I'm honored for the privilege
to be able to speak here today. The family had asked me to bring
a message for this service. Anytime I'm thankful of a funeral
service, memorial service, I'm always brought to remember King
Solomon. Solomon was known to be the wisest
man that was ever born of Adam. He wrote three books in the Bible.
Most of you probably heard of Proverbs. He wrote those Proverbs. He wrote Song of Solomon, and
he wrote a book called Ecclesiastes. In Ecclesiastes 7-2, he tells
us, this is the wisest man ever born of Adam. He says, it's better
to go to the house of mourning than go to the house of feasting. Now to you and I, to the natural
man, that makes no sense. Why would it be better to be
in this house of mourning today than to be enjoying a big happy
feast? Having a big Thanksgiving dinner.
How could this be better? But he continues there in Ecclesiastes
7.2. It says, It's better to go to
the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting.
For that is the end of all men. And the living will lay it to
his heart. Us who are physically alive need
to lay this to our hearts. We have an end. Every one of
us will have a day like today. We know this and this house of
mourning is a reminder to us our day is coming. We have an
appointed time to die. I pray the Lord be pleased to
give one of His children a living heart today and that that message
will be laid on your soul. Just a couple times I had the
privilege of speaking with Eddie. A few times there in Hamul, after
service we'd eat together and get a chance to sit and talk
some. Like in January we were up at
the conference and rescue and we were eating after the service.
It always seemed like we'd be eating together. But while we'd
sit and eat, and break bread together, each time I spoke with
him, the conversation would quickly turn to our Savior, Christ Jesus
the Lord. And for a believer, for a child
of God, one who has a new spirit born in their hearts, Christ
is the focus of our thoughts. His work and the saving of the
souls of His people and the person of Christ, His character, who
He is, holiness, the mighty God, The person and the work of Christ
is paramount to a believer. He is our life. The day before the Lord took
Eddie to glory, I went to visit him. Many times I've attempted
to comfort one of Christ's sheep that's in a heavy trial or someone
that has a severe illness. And it seems that every time
I try to do that, I walk away the one that's comforted. The
last time I spoke with Eddie was no different. He was very
tired. He was very weak. I told him,
I said, you're almost well. Not that his physical body would
be made strong again, that he'd become healthy again, but that
his true self, the Spirit of God that dwelled in him would
be all that was left. that this body of death, this
body of sin that we live in, that had soon passed, sin would
be no longer present. And He would stand in the presence
of our Christ, our Savior, our God, and worship Him as He deserves
to be worshipped. He would be without sin. So I
told Eddie, I said, you're almost well. You'll be with our Savior
soon and sin will be no more. And he looked at me. feebly,
weakly, and low voice, he simply said, he is able. He is able. People say that a picture is
worth a thousand words. It may be true, but if we're
truly made to understand the words of this phrase, what this
phrase means, He is able, that is worth an eternity of words,
an eternity of praise to Christ, to our Lord. Ever since my brother
told me He is able, I've had a certain verse on my heart. The book of Jude. It's 25 verses. It's right before the book of
Revelation. I encourage you to read it sometime. It won't take
you long. But there in Jude, he closes with these two verses.
He says, Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling
and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory
with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory
and majesty, dominion and power both now and ever. Amen. This morning I have three
simple points for you. First one is He is able to keep
us from falling. Second is He is able to present
us faultless before the presence of His glory. And then the result
of our salvation, the result of us being presented to our
Master, we glory in Him. We glory in Christ alone, now
and forever. That's my first point. Kept from
falling. Jude writes to us, now unto Him
that is able, keep you from falling. What is it to keep a man or woman
from falling? What does that mean? It means
we're not able to save ourselves. Why? Why can't a man or woman
save themselves from falling? We're already fell. If we fell
off a cliff and you're halfway down the cliff, you can't save
yourself from falling. What happened in the garden?
Garden of Eden, in self-righteousness and in pride, in sin, we fell
in our father Adam. We are guilty. We are fallen
before a holy God. Now, of ourselves, we cannot
enter into His presence now. That's why Adam was put out of
the garden. You must be perfectly and thoroughly clean. You have
to be holy, righteous, faultless, to be in God's presence. Every
person born of an earthly father, that's all of us, we were conceived
in sin, we were shaped in iniquity, we were formed in a womb in iniquity,
and we came forth from that womb speaking lies. Did all this start when Adam
fell in the garden? Paul wrote to us in Romans 5,
and he said, Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the
world, and death by sin, so death passed upon all men, for that
all have sinned. All of humanity are the descendants
of Adam. If that was all there was to
fallen, fallen in sin, if that's all there was to it, we could
just put the blame on Adam, couldn't we? But when our father Adam
took that fruit, it was counted to us. We remember that Eve was
there. She ate of that fruit first.
