James 4:13-17
Funeral Service for James Sulton
Introduction
In one of his books, A.M. Hunter, the New Testament scholar, relates the story of a dying man who asked his Christian doctor to tell him something about the place to which he was going. As the doctor fumbled for a reply, he heard a scratching at the door, and he had his answer. “Do you hear that?” he asked his patient. “It’s my dog. I left him downstairs, but he has grown impatient, and has come up and hears my voice. He has no notion what is inside this door, but he knows that I am here. Isn’t it the same with you? You don’t know what lies beyond the Door, but you know that your Master is there.”
Today as we gather here to honor and lay to rest the body of James Sulton, we do so on the one hand with sad and heavy hearts: sad and heavy because from this side of heaven we lose a friend, brother, a grandfather, a father, and husband. However, as sad as we are, we rejoice on the other hand because those who knew him best knew that with great anticipation he stood on this side of the door wanting to be with his Master.
Preparing for this time I tried to think of some favorite memory I shared with Brother Sulton, but what I loved best about him were the times around the table at Catfish King or at the River Bend Café, talking about the Bible and church and the Lord. I loved the way he would get fired up about something and get louder and louder until Gwen would elbow him and say, “Tom! Be quiet! Nobody wants to hear you preaching.” One day we were eating and I asked him a question about some thing I had been working on and he looked over at Gwen with that sheepish grin and said to me, “Well brother…I’d like to answer that, but Gwen told me I couldn’t talk about the Bible at lunch today.”
My heart goes out to you Gwen, and to all of you who loved him so dearly. I know that others here today hurt for you, and we want each of you as family to know that you are in our thoughts and prayers. There is no doubt in my mind that if it were possible, those who have come today to support you would take away the pain and loss that you feel. Death is a sure reality in this life. The writer of Hebrews said, “It is appointed unto man once to die, and after this, the judgment.” The scriptures speak the same truth in James 4 when they record:
“Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil. Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”
The text is a warning against presuming on tomorrow; on forming plans stretching into the future without a proper sense of the uncertainty of life and our absolute dependence on God. All plans are wrong if they are formed in this attitude. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Our life is like a vapor. It is frail and uncertain.
“If the Lord wills” is the proper attitude. He alone can keep us alive and make us prosperous. You might say: God didn’t prosper me – I worked hard for what I have. But the Bible says, “But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is he that gives you power to get wealth.” God alone keeps you alive and prospers you. He can mess up the best of plans you can make. In this text, the writer gives us a proper view of life. The passage I have read and want you to consider ought to help you and remind you of two things:
Life is a Gift
James said that life is a vapor, it appears for a little while and then it is over. Maybe you don’t think about your days like that, but every day you live is a gift from God. He has the power to give you days, and it is in His hand to take them from you. Life is a gift from God. Like every gift you receive, it is up to you how you use it. Somebody once said that life is like a coin, you can spend it any way you choose, but you only get to spend it once.
How will you spend your days? I have thought a lot about Brother Sulton and have listened to your stories about him. He was a man who had a great love for life, and he enjoyed the days God gave him. Do you know why he enjoyed his days in a world where so many people are living such miserable, boring lives?
Because his life had great purpose
You know the whole world is caught up in this vicious cycle of buying, selling and getting gain. Every day you and millions of others get out of bed every morning, choke down a bite of breakfast and run off to make a living. We work to spend, then we go work some more.
What’s sad is that most people will never see beyond that, but the Bible teaches that there is so much more to life than running the rat race. We were created for a relationship with God, and in that relationship we find our purpose. You see, each of us is born alienated from God because of our sin condition. We are born sinners, and that sin separates us from God. Paul said that the “wages of sin is death,” separation from God, “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” In other words, because of our sin we owe a debt to God that we can’t possibly pay, so God sent His Son Jesus to pay it for us that we might be reconciled to Him.
