other. You say, well, preacher, how
do I know that that word is for me? After all, it was given to
a Jewish prophet who lived 2,700 or more years ago. How do I know
that's for me? Well, it says, look unto me,
all ye ends of the earth. We're in doom. Near as I know,
dunes on the earth. Google it. You can find us. You know what that means? That
means there's words to us. This is God's word to you. He
says, look unto me. And that word look also has the
sense of turn. Turn and look to me, says the
Lord, and be ye saved. Now what does that imply? It
implies this, God believes you need saving. You need saving. You need saving no matter how
good you've been. I can stand up here and make
a case from the scriptures that you haven't been any good, and
I haven't been any good, but that's not my point. Point is,
no matter how good you think you've been, you still need saving.
No matter what church you were raised in, you still need saving. No matter who your parents were,
you need saving. No matter what they did to you
when you were an infant, you still need saving. Because you're
part of the ends of the earth, and God says, turn to me and
be saved. And God wouldn't say that if
you didn't need His saving. There are two things here. First
of all, There is a wonderful truth to contemplate that for
people like you and me, there is such a thing as salvation.
Oh, isn't that a relief? What a wonderful thing to think
of. There's also this sobering thought. Don't think you have it just
because you were raised in the church. It is a blessed advantage
to be born of those who believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. To
grow up in their homes, to go to a church where that gospel's
preached, and to learn that truth. That is all a wonderful privilege. Doesn't guarantee a thing. He said, turn to me. And that
means every one of us needs to turn. Every one of us, until God saves
us, every one of us is an idolater by nature, following a path that
seems right to us, but ends in death. We need to turn. Turn to me, he says, and be saved,
all the ends of the earth. And here's the warrant for it.
For I am God. It is amazing the obstacles that
the devil will lay in the path of someone whose mind is thinking
about eternal matters. And the really sad thing is,
is many of these obstacles, though devised by Satan, are actually
laid out there by preachers. And someone begins to have a
little concern about their sin, and they begin to think about
it, and they go to the preacher, and they talk about, you know,
I'm concerned about my sin. And the preacher says, well,
you should be. And he said, well, I think I need to go to Christ.
Well, you do, but before you go to Christ, you have to...
No. There's nothing you have to do
and nothing you have to become in order to look to Christ. Really? Nothing? Well, first I've got to repent.
You don't repent until you look to Christ. Well, first I've got
to come to understand just how sinful I am. Nobody on earth
understands how sinful they are. There's only one human being
in all the universe that understands how sinful human beings are,
and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. He alone. I don't know how sinful
I am. I keep surprising myself. I thought as I got older I'd
get better. I'm sorry, it's going the wrong direction. I find out
more and more of my sinfulness as I get older. And you know
something? That doesn't keep me from coming
to Christ. How sick do you have to be to go to a doctor? You
just have to be sick enough to know you need a doctor. In fact, sometimes you go to
the doctor to find out just how sick you are. How sinful must
you be? Or how much must you understand
how sinful you are in order to go to Christ? All you have to
understand is you're more sinful than you can handle. You need
a Savior. Here's your warrant to turn to
God. He is God. That's what He said. Don't believe me on this. And
don't let anybody else take this away from you. He says, look
unto Me, turn to Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.
And He doesn't say, because you have this, that, and the other.
He says, because I'm God. And that's all the warrant you
need. And unless you believe He's not
God, then you must believe that you
need to turn to Him. and that you have his full permission
to do so. I realize you won't, unless God
works in you to do it. But that's out of my hands. My
job as a preacher of the gospel is to tell you the promises of
God. Tell you who God is and what he's done. Turn unto me
and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and
there is none else. Say, yeah, we got to turn from
our sins. Well, yeah, but most people don't know what their
sins are. They think of all the corruptible
things they've done. Well, yeah, that's sin. Let me
ask you, have any of y'all been able to turn away from your sins? Have any of y'all been able to
quit sinning? If you have, I would like to meet you, really. Because
so far, I've not met anybody who's been able to quit sinning.
Do you know what we've got to turn away from? It's the hardest
thing. In fact, you won't be able to
do it apart from the grace of God. We've got to turn away from
our own righteousness. The Bible says your sins have
separated you from God. But you know what keeps you away
from God? Your own righteousness. You think you have something
to offer Him. And it's so hard to realize you've got nothing. We don't mind saying we're poor,
but it's really tough to admit we're bankrupt in the things
of God, and we have nothing. That all of our study of the
scriptures, and that all of our church going, and all of our
trying to love our neighbors as ourselves, and all our attempts
at being decent and all that means absolutely nothing in this
matter of salvation. A family came in with us singing
Just As I Am. The woman who wrote that song
was troubled about her soul and a local or notable preacher of
her day came. I think it was Samuel Rutherford. But she was talking to him and
he said, well, And she says, well, how do I
come to him? And he said, just as you are.
And from those words, she wrote that in, just as I am. If you try to make yourself worthy
to come to him, you will be rejected. The writer of Rock of Ages, Augustus
Toplady, put that line in there, nothing in my hands I bring,
simply to thy cross I cling. Naked, come to you for dress. Wretched, come to you for grace. Foul, I to the fountain fly. Wash me, Savior, or I die. We cannot escape the death of
this body. But I can tell you on the authority
of what's written in this book, we can escape eternal death. For the God who judges has said,
turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth, because
I'm God. Heavenly Father, I pray that
you bless this word. Thank you for those folks, these
folks here that gave attention as I preached. I hope that that
attention will do their hearts good. I pray for it, Lord. In the name of Christ, we pray
it. Amen. Now we're going to stand and
sing the final hymn that's on this song sheet, Does Jesus Care? And as we sing it, the family
will go out.