The Festival of Holy Trinity                                                                                                                                     

 

Click HERE for the Audio of Today's Sermon.

 The Festival of Pentecost

Click here for the audio of today's sermon.

 Jubilate

The Fourth Sunday of Easter

Click here for the audio of today's sermon.

Jublilate, Cantate, Rogate: These are the names of the next three Sundays beginning with today.  As the past few Sundays have been, these Sundays are named in Latin. So, here is your Latin lesson for the day. We begin with a bit of English grammar.

A sentence is made up of a subject and a predicate. The subject does the acting and the predicate tells you what the subject does. Every sentence, no matter how long it is, can be broken down into a subject and a predicate: “Frank walked” - Frank is the subject, walked is what Frank did (that’s the predicate). If one of those things is missing, the sentence is considered improper, not complete.

There is, however, one group of improper sentences that is used properly. These sentences are called imperatives. An imperative is a command in which the subject is not specifically stated but simply understood. An example of an imperative is, “Clean up that mess!” The subject is “you,” but it is not stated, it is understood:  “You, clean up that mess!”

Quasimodo Geniti Sermon 

The Second Sunday of Easter

"Stop being an unbeliever and believe!"

Click HERE for the audio of today's sermon.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

The resurrection is our Victory! The resurrection of Jesus proves He is exactly who He says He is: The Son of God. The resurrection proves that God accepted His Son's sacrifice on the cross for your sins and guilt. The resurrection proves that His blood and death was sufficient payment to forgive all your sins. The resurrection proves that Jesus is the Lord over sin and death and the devil. The resurrection proves that Jesus is the God who keeps His promises. The resurrection proves that all of your loved-ones who have gone on ahead into glory - you will see them again, they will rise from the dead just as Jesus promised. The resurrection proves that YOU will rise from the dead, just as Jesus promised. The Resurrection proves that the Holy Christian Faith is the one true faith, the only true religion, the only faith that can save. The resurrection proves that gathering here again and again around the Holy Word and Sacraments, which are the living presence of the living Christ among us now, is not futile but is the very power of God for eternal life for you. This is the resurrected Christ you hear, it is the living Jesus who is in the water of Baptism, it is the God who died but now lives who gives you His body and blood to eat. The resurrection is the heart and living soul of the Christian faith, without it there is no Christian faith, without it you are to be pitied most of all people, without it I am standing up here lying about God. The resurrection proves that God is the God who has power even over death and the grave and that you need not mourn as others do who have no hope. The resurrection proves that everything we have been given, every shred of hope we cling to at the grave, every word of divine encouragement we long to hear to strengthen our faith is true and has the power to do exactly what God says it will. The resurrection proves all of this.

 Easter Sunday Sermon

Click HERE for the audio of today's Sermon

No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’” (Luke 16:30-31)

The rich man in hell was trying to convince Abraham to send poor Lazarus to warn his brothers. But they already had the Word of God, Moses and the prophets. If they would not believe the Word, why would they believe even if someone were to rise from the dead?

What do you suppose would happen if we had a funeral for someone and everyone in the community saw him dead and buried and a few days later we invited the town to come and see this man who was dead and is now alive again? I suspect people wouldn't believe it. It was some kind of a trick. He wasn't really dead, he was faking it, it was all staged. Someone stole the body.

It is not through seeing with the eyes that faith. It is through the Word of God. You do not believe that your body and the bodies of your loved ones will rise again on the last day, you do not even believe that the body of Jesus rose from the dead because you saw it. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe! It is only by hearing the Word that you believe. The first two verses in Paul's great resurrection chapter, 1 Cor 15, from which our epistle came today, is: “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.” Sounds a lot like Romans 10, doesn't it: “Faith comes by hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ.”

Oculi Sunday Sermon (Lent 3)

 Click Here for the Audio of Today's Sermon

 

Oculi - The Third Sunday in Lent 

My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he will pluck my feet out of the net.

“What about the ROUS.’s,” Buttercup asks Wesley as they make their way through the Fire Swamp. “Rodents of Unusual Size?” He replies. “I don’t think they exist.” Fans of The Princess Bride know what happened in the split second after Wesley declares the ROUS’s don’t exist. He is attacked by one and almost dies in the fight. “I don’t think they exist,” he says. But they do exist.

