l Song #1 Amazing Grace
Ecclesiastes 3:1-2
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
Purpose of Funerals
1. Honor a loved one
2. Comfort a family
3. Reconnect with priorities – Love God; Love Neighbor
4. To remember
a. We generally want to remember our past.
• Story-tellers
• Photo albums
• Monuments
b. We also want to be remembered – we give pictures and gifts to be remembered.
c. Irony – We will eventually be forgotten
Memory is important –
1. Events from our past shape us for today.
2. God wants us to remember Him – Ecclesiastes 12:1; Luke 22:19;
3. God wants us to remember his words – Luke 24:8; Romans 1.16
4. God wants us to remember his works –the LORD is gracious and merciful. Psalm 111:4
5. God wants us to remember his Son – Luke 22:19
A dilemma – We will be forgotten (Ecclesiastes 2:16-17)
16 For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! 17 So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.
1. People may and will forget us
2. People we have touched will remember us while they live
3. God never forgets us. Precious (costly) in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints (Psalm 116.15).
Funerals remind us of:
1. The Certainty of Death (Ecclesiastes 9:5)
2. The Shortness of life (James 4:14)
3. The Shortage of life (John 10:10)
4. The Sovereignty of God and Reality of Eternity.
Obituary
Song #2 – When the Roll is Called Up Yonder
Eulogy
2 Timothy 2:1-8
You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, 2 and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. 3 Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 4 No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. 5 An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. 6 It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. 7 Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.
Loy wasn’t a “soldier.” He was a “sailor.” But the military concept applies to each of our branches with a biblical application.
Good Military Personnel:
1. Must be strong (v.1)
2. Submit to authority (v.2)
3. Shares in Suffering (v. 3)
4. Sees his mission (v. 4)
Reservists in the US Military, none in Christ’s service.
Christians Serve God All Because of Grace (v. 1)
An Appeal through Amazing Grace
John Newton wrote Amazing Grace
He never forgot what God did for him. Until the day he died he always referred to himself as “The old African slave trader” or “The old blasphemer.” That is what he was before grace.
Over his fireplace in Olney, England, where he was a Pastor for 16 years, there was a plaque that he always saw on his way in or out of his study. It read: “Thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt and the LORD they God redeemed thee. Deuteronomy 15.15.” an old English way of saying I do not want to forget what God did for me. He never did.
Amazing Grace, was written in 1773. It was written as many of John Newton’s songs. When he would preach a sermon, he would often write a hymn to go along with it.
We would not recognize the song as Newton presented it to his congregation. In that day, they would write the words to the hymn and then find a tune to go with it. Amazing Grace had 20 tunes before it received the melody we are familiar with.
There are three verses of the hymn that Newton wrote that we rarely sing and most have never heard. There is a verse that we sing that Newton did not write. In fact, he never heard of the verse because it was written after his death – “When we’ve been there 10,000 years. . .” Edwin Othello Excel put these words to the hymn after finding them in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slave novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Amazing Grace was a part of hymn books through the 19th century. Most did not think much about it. However, something happened in 1970 that catapulted it into the mainstream of life. Judy Collins’ a capella single was released in December of that year. In January, 1971 Amazing Grace was #1 in GB and the USA, nearly 200 years after its writing.
Since then Amazing Grace has been heard on worldwide coverage of Olympic Games; rendered three times during the inauguration ceremonies of GW Bush; on 9.11 – was heard all over the country.
Ephesians 2:1-10
I. God’s Grace is Available (1-5)
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
Even in our antagonism to God With clarity – not hidden
II. God’s Grace is Able (4-7)
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
To give us a new start; to save us eternally
III. God’s Grace is Amazing (8-10)
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Amount – Enough for all; Cost – John 3:16
Loy Smith once named Jesus as his savior; put him on in baptism; and relied on the grace of God – just like the rest of us must.
Prayer
Video
Military Honors
Closing Remarks
Dismissal Song #3 – I’ll Fly Away