I don’t know how old he was, but I know from his personal testimony that there came a day in his life when James Sulton understood that because of his sin he had offended God. He understood that his sin had caused the death of Jesus Christ. He repented of his sin and trusted Christ as his personal Savior. But when he did that, he didn’t just jump right back into the rat race. He loved to tell me about the new purpose that his new life in Christ offered.
“If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation…now then we are ambassadors for Christ…”
He knew his life’s purpose was to reconcile other people to Jesus Christ. He talked to people about Jesus. He sang to people about Jesus. He preached to people about Jesus. He lived a loving, joy-filled testimony before others for Jesus.
Did it bother him to spend his days this way? Not at all – because he understood that life is a gift. There’s another reason he enjoyed the days God gave him.
Because he understood that his problems were nothing more than light afflictions
More than any other Scripture he quoted to me was 2 Corinthians 4:17.
“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”
When Paul was talking about affliction – he wasn’t talking about petty bellyaching and such. He was talking about real affliction: real pain and suffering. He was talking about prison sentences, slander, those who took advantage of him, the ones who beat and mocked him. He was talking about being an outcast among his own people, being rejected the way he was. He was talking about the whippings and lashing and beatings. He was talking about the stonings, the shipwrecks, the constant traveling and not having a home. He was referring to the constant threat of living in the wild, of having to go hungry because he was broke or because no one would offer to feed him. He was taking about sleeping outside in the harsh winters and going without decent clothes and shelter.
We talk about light afflictions: about how we can’t get a good parking place at Wal-Mart or how someone is going to keep you from getting down the street a couple of minutes faster. We complain because our insurance doesn’t pick up all the tab or because the cell phones won’t reach who we’re trying to call. Afflictions? If Paul endured all he did and could still call them light – then how are we to view ours?
I don’t mean to belittle anyone or suggest that your afflictions aren’t real – only that we need a new perspective. I went over to visit Brother Sulton one day after he was moved into his new bed by the window. He had a new roommate that was yelling and moaning and groaning and keeping him up all the time. Brother Sulton told me about how the man was so disagreeable and how he was hard to live with and I remember feeling so sorry for him having to live under those conditions. He was right…that man was miserable and was making everyone else miserable.
I was trying to empathize with Sulton when he told me, “Well brother, I suppose that this is just one of my light afflictions. It might be that God wants me to suffer a little bit so I might minister to him. I can talk to him about the Lord, and if need be God just wants me to suffer a little bit so someone else won’t have to.
You see, it’s all about perspective. He was missing a leg, but he said it was a light affliction. When he got to where he couldn’t read, he called it a light affliction. When his foot got infected, he called it a light affliction. When we had trouble getting him around in that wheelchair he said it was his light affliction. Every time I visited him in the hospital he told me he was experiencing some light affliction. “Though our outward man is perishing – our inward man can be renewed day by day when you remember that your afflictions are light.”
How could he keep a song in his heart? How could he sing Amazing Grace and Victory in Jesus when he was obviously hurting like he was? Because he considered his afflictions to be light afflictions.
Because his hope lay beyond the grave
He didn’t just consider those things to be light afflictions. He believed the rest of that verse and took great comfort in it. Those light afflictions he said were “but for a moment,” and they worked for him “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” Sulton said, “Glory, brother! That’s what waits for me. I’m just suffering these light afflictions for a little while so I’ll have glory!” Then he’d quote Romans 8:18.
“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”
Listen to me: you can dress that old body of yours up all you want. You can take it to the gym and feed it salad till you grow long ears, but you’re still destined for the grave. But if you know Christ as your Savior then your future is bright! When you suffer like this man did, do you know how you spell relief? Glory!
James said that life is a gift, and when we understand that we were created for a wonderful purpose, that our afflictions are light and that our hope lies beyond the grave we can really live with great joy, enjoying the life that’s be given to us. Not only is life a gift, but…
The Grave Awaits Us
While former president John Quincy Adams was taking a walk one morning, he met a friend who asked him, “How is John Quincy Adams this morning?” The president replied, “John Quincy Adams is fine, but this old house I live in is getting pretty rickety.”