Nothing happened. She was not her own representative. Adam was a representative of
humankind. When Adam ate, mankind's seminal
head, Eve's head and our head, then they both knew they were
naked. We, you and I and Adam, took
a bite of that fruit. Then that trait of sin, that
disease of sin was passed to us. That's our nature. That's
the nature we're born with. Shaping and iniquity. If two
zebras have a baby, it's a zebra. You'd be surprised if it wasn't.
If two sinners have a child, it's a sinner. just like their
parents. And it was not only counted to
us in Adam, it wasn't only passed along to us in our natural birth
and our instincts, but we acted on that instinct. Each of us
have. Paul told us in Romans 3.23,
so for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. You
may say, well, I know some nice people. I'm not that bad. All
have sinned. A-double-L. Some of you may say
in your minds, well, I'm not that bad. I've not sinned enough
to deserve eternal damnation. Apostle John told us in 1 John
1.8, he said, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves
and the truth is not in us. If we say we have no sin, we're
still falling. We are proven that we are ruled
by our sin nature. Our eyes are still covered in
those filthy rags of our self-righteousness. We're blinded by our own pride.
What happens when we're made to know what sinners we really
are? When this has been revealed to us, we know that we are fallen.
We tell the truth about what we are. We confess, we tell the
truth, that we are nothing but sin and can do nothing but sin
in ourselves. John continued on there in 1
John 1.9, if we confess our sin, Christ is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If the Holy Spirit comes to your
heart and convicts you that all you are is sin, then you will
tell the truth. You'll confess your falling.
You'll confess your sin. You'll confess your inability
to save yourself and you'll confess it to God, the one you sinned
against. You won't confess it to another
man. Don't have to. Talk to the one that you sinned
against. Christ told us in John 16, He said, and when He has
come, He's speaking of that Holy Spirit, the Great Comforter.
When He has come, He will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness
and of judgment, in that order. He goes on, of sin because they
believe not on Me. That's unbelief. That's our greatest
fall. Not believing God, not believing
who His Son is, not believing His Word. John 16.10 says, "...of righteousness,
because I go to my Father and you see me no more." The only
way, the only truth, and the only life that can be presented
before God the Father is Christ. Him alone. He was raised from
the grave as a testament His blood atonement for the sins
of His people was accepted by the Father. That was proof. We don't have a coffin full of
bones. We have an empty tomb. That payment
was accepted. And He goes on and says, we'll
be convinced of judgment because the Prince of this world is judged.
Christ being able to save an unable elect people was finished
on the cross. What happened in the garden was
dealt with at the cross. And because of that willing sacrifice
of God, Paul told us that our judgment is over for those that
Christ died for. That judgment's been dealt. He said in Romans 8.1, There
is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. When a person is not made by
God the Holy Spirit to truly confess that we are nothing but
sin, that Christ is all our righteousness, and that His perfect obedience
was accepted by the Father, we are still fallen. We are saying
we aren't that bad. I can do something in addition
to Christ's person and work. I could add to it. And that judgment
is not yet satisfied. The Apostle John told us, he
said, if we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar
and his words not in us. We're calling God a liar. Who
then is able? Who is sufficient? for these
things. Who's able to keep us from falling?
Christ is able to keep you from falling. Matthew 11, 27 says,
And these things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no
man knoweth the Son but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father
save the Son, and He to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. Come
unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give
you rest. What is it to labor? That's to
work. That's to do something. What
is it to be heavy laden? That's to carry something heavy.
That's work. What is it to rest? Stop working. Stop trying to save ourselves
from falling. He says, take my yoke upon you
and learn of me for I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall
find rest unto your souls. True rest in our souls. Peace in our souls. And then
he goes on and says, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
If He's the one that kept us from falling, that's a light
yoke. To honor Him is an easy burden. After God keeps His child from
falling, We will give them complete rest in His Son, knowing that
He's able to keep them. We also have rest and peace in
Christ to be presented to the Father after this life is over. That's my second point, presented
faultless. Jude tells us there in verse
24, now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling and
to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with
exceeding joy. Christ is able to keep us from
falling and He's able to present us faultless. And saving us from
sin and keeping us from falling from Christ back to our own nature,
back to our old sin nature, Christ didn't just wipe the slate clean.
