Jeffrey Alan Moffett
3/7/2001
Every now and then God does something super extraordinary and then wraps it up in such an ordinary looking package that if we do not look closely, we miss the beauty inside the package. Brothers and sisters I submit to you today, that Jeffrey Alan Moffett was one of God’s superordinary creations wrapped up in just an ordinary package. Jeff was not one to immediately stand out in a crowd, but if you ever got to stand next to him, you knew there was something special about him. Everybody God creates, God places a special gift within them to be used to impact others for God.
The gift placed inside of Jeff was the gift of compassion. If you wanted to see Jesus in Jeff, all you had to do was to place him in a setting where compassion was needed and you would find Jeff at his very best. When I think of what passage of Scripture best suits Jeff’s life, I believe when Jesus was giving the beatitudes in the sermon on the Mount on the mount, he was thinking about creating a Jeffrey Moffett down the line to show us what exactly he meant.
Jesus said, blessed are the poor in spirit for they shall see God. Jeffrey had a love for God throughout his life. He recognize his need from the beginning to the end. There’s a reason the Angelic Voices sang, "no weapon formed against me shall prosper it just won’t work." There were weapons when Jeff were born and weapons when he died, but they did not stop his life from prospering.
You see the beginning of Jeff’s life was just as much a miracle as the end of it. The first six weeks of Jeff’s life was spent in a hospital. He was born prematurely weighing 4lbs 7 ounces. He had a normal size heart, but his body was very small. There was a question as whether or not he was going to make it. There was never a question however in the heart of God, for God knew he had a work for Jeff to do.
Within 10 weeks, God had made everything all right inside that little baby. The fact that we are all gathered here tonight is proof that God’s plan for Jeff’s life has been a good plan indeed. On the end of Jeff’s life, when he needed a heart transplant, it was a miracle within a week a replacement heart was found.
Jeff was truly humbled by the miracle of a new heart. He did not think he was any more deserving than those who had waited for months or years. He was simply grateful that the God he knew and trusted in had shined upon him once again. There was no element of pride When Jeff sang the song, "Jesus is the center of my joy, it was real to him." When he snag "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" he wasn’t singing about something he heard about, he was singing something he was living first hand. When we look at some of the trials others go through, and yet talk and sing about the faithfulness of God, it ought to put us to shame the way we often complain. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God.
Jesus said, "Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted." Jeff was a great listener to the pains and sorrows of others. That’s one of the reasons so many people loved him so much. You could always talk to Jeff. Sometimes, the quality of one’s ability to comfort goes with the depth of pain and suffering one endures in life. There were times when Jeff was ill and it would take him about thirty minutes to go up the stairs.
He told me, I’d sing the same chorus on one step, until God gave me the strength to make it to the next, and then he’d give me another chorus to make the next step. Every now and then Jeff would say, "well I’m just sick and tired of being sick and tired." He never said it with a sense of hopelessness. It was always with a sense of frustration that he wanted to be able to do more for others and for God than the weakness of his body would allow.
Jesus said "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." Meekness is power under control. You have the ability to do some serious damage, but you don’t flaunt it and you don’t use it unless absolutely necessary. Now Jeff was about as laid back as they come. If you were more laid back than Jeff, you were probably asleep lying down. He got his gift from his Dad. Jeff may not have looked like he could fight, but the brother knew enough about martial arts to make sure you would not want to fight with him again.
A meek person does not let you run over him or her. Meekness is an attitude of not having to prove yourself, because you know who you are in God. You know when to take a stand. One day when Jeff was in high school, at Cleveland Heights High School, a group of whites had started a fight with the then outnumbered Blacks. The principal put the Black students outside the school and locked the door.