That’s true of all of us. Time takes its toll on the human body, and life soon vanishes away. People keep asking me how Sulton died. Was it his heart? His diabetes? Staff infection? Too many toxins in his body? Bed sores? Lack of nutrition? Kidney failure? I know we like to know and in some cases we need to know, but what difference does knowing really make? The reality is that it doesn’t matter what killed him. What matters is that you understand that he died, and like every human being, we all die. We somehow think that if we are young and strong and healthy that we have many years ahead of us, but you only have to watch the evening news or read the daily papers to know that’s just not true.
Many die young, many die perfectly healthy, and even those who live good long lives never dreamed the years would pass so quickly. Think about your own life. I would dare say that your life, especially the years since adulthood have been racing by with increasing speed. It seems like just a few weeks ago I was watching this brother preach from his scooter, but it’s been four years, and time isn’t slowing down a bit.
Death has a place in the grand scheme of things. It is a sentence that has been passed on all humanity. Following His creation of man and woman, God warned against rebellion by saying that in the moment rebellion came man would “surely die.” When human rebellion passed from the realm of possibility to the realm of reality, death entered the human story and God proclaimed, “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.”
Man’s sin, then, is the source of death. And since all have sinned, all will die. Whatever path you take in life the end will always be death. Death is our constant reminder that there is more to this life than what we can physically pursue. Whether you live or die right here in Denison, whether you fly to the moon, no matter how much or little you accomplish in this life, it makes no difference so far as the end is concerned. The grave awaits us all. Medicine may lengthen your life, doctors may do wonders, but we will at last die. Life is but a vapor. The writer of Hebrews tells us, warns us, “It is appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment.”
To live and die right we must realize that God is sovereign. Instead of presuming upon or boasting about tomorrow, we ought to say, “If God wills” we will live and work and prosper. To acknowledge the sovereignty of God makes all the difference in the way we live and the way we die. But there are some other things you need to acknowledge. I’ve already told you that Sulton never left any doubts about where he stood with God. He had trusted Jesus Christ as his Savior, loved the Lord more than anything in this life and wanted to be with Him for all eternity.
He was sure, but his surety wasn’t based on the good life he lived. It wasn’t the absence of sin or vice. Those songs he sang didn’t impress God. It wasn’t his faithfulness to church and to preaching. It wasn’t because he loved preachers or did good deeds.
I don’t mean any disrespect, but Brother Sulton was not a perfect man. He had his faults, just as you and I do, but he was able and willing to admit those faults to himself and to Christ, and in that moment of repentance he confessed them to God and trusted Christ to save him.
I would do this great man’s life and love a disservice if I did not plead with you today to put your faith in Christ and plead with those of you who are believers to live your days for his glory. We’re not going to have an invitation in this service, but I or any one of the preachers who is here today would be glad to talk with you about your relationship with God.
Almost every Sunday he was here in church, I would come to shake Brother Sulton’s hand. When I did he would tell me, “Brother, you’re looking sharp today. You’re looking mighty fine today.” It was a joke we shared because you see, one day as we were talking he told me he couldn’t see. He didn’t know if I looked sharp or not!
But I’ll tell you this: the next time I see him we’ll both be in glory, and we’ll be able to say to one another with perfect vision, “Brother, you’re looking mighty fine today.” I know he’s anxious to see the rest of you in glory too.
Today many of you are saying goodbye to a man who was very dear to you. For Gwen and those of us who are believers in Christ, we only say “I’ll see you later.” At any rate, the days and weeks ahead will no doubt be difficult. In those hours, turn to the One who loves you and cares for you. Cling to Christ for all your needs. Hold his hand as you walk through this valley, and let us look to Him who is the Author and Finisher of our faith.
