This sermon was preached at the Maryborough Crematorium, 1pm.
Grace, mercy and peace be to
you from God our Father, and form our Lord Jesus Christ.
You are not your own, for you were bought with a
price.
Prayer: Dear Lord Jesus, send
to all of us your Holy Spirit, to me that I may preach well, and to all of us
that we may hear well. Amen.
At a Christian funeral, we come
together to hear about two things. The first thing is that we come to remember
the life of a person who has died. Today we have heard the life-story of
Brenda, who was a wife, a mother, a grand-mother and friend to all of us who
have gathered here today. She lived a particular life that no-one else has
lived.
But also there’s a second
thing that we also come to hear about at a Christian funeral, and that is that
we come to remember the life of Jesus Christ, who also died, but three days
later, rose again from the dead. Jesus also lived a particular life that no-one
else has lived, and because he has risen from the dead, he is still living, he
is still alive, and is the Saviour of the world.
And we might think: what has
Jesus got to do with a funeral? We’re not having a funeral for Jesus. However,
when we come to a funeral, the death of our loved one, the death of Brenda, is
sad news. But the death of Jesus and the fact that he rose again from the dead
is good news. The fact that Brenda has died is the reason we have come together
today in our grief. But the fact that Jesus has died and rose again is the
reason why we have comfort.
When we sit and write a
eulogy or an obituary for a person, we like to give a picture of that person,
and we have been given a bit of a picture today of who Brenda was and the
impact that she had on us. Also, there are certain facts about her life: her
mum gave birth to her in Kingaroy, she was baptised there—here’s the beginning
of her life. But also in the last few days, her earthly life has come to an
end.
And also, we read in the
bible about the life of Jesus Christ. He was born at a certain time, not in
Queensland, or in Australia, but in Israel, in a small town near Jerusalem,
called Bethlehem. He was born of a human mother, but didn’t have a human
father. God the Father was his Father, and his mother was a virgin. And just as
many people today are born in very humble circumstances, Jesus also was born in
a stable, and put in the feeding trough that the animals would eat out of.
Christians believe then that Jesus was both a true man, and a true human being
like each of us, and also that he was true God, at the same time. He is both a
true man and true God in one person. Everything that Jesus did was God’s work.
When he touched someone or spoke to someone, it wasn’t just a man touching or
speaking to someone, but this was God. He had God the Father as his Father, and
also a real human woman as his mum.
Now, all of us are not God.
We have two human parents—and we all know that all of our parents have their
faults. And right from childhood, no-one ever needs to teach a kid to be
naughty, they do it completely by themselves. So when we were born, we were
born as sinners. Sin is not just doing wrong things, but includes wrong words,
wrong thoughts, and also sin is the way in which our whole thinking and our
minds and our hearts are turned away from God from the very start. Just as we
inherit all kinds of good things from our parents, we also inherit a family
debt, which is passed on from generation to generation. We are all part of the
human race, and even though God created us, and was pleased with human beings,
the human race fell into sin. So when we come to the funeral of a person who
has died, we have many things to be thankful for which we received from their
unique life. But also, as Christians, we don’t pretend that the person was
sinless, or perfect.
Now, when we look to Jesus,
the exact opposite is the case. Because Jesus was not just a man but also true
God, he had no sin at all. There was nothing wrong in anything that he thought,
that he said, or that he did, and his whole mind and heart and thinking was
completely in harmony with God the Father in every single thing that he did.
The book of Hebrews in the bible says that Jesus in every respect has been
tempted as we are, yet without sin. So with us, we were created and made
with a body and a soul at a particular time in our mother’s womb. So was Jesus
in his mother’s womb, but unlike us, he also existed right from before the
beginning of time, because he was God, and so when he was conceived in his
mother’s womb, he entered into the world and he took on a human body and human
flesh.