The next day, Jeff’s Mom Aileen told him, "now Jeffrey if those kids start any trouble you just run away." With meekness Jeff told her, "Mom, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I won’t run. I may have to go to jail, but I’m not going to run." Jeffrey had drawn his line in the sand on how far he would allow racism to push him. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Aileen said Jeffrey was always a sweet boy who wanted to do what was right. She had taught Jeffrey to always cross at the light. Jeffrey had gone somewhere with his grandfather Mr. Jones. He came home and reported, Mommie, Granddaddy doesn’t cross at the light what should I do. Aileen told him, "you tell your granddady, you can’t cross the street with him, and you go on up to the light.
Butch, Jeffrey’s brother, remembers a time when he was really lonely his first year in college, and their parents sent Jeff by himself on the train to spend thanksgiving with him. Butch was thrilled at the presence of his little brother. But then Jeff went home and reported all the things Butch was doing at college that he was not supposed to be doing. Jeff was like Joseph in bringing home a bad report about his brother.
Jeff had a desire to continue to grow in his faith. Jeff would often call us on the phone to help him make a decision and he would start by saying, "I want to do the right thing so …" When he could no longer make it to service, he asked for tapes so that the could hear what was going on. He looked forward to the TV broadcasts. For even when his body was not with us, his soul and his spirit was. He was glad to be able to go into the house of the Lord. I’ll always see Jeff with the big smile he had on his face singing in the Men’s Choir as the broadcast comes on. Blessed are those who thirst and hunger for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy. Few men have hearts as big of compassion as Jeff did. There was something in him that always sided with the underdog. When he was a small boy he cried when the exterminator came to the house. He felt so bad and cried as he watched a bug dying from the spray. He talked about the bug being upside down and his eyes closing. He didn’t want it to happen again. He wanted to protect whatever was living no matter how small it was.
Jeff could see a beauty in others, that many people failed to see. He loved his job when he was working with the mentally handicap in the group home. He wanted them to know the love of God so he brought them here to church. He invested himself in the life of one Shaw High student who had some severe emotional and behavioral problems.
Jeff had a compassion for the youth of our community and our church. He used his skills as a martial arts teacher to be a positive male role model in their lives, and as an avenue to try to bring them off the streets and into the church. He didn’t just talk about the youth, he tried to make them better by getting involved in their lives. They knew he had cared about them. He had a ministry here once called the Black Knights, teaching martial arts. The only thing that kept it from soaring was Jeff’s health. Sometimes he’d be feeling very poorly but he still made the attempt to make it to class. If he had to sit and teach, then that’s what he did that day.
After the Black Knights disbanded, Jeff worked for a summer with the kids in the Summer Program. Jeff wanted to make the most of his life by investing as much of himself into the lives of those coming behind him as possible. He once tried to quote Dr. King when I asked him why he didn’t stay home that day. He said if I can just touch someone that’s living wrong, then my living will not be in vain. I said I don’t know if that’s that quote and we laughed together. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. With Jeff, it was what you see is what you get. His brother said, one of the things he admired about his brother the most was his honesty. He was not one to say one thing to your face and something else behind your back. Whenever he tried to lie to Jeff, Jeff would look at him and say, "are you sure that’s right."
To be pure in heart, is to be honest before God and to invite God in to clean each and every area of one’s life. When Jeff first got his heart, he told me that he knew the average heart transplant back then gave you about five additional years of life. So in the back, he lived with the reality of not having that much time left to serve the Lord. He recognized, time is too short to be saying one thing, but living another.
Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called, the sons and daughters of God. Jeff was one of the greatest peacemakers of all time. He simply did not want to argue. Aileen his mom, said, " I had to teach him how to fight, when to fight, and when not to fight." But Jeffrey was not planning on fighting anyways. He would simply rather make adjustments on his side than get into an argument.
It practically drove his mother crazy, because she would like a good argument every now and then. Her testimony of Jeff is that Jeff loved everybody, anybody, all the time. He simply loved peace. Now there were some things about Jeff that you understood why he had to be a peacemaker, otherwise he would be arguing a lot.
