Sermon

God's Logic

Today on this solemn occasion, I want to speak to you about God's logic. God's logic and our sense of logic are often quite different.

For example, I am grateful to God that Mom did not have a protracted period of suffering... I am also grateful to God that Mom got to enjoy such a wonderful visit with her nephew Steve in Jacksonville and with Aunt Sue and Uncle Gene in St. Croix. I am grateful that I was able to visit her last fall, and that Chris visited again and took her to dinner earlier this year.

Yet, humanly speaking, there does not seem to me to be much logic in my mother dying just now before I had a chance to see her again.

I had planned to have Mom come out to visit us in California, and to spend several weeks going through a health program at the Optimum Health Institute in San Diego. Yet Mom deferred coming out, and God saw fit to take her home.

There does not seem to be much logic in my not having been able to reach Mom by telephone on Mother's day, or that I was too busy to try to call her the next day.

I look back with regret that I was unable to speak with Mom or to see her alive again, but this does not mean that I think her death was tragic or that the timing of her death was incidental or accidental.

Death is a mysterious enemy. Many people live in the fear of death their whole life long. I believe that the only way to genuinely understand this mystery and our only hope of escaping this fear is to listen to God's thoughts on the matter. I believe that the only source of God's thoughts is His Word, the Bible.

In my Mother's bible there is a bookmark about in the middle, beginning right at one of my favorite sections of scripture. Isaiah chapters 53 through 55 are very special to me because they speak of God's servant, Jesus, God's own Son whom he sent to deal with our death problem.

The concept of sending one's own son to die is a concept that can only be fully understood by someone who has had a son. I think perhaps even better understood when you have grandchildren. Last year my wife Pam and I lost our precious grandson Skylar to death.

I am reminded of the time that Jesus was called to come to the aid of his friend Lazarus, who was deathly ill. Jesus appeared to ignore the request, which mystified His disciples and dumbfounded Lazarus' sisters Mary and Martha.

Jesus comment, however, was that through Lazarus' death God would be glorified.

I am confident that God will be glorified even in my Mother's death, and that her death was in God's good time.

Where is the logic in death? Why would God take someone young and strong, full of hopes and dreams, and then age them and allow them to become ill and to die?

Scripture solves that mystery for us when we read Romans:

"For by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned."

Much as we as humans hate to admit it, we are not inherently good; we are inherently sinful. Scripture reveals to us a Holy God, one who cannot tolerate the presence of sin. And so, as sinful men, we are not qualified or able to stand in the presence of God. To do so in our sinfulness will only result in our destruction.

And so here is some more of God's logic, perhaps very foreign and distasteful to our ears:

Ecclesiastes 7:1-4 says:

A good name is better than a good ointment, And the day of death is better than the day of one's birth.

It is better to go to a house of mourning Than to go to a house of feasting, Because that is the end of every man, And the living takes it to heart.

Sorrow is better than laughter, For when a face is sad a heart may be happy. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, While the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.

How can this be? Can we really believe that the day of Eleanor's death was better for her than the day of her birth?

Listen to the logic of God's Word in what Jesus said in His sermon on the mount:

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" - Jesus

We mourn today for Eleanor, and this is to be expected because we will miss her. I already miss her encouragement and her expressions of confidence in me and her pride in my accomplishments.

However, in our mourning, I pray that we will be reminded of our own sins, that we may mourn over our own failure to please God, and that we may set our hope entirely on Jesus Who conquered death, and Who is the only One who can make us fit to stand in God's presence.

But where is the logic in death? One day the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, came to Jesus trying to confound Him and to trip Him up.

They posed a riddle about seven brothers who all married the same woman, one after another, at the death of the previous husband.

The point I wish to make is that Jesus had a succinct observation about God's logic as revealed in Scripture. Jesus pointed out what God said to Moses when Moses stood before the burning bush.

"I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" said God to Moses, hundreds of years after those patriarchs had died and were buried.

Jesus' commentary on that was "God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the Living"

And so, I would like to use God's logic to make this extended observation today.

Jesus was the God of my grandmother Teresa and my grandfather Ralph. They raised my mother Eleanor to know and love Jesus as well, and so I am confident because of that and by my mother's own confession that Jesus is her God.

Because God is God of the living, I am confident that even though Eleanor's body lies asleep before us in a box, my mother's spirit is alive and well in the very presence of Jesus.

Jesus Christ is my grandson Skylar's God, and so I am confident that Skylar is with Jesus, and that - by logical extension - Mom is reunited with Skylar, whom she dearly loved and over whom she wept, as well.

Jesus Christ is God to my grandparents. Because Jesus is God of the living, they are with Him - and by logical extension - I wish I could have seen the reunion of Mom and my grandma and grandpa Teresa and Ralph!

I found something else in Mom's bible, a note from her mother Teresa referencing Acts 4:12:

"Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved."

Lest you think that "being saved" is a quaint and trite expression, let me bring it into the 21st century for you.

I've worked with computers for many years, and as time has gone on computers have come into more and more widespread use. And so, let me use a computer analogy: if you are working on a file and the power goes off, you will lose that file unless you have saved it.

God is the author; we are the files. If we reach the last day of our life, or the last day of this world, without God saving us, we will be just like that file. It doesn't much matter what happens next - we will be dead lost.

But if Jesus Christ is your God, as he is Abraham's God and Isaac's God and Jacob's God, Teresa and Ralph's God, and Skylar's God and Eleanor's God, then your life will go on forever, because God is the God of the living, not of the dead.

Is Jesus Christ your God today? Do you have the confidence that, if you should be the next one in a box in front of an audience of mourners, your spirit would be safe at home with God? Jesus is the God of the living, not the God of the dead - are you living in Him, or are you still dead in trespasses and sins?

I invite any of you, you who have come today to honor Eleanor’s memory; if you have any questions about your personal standing before God, please find a time today to talk to me about it. I know Mom was very fond of many of you and counted you as her friends, and I believe that it would be her desire that you also one day join her in the presence of Jesus.