One of the devil’s most effective tactics is to get people to think he doesn’t really exist. Like Wesley with the ROUS’s, he has heard of them and knows the name, but still, they don’t really exist. Even many Christians, while they have heard of the devil and know his name, well, “The devil? I don’t think he exists.” Or at least they don’t believe he has any real power in this world. They do, on the other hand, believe God exists and that He does have power in this world so the devil wins when the believe this lie: It is God’s fault when bad things happen, when there is evil in the world. Like Wesley in the Fire Swamp, the evil attack comes suddenly and viciously and if it isn’t the ROUS’s, if it isn’t the devil, then must be God’s fault when I suffer.

Quinquagesima Sunday Sermon

Quinquagesima: The Last Sunday before Lent

Click Here for the Audio of this Sermon

Click Here for the Propers for Quinquagesima

Click Here for this Sunday's Bulletin

Taking the twelve, [Jesus] said to them, "See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise." But they understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.

I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the virgin Mary, is my Lord. With these words the Christian Church confesses the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ is, at the same time, both God and man.

Sexagesima Sermon

Click Here for the Audio of Today's Sermon.

 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.  Let us therefore strive to enter that rest. 

About this time of year my thoughts start turning to the open road with a motorcycle under me and a wife in the seat behind (reminding me I should have turned at that last corner!). We haven’t been on a proper motorcycle trip for a couple of years and I miss it. Jane’s and my longest trip on our bike was three weeks in 2019 when we took our trip to South Carolina. Our longest day on the bike, however, was a year before that when we went to Colorado and Utah. It was on our way back and we stayed in a little town by the name of Baggs, WY 0n the Colorado border. We were on the way back home and we got on the bike at about 8:00 that morning and when we finally parked it for the night it was 2:30 in the morning, we had covered nearly 800 miles.

I have said before that motorcycle trips are not an easy way to travel. It is slower than a car because you need to stop for gas more often and take a lot of breaks to stretch and walk around, at times its pretty rough, you are out in the weather and the sun beats down on you and the wind batters you and it is physically exhausting.

A strange thing happens on a motorcycle trip. On the way out all that discomfort toughens you up. When you start out you can probably spend at most five hours in the saddle. By the time you are heading home you are saddle-hardened and it gets easier. So that day from Baggs we spent nearly 15 hours on the bike.

The second thing that happens on a motorcycle trip is the strange turn of mind a little more than halfway through. Eventually all the battering of the bike ride gets you longing for home. The reason we spent 15 hours on the bike after we left Baggs that morning is that, by that time on our trip, both Jane and I just wanted to get home. We were tired of hotel beds and restaurant food and, as much as I love being on the bike on the open road, we were tired of the road. Just get us home, Lord, we prayed, we just want to get home.

Life is kind of like that, isn’t it? It’s a blast, life is. We have lots of days that we go to bed with a smile and look forward to the next day with great anticipation. Lots of happy times with family and friends, lots of good days on the open road when the weather is perfect and the road is smooth and it just makes you smile. But the next day can be a bugger. Suddenly you are bucking a 40 mile an hour crosswind and 100 degrees on a black road and thunderstorms are building in front of you – everything seems against you. Along with the joys, life is filled with afflictions and pains and sorrows and hardships, you all know that. Some of those times can be really tough and really hard to bear, they put you through the ringer, pull sobs of grief out of you, make you ache all over as they soak you one minute and roast you the next and the wind of adversity batters you.

These times of affliction and pain are one of the ways God plows the soil of our souls and gets us ready for the Seed of His Word. Pain and suffering have a way like nothing else in a Christian’s life to plunge us back into the Word of God, to seek out His promises in Jesus. When the pain of the road hits we want to hear our Father’s voice and rest in His embrace — the Sabbath rest, that Hebrews talks of - that place, in His Word, where God gives those blessed promises – the adversities and sorrows of life make us receptive to those things. You don’t need God if you can make it on your own, so God will plow us by showing us from time to time that we can’t make it on our own, that we need Him, we need the presence of Christ in us through His Word to sustain us on the way.

When we are young, these adversities of life serve to toughen us up and teach us the way of the faith and give us Christian maturity. I often say when working with young pastors, and I apply these words to my young pastor self too as I look back on my pastoral life, a man shouldn’t be a pastor until he’s been a pastor for 10 years. Walking with the saints through the joys and sorrows of life and all the situations you encounter on the way may not always be pleasant for a pastor, but it toughens a pastor up, teaches him, prepares him to be able to face things in life without losing his grip and teaches him how to be a Christian consolation to other people. I can tell you that my pastoral practice has changed a lot since my younger days as a pastor. Not only my afflictions, but the afflictions of the saints have matured my faith and my pastoral presence.