For one thing, Jeff was a creative kid born into a family of very concrete thinkers. When they were thinking schedules and tasks, Jeff was thinking about creating music and drama. When Jeffrey drew pictures as a child, you had to turn it upside down a few times as you admired it trying to figure out what it was. His father would say, "now that must be a … and Jeffrey would always yes that’s what it is."
Jeff’s big brother has always been organized. He felt that organization was one of the gifts he could pass on to his little brother. Boy was he ever wrong. He bought Jeff watch, after watch to help Jeff understand the concept of time. Jeff quickly put those watches in drawer after drawer to make sure nothing ever happened to them. Jeff refused to wear a watch which was torture if you needed him to be at a certain place at a certain time.
Jeff would say, "Pastor Rick I’ve got a short announcement to make. I’d say now Jeff you got two minutes. He’d say that’s all I need and then take about ten minutes with a skit. I wouldn’t know whether to get upset, cry or laugh, because his skits could be so creative. I’ll never forget that outstanding music group he had, "brothers be sanging."
Jeff simply had a calming effect when he entered in your life because he was not in a hurry to do anything. You never found Jeff at the center of any turmoil in the church. He was a peacemaker in whatever group he was in.
We look at Jeff and we say, but he died so young. Did he really? Keep in mind Jeff’s most important role model, Jesus Christ died at around 33. You see you cannot fully understand Jeff, unless you know the Savior he served. Jeff made John 3 :16 personal. For Jeff It read like this, John 3:16 "For God so loved Jeffrey Alan Moffett that he gave his one and only Son, that if Jeffrey believed in Christ, Jeffrey would not perish but have eternal life. John 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn Jeff, but to save the Jeffrey through Christ.
Jeff made it personal. How do you respond to this good news of the gospel. It’s good news, only because there is some bad news because of the wrong all of us have done. That passage actually says "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
Do you realize God loves us all, but death will be the final separator between those who are living for Christ and those who are not. It’s not matter of who was good and who was bad. We all were bad, and God wants to give us all the same chance he gave to Jeff. If we do not know Christ, we are condemned to eternal death.
We all have the rest of our lives left to choose whether or not to leave our predicament and accept what God eagerly wants to give to us. When some people find out they don’t have much time left they die and become bitter, angry and withdrawn. Jeff chose to live his final days, even with the pain and the hurt.
His attitude was that of Shadrach Meshak and Abednego, when they were told to either bow down to the false god or be thrown into the furnance. They responded, we know our God is able to deliver us from the flames, but even if he does not, we will not bow down to serve your God.
We prayed with Jeff many times for a healing. But Jeff determined come what may, I’m going to be faithful to my God. Jeff died as all Christians should die and that’s with vision for the Lord. . He had recently purchased a computer and we had talked about him producing the TV broadcast for the church. Jeff and I had often discussed him being the athletic director for our New Life Center. From its inception, that’s where we wanted to see him utilize his gifts. As his pastors we knew how much he wanted to be involved in the lives of young people.
But God had other plans. Sometimes we don’t understand. The apostle Paul was one of the church’s greatest teacher, preacher, and miracle worker. Yet God allowed him to be thrown into prison and sentenced to execution for simply loving Jesus. The apostle Paul put it this was as he wrote to the church one last time before being executed, he said 2 Tim 4:6 For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day--and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
If Jeff could say one parting word to us. I believe he would say, if not sing, " As I look back over my life, and I think things over, I can truly say, that I’ve been blessed. I’ve got a testimony. Sisters and brothers, I say to you today, Jeffrey Alan Moffett has a testimony and he is prepared to here our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ declare, "Well done you good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of my kingdom which has been prepared for you since the creation of the world.
The good news is that it is not over for Jeff nor is it over in our relationship to him because we shall one day be together again, For The Bible tells us in 1 Thessalonians Chapter 4 1 Th 4:13-18 Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.
According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
Therefore encourage each other with these words.
