READING OF SCRIPTURE
PRAYER
Richard and Sarah Jane (his wife) were farmers. Almost everything they touched had to do with farming. They were involved with Farm Bureau and 4H, and the only vacation they took every year was to the State Fair. And at 4H – Richard did farmer stuff. He was in charge of the hog barns, and tractor maintenance. He was so into farming that one of his favorite past-times was going to tractor-pulls. You could say Richard LOVED farming. And he’d have fully understood the passage I read for us today.
“Someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.”
This passage had a special appeal to a man like Richard, because Richard was a Christian, a man who wanted God to run his life. For Richard – God was his source of life. He literally believed that God had promised him a resurrection. That the day was going to come when the Lord would descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And Richard would rise from the grave to live with Jesus forever.
That’s why, every Sunday Richard was in Church. He and Sarah Jane were faithful members of the Indian Creek Christian church. He might go to an all-night tractor pull the night before – but he was up for church every Sunday. It was so obvious, the church gave him a 40 year perfect attendance pin.
Eventually, he and Sarah Jane started coming to Logansport. The always came to the 1st service because they didn’t like the modern music. But even after he went to Woodbridge (a local nursing home) and our bus couldn’t get him he came to the 2nd service… and just put up with the music, because Jesus meant so much to him he would NEVER miss church.
I remember Richard as a gentle and kind man. He was the kind of guy most folks would say “If anybody would deserve to get to heaven… it would be Richard.” The problem is… that’s not the way it works. Folks don’t get into heaven because they’ve been decent folks. People who think that way may figure – yes, they’ve sinned but if they can just be good enough... God just MIGHT let them in.
But the Bible teaches that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. No one can ever be GOOD ENOUGH to be good enough to earn heaven. If they could, their own self-righteousness would have bought ticket and God couldn’t keep them out if He wanted to.
ILLUS: On your way into the funeral home, you may have noticed a pair of torn up overalls draped over one of the tables. For those who don’t know the story, Richard was out farming one evening and was struck with lightning – and it had a lasting affect on him. It shredded his clothes (he kept them in a special drawer from that day on), put a hole in his ear drum, cleared his sinuses and it reminded him of the frailty of life. He didn’t deserve to survive that strike. And he didn’t deserve to be saved either.
ILLUS: Some time back I came up with an illustration that best explains that Biblical truth: At most funerals there are flowers that friends and family have purchased to express their love for the dearly departed and their family. Some of these are cut flowers – and they are perhaps the most beautiful because there is such a collection of colors and shapes. Others are simple plants, but beautiful and elegant in their own way. All these are purchased because of their beauty – their “fruit” if you will.
Let’s say that the family were to say to me that I could take some of the cut flowers home. I take them home, put them in a vase, put the vase in the window and faithfully water it each day. What will they look like in a month? They’d be dead. But if I took home the plant and placed it in the sun and faithfully watered it… in a month it would still be alive. What’s the difference? The plants have roots, the cut flowers don’t. It’s the root, not the fruit, that gives life. In the same way, it’s our root in Jesus that gives us life… not the fruit of our good deeds.
The basic teaching of Scripture is that all our good deeds are like filthy rags. The Bible says we have to take those old rags off and wash away our sins in blood Jesus. And that’s what Baptism is all about. Baptism reenacts the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
ROMANS 6 says “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
The beauty of baptism is that God teaches us that not only is that the point at which our sins are buried in a watery grave, but it also is the time when we’re reminded that death will not keep us in the grave. Just as we rose from the waters of baptism, so also – when Jesus returns - we will rise from the dead. No grave will hold us!
And that is what our text in I Corinthians 15 tells us:
“Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. ‘O grave, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’”
One of Richard’s favorite hymns was the doxology – a hymn sung at the close of many old church services. I’d like you to sing it with me now:
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
PRAYER