The same is true for all of God’s people. As we flee to the Word of God for our refuge in times of distress, we learn how to make that Word our own consolation and then apply that consolation to others that God puts in our way – who, for instance, can speak consolation to Christian parents who have lost a child to death better than other Christian parents who have already gone through that terrible sorrow and whom God has kept safe in His Word? Paul said in 2 Corinthians: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”

Did you know that your suffering and afflictions join you to the sufferings of Christ? Your suffering is holy because it has been redeemed by the blood of Jesus just like every other aspect of your life. By that affliction you are joined with Christ and through it God teaches you how to be a consolation to others who are going through similar things. In other words, suffering toughens us up as Christians, it helps us understand God’s promises in Christ and gets us ready for the next day on the road and all those whom God will put in our path that we may have the opportunity to console with Christ.

But a strange thing happens in life, and you who are old enough have maybe experienced this. Eventually the afflictions and pains and sorrows of life serve not so much to make you tougher, although they continue to do that, but they start to turn our hearts and thoughts toward home. Instead of being a challenge to face, they start to remind us just how much we are strangers here in this world. Baggs might be a nice town, but it’s not home. This world may be nice enough in many ways, but it’s just not home, is it?  Eventually the Christian soul just gets tired, weary of life in this broken and sinful world, worn down by the attacks of Satan and just longs to be home where there is peace and joy and we can see Jesus and be in our Father’s house and rest from our labors.

The day is coming when our ride will be done and we can put away the boots and hang up the leathers and relax because we are home. But you and I, friends, we are still on the road here, still heading home from Baggs. Here God continues to plow the soil to make it just right for the seed. And here God continues to plant that seed in us as He gives us His Word and, kept by that Word, here He uses the afflictions of life to toughen us up for the ride and, eventually, to turn our hearts toward home and give us the stamina for that last day, that long last ride until we stand safely home in our Father’s glorious house.

But there is one more thing God does with the afflictions of life that is even more important — afflictions in life make us lean hard on Jesus. Paul said this when speaking of that unknown affliction he had that was making his trip hard, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

Strangely, Paul boasted of his suffering. That’s something that is completely foreign to the way people think, and this isn’t the only place Paul speaks like this of suffering. In Romans 5 he speaks of the toughening-up aspect of suffering and the longing for home aspect of it, as he points us to Jesus. Listen to what he says there: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

In the end, our suffering teaches us how weak we really are on our own, how unable to face life without God’s help. Suffering teaches us to throw ourselves upon our Lord Jesus Christ and rely upon His grace. Suffering makes us flee to where He is for us in His mercy, His forgiving love, His strength for today and His hope for tomorrow.

When Hebrews says there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, God is talking there of that rest we have right now, right here, in the middle of all of our afflictions and sorrows and pains. The rest that is a foreshadowing of the final eternal rest we will have in glory. He is talking about the blessed Means of Grace – His holy Word, Baptism, Holy Communion, by which the Holy Spirit keeps us connected to Jesus and gives us a refuge for our weary souls every day we spend on this weary road through life. Here, at the altar, where Jesus is for you, connecting you by Word and Water and Bread and Wine to His death and resurrection for you, here, in His sanctuary, where your Father forgives all your sins ans strengthens you for the road ahead for this day, here where you receive by the ministration of the Holy Spirit all the spiritual strength and energy you need for this day, here is your rest, here is your blessed Sabbath Day.

By the plowing of the soil of our souls, by the planting of the Seed of the Word, by the afflictions and sorrows that toughen us up and turn our hearts toward home and make us lean hard on Jesus, by our Father’s love in the blood and righteousness of Jesus, that great and eternal Sabbath Rest is opened up for the people of God where our labors shall be finished, the sorrows all healed and we shall have that blessed reunion with our dear loved ones who have gone ahead into glory and, most importantly, we will finally see Jesus face to face and rest forever in the perfect peace of His presence.

What’s really a blessing, though, is how the rest we receive here in our Father’s house does get us ready for the next day on the road. When His Word is received by the plowed soil of our souls, the Holy Spirit has a way of giving us the rest we need in His Word and Sacraments to help us through the next day on the road until we get home.

Even though we spend the night in foreign places and unknown beds eating less that satisfactory food when Jane and I are on our motorcycle trips, I am always ready for the next day on the road when I get up in the morning. And so it is for us on the tough road through life. God’s Word fills you with Jesus. Baptism washes you in the blood He shed for you on the cross and gives you new life in His resurrection. His Holy Supper fills you with Jesus’ strength to help you through just one more week in this world.

