I recently preached this sermon at the funeral of my brother-in-law, designated herein as "V." I've taken out a lot of personal stuff. The text is that famous first periocope in Ecclesiastes 3.
Many of us here remember the ‘60’s – how can we forget them! What a time! As we read the first lesson from Ecclesiastes, I’m sure many if not all of us were reminded of the Bob Dylan song made famous by The Byrds, “Turn, Turn, Turn”….
As the passage
says, we live in seasons, and all our seasons have a purpose, and every purpose
is under heaven. God sees it all, he
knows about it all, and he is ultimately seeking our good in it all – as hard
as that may be to believe at times. It’s
easy enough to see how our birth was good, but death is not a good thing: it’s
a curse brought upon us by the sin of Adam and Eve. But, however or whenever our death comes, God
is still good and He is still watching over his purpose under heaven….
But let’s focus
for a few minutes on how the passage starts out: “a time to be born, and a time
to die.” This speaks of a number of
things, doesn’t it. For every one of us,
there was a season and a time for our birth.
And for every one of us, there is a season and time under heaven for our
death. As the Psalmist says, “my times
are in your hands.” To us, this is all a
mystery. There may be times when we ask,
“Why was I born?” And we can certainly
have lots of questions about death: “Why now?
Why like this?”
Yet, somehow, God has
a purpose for our birth and even for our death.
And in it all, whatever our questions, we know he purposes good. God did not bring you into this world to do
you harm but good. The apostle James
says in the first chapter of his letter in the NT:
“God cannot be
tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. … 16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.
17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from
the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of
turning.” In other words, God is good
through and through.
In this fallen
world, bad things can happen to us and we ourselves can do bad things. But that is not God’s ultimate purpose for
bringing us into this world.
In fulfilling his
purpose he also brought us into this world at just the right time; He does that
with everybody – He did it with his own Son, as the Bible says, “But when the
fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son.” As for the time of our death, we could say
God gives us some leeway. Going back to
Jesus, consider his death. Jesus died
because wicked people killed him. They didn’t
have to, but God let them do what they wanted to do. But here’s the mystery; Jesus spoke of his
death as the hour appointed for him by his Father; the hour that he would save
his people from their sins. Somehow, in
spite of leaving people leeway to do what they want, God’s purpose for our
salvation, under heaven, was still done.
This can be a
comfort to us. The time of V.’s death
was no accident. It was no chance. It wasn’t just because COVID was around. There was a good purpose under heaven for it;
and it was the hour that our Father in heaven had long appointed. It was simply time for V. to come home. God is good; He’s been good in giving V. to
us, and he is good in taking V. home.
Now this is a
loving family, and I cannot imagine any of us wants to find ourselves on the
last day, when Jesus returns, and raises us from the dead and gives us our bodies
back again, and brings us before his judgment – I can’t imagine any of us wants
to find ourselves alive on that day and we not be together, because this one or
that one is on the wrong side of Jesus, the Judge. There is a time for each of us to die. Then will follow the judgment – there’s a
time for that too. And Jesus promises us
that, if we will lose our lives for his sake, we can be on the right side of
his judgment. Jesus calls us today to
give up ourselves in this life, so we can have our true selves back, forever;
and that all who believe in him, raised back to life, can look each other in
the eye again, and shake each other’s hands again, and hear each other’s voices
again. What a gift. God purposes this blessing for us all. He wants us to see each other again. But what we do with our lives, and what we do
with Jesus, is up to us.
[image is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TheByrdsTurnTurnTurn.jpg - used only to illustrate the recording mentioned in this article above.]
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