And now it's up to us to stay good until we die. Or to get
better until we die. To get presentable until we leave
this world. He made us presentable. What
does that mean? He made us righteous. We remember
Adam fell in the garden. He was cast out. He wasn't holy
as God requires to be in His presence. Christ makes us His
righteousness. Paul told us in 2 Corinthians
5.20, he says, Be ye reconciled to God. Be united to Him. Be kept with Him. Be presented
to Him. How? How can we do that? For
He hath made Him to be sin for us. who knew no sin, that we
might be made the righteousness of God in Him. And that work
on the cross, Christ being the substitute of a hell-deserving
people, He took our place. He became those He died for. And in that happening, His sheep,
His elect children, became His righteousness. All of our fall,
all of our sin, and the nature it comes from was dealt the full
deserving wrath of God's holy judgment in our representative,
in Christ our Savior, Christ the God-man. And not only did
the blood of Christ remove our sin as far as the East is from
the West, the Scriptures say, but we were made righteous as
Christ is righteous. Song we sang sometimes as the
water and the blood from His wounded side which flowed, be
of sin the double cure, save from wrath and make me pure,
kept from falling and presentable. Pure as Christ is pure, holy
as Christ is holy, and able to be presented before His glory
forever. We were kept from ourselves,
kept from the fall that we are. We will be presented faultless
before the glory of God and Christ will perform all of this with
exceeding joy. There in the church in Hamel,
we've been looking at the book of Ruth. Some of y'all may know
that it's about Boaz, the kinsman redeemer, but he's a picture
of Christ. When Boaz went to redeem Ruth, God's holy law required
three things for someone to be a kinsman redeemer. For him to
keep her from falling. It required they must be related.
They have to be kin. That kinsman redeemer must be
able to redeem and they must be willing to redeem. Christ our kinsman redeemer,
He is the God-man. He was born of a virgin, made
like we are. He is able, who he is, God Almighty
in human flesh, and what he accomplished, his person and his work, he is
able to keep us from falling and present us flawless. And
it says he must be willing, that was the other requirement of
the law. Christ walked this earth in perfection under God's holy
law, honoring the Father in all things, taking our sin on Himself
and having God turn His back on Him for it. All for a people
that were still in our sins, still enemies against God. And He did it with exceeding
joy. Christ, our elder brother, our
kinsman, He is able and He is willing. We are made to know
what we are by nature and what the payment for our sin was in
the body of Christ. And we see that salvation is
finished. When He said, it is finished,
He didn't lie. We then honor Christ now and
forever. There in Jude 25 it says, to
the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion
and power both now and ever. If the Lord is pleased to send
the Holy Spirit to your heart, give you a new spirit, give you
new eyes to see Christ, new ears to hear of Him, you will praise
Him. You will praise Him now and you'll
praise Him forever. The text there says both now
and ever. All of humanity will confess
Christ Jesus as Lord. Every knee will bow and every
tongue confess forever. But the child of God, those born
again in the heart, those given life from the One that is able,
quickened, we will confess Him now and forever. He's able to save His people.
He's able to keep His people. He is able to present us as a
vessel of honor, as a bride adorned for her wedding day to God the
Father. And because of His righteousness
given to us, the Father looks at that once sin-filled, fallen
people and He says, well done, my good and faithful servant.
Just come here. We've been reconciled in Him
because He's able. I was told one of Eddie's favorite
songs was, There is a Fountain. I want to read you one of the
lines from that. It says, When this poor lisping, stammering tongue
lies silent in the grave, Then, in a nobler, sweeter song, I'll
sing thy power to save. Every born again child of God
in this world now declares cross power that He is able. He is able to save to the uttermost.
And from the moment the Lord takes us to glory and forevermore
we will continue singing He is able. Speak of His power to save. We will declare worthy is the
Lamb. Do you declare now that He is
able. You will in eternity to come,
but you declare Him now. I pray each of us will see the
power of Christ to save His people now. Sing His praises now. Seek Him while He may be found
today, now. And rest, for your souls will
be found in Him. We are falling. Come to Christ. He is able. Amen.