Eventually you will get home, friends. That’s what we all look forward to. But as long as you are on the road, know that your Father will give you what you need for the day through His blessed Word as we look forward to that day, not too many days from now, when we shall at last be home.

What though the tempest rage,

Heav’n is my home;

Short is my pilgrimage

Heav’n is my home;

And time’s wild wintry blast

Soon shall be over, past;

I shall reach home at last,

Heav’n is my home. 

Thank God for the toughening up. Thank God for the heart longing for home. Thank God for the blessed arms of Jesus to lean on. Through every day and every affliction and sorrow, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, here at the Altar where God gives you Jesus and forgives your sins, and there on the other side where you shall forever be in glory in y our Father’s eternal house.

May God keep you ever until that day through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen!

Jim Marquardt Funeral Sermon

Click Here For the Audio Of the Sermon

Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD. Therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD. (Genesis 10:8-9)

That verse came up once when Jim and I were visiting one Sunday morning. He had missed a Sunday in church, a very unusual thing – if you knew Jim at all you knew he was in church come hell or high water, as the saying goes. But it was deer hunting, so, you know ... neither hell nor high water, but deer hunting. The next Sunday he was in church again, with pictures, and this one was yours, Shay, although I know all the boys had their day at the trigger. Your dad could have taken the shot, but he gave it to you and there lay that buck and your dad was so proud of you – I could almost see him inflate when he showed me that picture and you should have seen his smile. So proud. I told him by bringing his family to church every week and taking his sons hunting he was walking in the footsteps of Nimrod. He was a mighty man because he protected his family from the assaults of the devil by bringing them to where Jesus is for them in Word and Sacrament, where His body and blood is given as the blessed meal of immortality to protect them from Satan’s fury. A mighty man does that for his family.

But don’t forget the mighty hunter part either. He liked his hunting, that’s for sure. So, Jordan and Shay and Peyton and Tyson, and Hanna you can chime in here too, I have two questions for you about your dad this morning. The first is this: Chiefs or Eagles? Now here’s the second: If opening deer hunting was on Super Bowl Sunday, where would your dad be?

I know this is hard for you all right now, but, Steph, you talked about Jim’s legacy the other day when we were visiting, and we’re going to talk about that a little more here in a bit ... and Lincoln, Olivia, and Cameron, bless them, they are just too small to understand what’s going on here, they just want to play and be children, and thank God for the innocence of little children! Would that we could all be like that! Just want to play in the presence of our Father in His house. Watch them closely and you will get just a little taste of what Jesus meant when He said unless we become like little children we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

But I digress here, let me get back on topic. Shay, Jordan, Peyton, Hanna, and Tyson, I know its hard right now, but never lose your love for those things your father loved — go hunting and fishing. Watch football. Root for the Eagles. Cook those smoked ribs. Laugh a lot and play your music just a little bit too loud. Love your family. And most importantly, go to church to receive Jesus in Word and Sacrament because you need what your Father gives you in Jesus: you need the forgiveness of sins and life through His blood and righteousness preached into your ears, poured over you in Baptism and Confession and Absolution, put into your mouth in the holy Sacrament of His body and blood. Jim rejoiced in the gates of eternity and the halls of glory being opened to him in Jesus. You rejoice in that, too, because no matter how bad things get in this world and how deep your grief may be, when you are in Christ, swimming in your baptismal grace, things are going to get better. You know that because your heavenly Father has promised it and He never fails His promises.

So do those things that your Dad loved, honor his memory, and laugh and love life and rejoice in God’s blessings, and live in that legacy of your father in thanksgiving to God. Laugh today, all of you who love Jim. When you gather around the meal, when you are visiting, thank God for the memories, tell stories, talk of his goofiness and his big heart, and laugh. It’s ok. Don’t bury him in a memory hole afraid to even mention his name because it might be uncomfortable. Remember and laugh and continue to enjoy ad love your husband and father; and the laughs will get easier and more heart-warming, I promise you that ... they will ... with time, and with Jesus.

That Sunday when Jim and I were talking hunting, he mentioned how short the season was; if I recall correctly, Shay, you shot that deer on the first day of the season. Why not wait for a bigger one, a better opportunity? Jim said, “I’ve missed enough of those opportunities, Pastor. I’ve learned that when the shot is there you take it.”