Now, even though Jesus was
not a sinner like us, he took on himself all the sin of the world. You see, a
crime needs to be punished. If we find ourselves in a situation where someone
has committed a terrible crime against us, and they do not serve their time in
prison for it, we think that justice wasn’t done. And we might look at our life
and have some really serious regrets for the things that we did or didn’t do.
And then we start to think, “Now I have to live with it.” “I did the crime, now
I have to do the time.” Or we think, “God’s already done with me. There’s no
hope for me. There’s no turning me back. I’m getting my come-uppance. I deserve
this.” And then we start to think, “I have to carry all of this by myself,
because no-one can pay off someone else’s wrongs. I have to do the time for my
own crimes.”
But here’s where Jesus comes
in. All of that come-uppance, all of that payment, all of those loads that we
all carry around, all the time for the crimes, all of that, Jesus took upon his
shoulders. And what did he do with it? He made a payment. He was crucified, he
was nailed to a cross. Getting yourself nailed a cross was the punishment that
the Romans gave to rebels. If Ned Kelly or someone like that lived in Roman
times he would have been crucified too. Jesus wasn’t a rebel, but he died the
death of a rebel, and died for all the rebels in the world like you. We’ve all
rebelled against God. And all that rebellion against God is on Jesus’
shoulders.
Now with Brenda, she was sick
for a long time and struggled with bad health, and when she died, she died a
very quiet and peaceful death at home in bed.
Jesus died quite a different
death. He was whipped, beaten, flogged with whips, stripped of his clothes, made
to carry his wooden cross, and then they nailed him to it. And in enduring all
of this, Jesus suffered and died for the sin of the whole world. He made a
perfect sacrifice for you. All your debt, everything in your life that you’ve
ever completely stuffed up, every single second of the time for your crimes, all
your come-uppance was put on him and came down on him. When someone says to you
that you’re getting your come-uppance, you can say that what has “come up” on
me “came down” on Jesus. That’s what the little verse means that I read at the
beginning of the sermon: You are not your own, for you were bought with a
price.
But here’s the next thing: After
Jesus died he was buried. And he didn’t stay buried for long, but he rose again
three days later on Easter Sunday. He’s not a ghost, he’s not an angel, he’s
not a disembodied spirit… but his body and soul came back to life, he walked
out of the tomb, and he will never die again. And he goes to his Father with
all of our accounts, with all of the debts of our sins and crimes, and all of
our rebellion, and he presents it to his Father, with a red stamp on it. This
is the red stamp made with his blood which he shed for you. And the stamp says:
Paid in full. Nothing owing. You were bought with a price. You belong to me.
And sometimes, we might
think: Yeah… maybe Jesus died only for the good people, but not for me. That’s
not what the bible says. It says: God so loved the world, that he gave his
only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. It
doesn’t say: God so loved the good people. It says: God so loved the world.
Also John says: He is the propitiation for our sins—propitiation means
atonement, or sacrifice, or payment—and then he says: and not for ours only
but also for the sins of the whole world. And if it says: the whole world,
it means, that your sins have been paid for too.
You are not your own, but
you were bought with a price.
And so, here we see how when
we come to grieve a loved one, like Brenda today, because God created her, we
see a life full of blessings that we have received, and we also see because of
sin a life with debts still owing and payment still to be made.
But all of our debts and
payments that all of us have, were never going to be paid by any of us
individually, because that would be completely impossible. And so at a
Christian funeral, we also remember the life of Jesus Christ, because he is our
Saviour, and he is not just a true man, a human being like you and me, but also
true God. And because he is God, we know that there is going to be nothing
owing, nothing still to be paid, nothing wanting, but everything paid in full,
everything dealt with, everything stamped and sealed with his holy and precious
blood.
You are not your own, but
you were bought with a price.
And that same Jesus says to
us today: Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Amen.
Dear Jesus, we commend our
hearts and our minds, our bodies and souls, into your hands. Strengthen us in
the comfort of your word in our time of grief, and send to each one of us your
Holy Spirit. Amen.
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