As a pastor I tend to be a little cautious with my shots. Heavy on the mercy and maybe a bit slow sometimes to say the things that need saying, taking the shots that need shooting. So, Jim. I’m going to take your advice here today, because I need to take a shot. There is an elephant in this room this morning, and that boy needs to go down, man. He has no place in the gathering of the Saints at a time like this. So I’m going to take the shot.

Yes, my friends in Christ, Christians DO die by suicide.

And I know, I know all the questions that come up. I’ve even heard those questions leveled against family left behind after any kind of death. Probably they could be asked of any number of us here today. Why are you so sad? Don’t you trust Jesus? Where’s your faith? You know the questions and doubts. Many of you have them.

And they may be good questions, but the questions and doubts display a lack of knowledge of the true human condition. If we lived in a perfect world and all had perfect faith and could laugh at adversity and pain and grief with abandon, then maybe those questions might have a place. But this world isn’t perfect, is it? And no one can know the pain another person is going through – even if we have gone through the same thing ourselves, even if you have lost a loved one to death like Steph and Jim’s family have, you cannot rightly say to them that you know what they are going through. You have your pain, they have theirs, and none of us can say we knew what Jim was going through before he died. In this world, fallen and broken as it is by sin and death, we struggle with our faith, it is never perfect, it is always broken somewhere, our trust is shaken like Peter’s walking on the water, the afflictions and pains of life can often take our eyes off Jesus and we begin to sink.

Even the great prophet Job, renown for his patience and faith, struggled? We know him as the guy who could face afflictions in life the likes of which we can barely imagine and respond by saying, “well ... The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” all while whistling a happy tune as he scrapes his boils. Nope. That’s not Job. He had faith, he believed in his God and Father, yes, but it was out of these same believing lips that these words cried out, and hear the despair and horrible doubts and remember, this is Job! Patient Job! “God has .. closed his net about me. Behold, I cry out, ‘Violence!' but I am not answered; I call for help, but there is no justice. He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths... He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope has he pulled up like a tree...”

Do you know what Job was going through? Can you say you know how he felt? No, yet at the same time, Job’s words are your words, aren’t they? My hope is pulled up like a tree ... This was a Christian who said that! And it’s in the Bible! Do you think these could have been Jim’s words last Friday?

So even Christians find themselves doing things they do not want to do. “I do not understand my own actions.” Paul said. Paul, my friends. The apostle. If anyone should have had his act together, it is Paul. But he followed in the train of Job in his struggle with the weakness of this flesh in the face of the difficulties of life in this world. “I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate... I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” Paul said that. The apostle. If anyone should have had his act together it was Paul. But he fell in despair of his own ability to save himself. He was always doing those things he didn’t want to do. Do you think Paul wanted to sin? Do you think Steph and all of Jim’s family want to mourn? Do you think Jim wanted to die? I do not do those things I want to do.

“Oh wretched man that I am. Who will save me from this body of death?” Who will save me? Because I cannot save myself. I am too tangled in the webs of sin and sorrow and death and my hope is pulled up like a tree. I am sinking down like Peter and will soon be drown. Who will save me?

But Job rejoiced in the midst of his despair: “For I know that my Redeemer lives!” And Paul’s answer is, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

And so the broken father throws himself in the dirt at Jesus’ feet. His little boy is oppressed by the demons, they are trying to kill him. He can do nothing to save him, it is out of his power. So he begs Jesus: “If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’? All things are possible for one who believes.”

We don’t know this father’s name, but he is my hero of faith in the Bible. I love this man because he is me, tossed as I often am between belief and unbelief. He is every one of us, He is Jim on Friday as he was torn between life and death, he is you as you struggle with your grief and fear and questions, he is Everyman, who put into words exactly our predicament as we walk the path of sin and death. His words are your words: “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!”

Job, Paul, the nameless father, every one of us in this sin-torn world where the grave yawns before each of us. How we are torn and tossed between the Promises and the doubts! At the same time believer and unbeliever. At the same time saint and sinner. At the same time confident in the Lord's presence and afraid He has forgotten us. At the same time in despair yet filled with joy. Torn always between the mortal and immortal, sin and righteousness, faith and unbelief, trust and doubt, fear and courage. “I do not understand what I am doing!”

“Lord, my faith is little, I’m afraid it’s not up to the task before me. I struggle and doubt and cry and question and feel so terribly alone and afraid. Be my light in the day of darkness. Be my life in the day of my death. Be my courage in the blackness of my fear. Be my confidence in my terrible uncertainty, my strength in my pathetic weakness, the warm glow of eternal love in the cold darkness of my despair. Lord, save me, for my way is swallowed up so I cannot pass, darkness is upon my path, and my hope is pulled up like a tree. “Lord, I believe, Help my unbelief!”

Who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God in Christ Jesus our Lord! As you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, the valley of your doubts and weakness, the valley of sorrow and bitterness, look down, friends, and see in whose footprints you walk; there is the holy blood of God marking them. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me!

The one who goes before you has already walked this way. His nail-pierced hands and feet testify to the price He paid for your sin and guilt. He bore your fear and Satan’s attacks as He sweat great drops of blood in Gethsemane the night He was betrayed. He bore your grievous  despair and horrible questions as He cried out His desperate cry to His Father, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” He took upon Himself the bloody payment required of for your sin and guilt as His blood was poured out upon the earth and His body turned pale and cold in death: “Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit.” 

This is your Savior who laid dead in your grave and made holy the earth in which you will lay the mortal remains of Jim today and one day join him there as we all must. This is Your living Advocate and Redeemer, Whom death and the grave could not hold, who burst forth from the tomb alive again for you, for all. He is your victory, He is your eternal life, He is the answer to all your questions. He never leaves His blood-washed Saints to walk alone through the valley of death.

And we must walk through that valley, just like Jim. We have no choice, the way is closed behind and we must take the next step forward to the end as, in many and various ways, death will take us all. But when Jim took his last steps down that path on Friday he did not walk alone. He struggled under the assaults of the devil and the weakness of his flesh, “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!” You do the  same. But thanks be to God we are not saved because we have a perfect faith; we are saved because we have a perfect Savior. Our hope may be pulled up like a tree and we may struggle with unbelief, but the believing part of us still sings with Job: “I know that my Redeemer lives! What comfort this sweet sentence gives!  He lives and grants me daily breath; He lives, and I shall conquer death; He lives my mansion to prepare; He lives to bring me safely there.”

So on that Friday, as the end of Jim’s walk through the valley of the shadow of death drew near, as he cried out to his Savior, “Help my unbelief!” as, like the little boy in our Gospel, the demons cast him to the ground and he became like a corpse and everyone who saw him said, “He is dead,” well, don’t be deceived by what you see with your eyes, my friends, on that Friday, Jesus took Jim by the hand and lifted him up and he arose ... and the storm was over and there was peace like he had never known and he smiled at the face of his Savior and rested in His embrace. The devil did not win, Jim had already been claimed by Someone stronger than all the hoard of hell; he had already been washed in holy blood that covered all his sins, marked as a child of glory with the water of Baptism, preserved in that eternal hope as God gave Him more and more Jesus as he came to church with his family. It was not the strength of his faith that saved him, it was the strong hands of his living Savior, who still bore the scars of the price He paid for that soul.

And that brings us back to Jim’s legacy. One of my favorite memories of Jim is always going to be last Christmas Eve when the children were doing their Sunday School Christmas parts and Tyson got a little shy about speaking in front of the crowd, so this big guy with the big heart and the big hands, this Dad who wanted his boys to know Jesus, walked up and kneeled down by his son and gave him courage in his fears, because who isn’t stronger when they know their Dad is on their side and is not ashamed to kneel down with them when they are scared? Jim was the strength of his little boy and they said together: “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying” ... and we all know what they said ... “Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth, good will toward men!” Peace like a river, in Jesus. Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, Let this blest assurance control, That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My hope is pulled up like a tree. Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief! Who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because, my dear friends in Christ, we know one thing that the devil also knows and it makes him tremble in the blackness. The Victory Cry of the Church, and let’s see if we can outdo the crowd last night – let’s spit in the devil’s eye, who think he has won, and speak out loud as those who believe it: “CHRIST IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN INDEED! ALLELUIA!”

Ok, Jim. I took the shot, just like you would want. That elephant is lying dead at the door — and we’re all going to kick it when we leave here. This is not goodbye, my friend, this is “see you later.” And say hi to my dad when you see him there, tell him I’ll see him again in just a little while.

And in just a little while, friends, as we continue to confess and lean on Jesus here, we will see our loved-ones again. So, banish those questions from your mind. Jim’s death was no different than anyone’s – we all must die for we have all sinned and our faith cannot save us, it’s just not strong enough. But Jesus saves us. He has suffered for us and risen alive again from the grave for us, He is our strength in our weakness and our certainty when the hellish doubts and questions assail us. He is our life in the day of our death, our hope in the time of our despair. He is the resurrection and eternal life for all who believe in Him.

Lord, I believe, help my unbelief! Three is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Thanks be to God. Amen.