Rev. Ron C. Whyte
Rothiemurchus and Aviemore Church of Scotland
Aviemore
Funeral message 3.02.06
Reading :- John 11:17-44
Patty (my wife) and I hope to go to Turkey this year,
but the things is our going and getting there isn’t based on hope alone,
there is a certain amount of preparation involved.
We have to work out when we are going.
We have to get the deal that suits us.
We have to get the travel insurance,
The money and the factor 20 sun cream sorted out.
Most of us know all about preparing for a trip abroad,
It’s something we do well to get the very best out of our holiday.
I encounter people all the time who plan meticulously for a holiday – but when it comes to the final dwelling place of their eternal soul, many of them have a vague hope that it will all somehow work out o.k. at the end of the day.
Some people have an unfounded notion that no matter what they do, or don’t do, or how they live, that at the end it will be o.k.
That’s a nice thought, and if that was the case then God wouldn’t have had to go to all the bother of the humiliation of becoming human in order to show us the way to eternal life – and then suffering the cruel nails of crucifixion to take upon Himself the punishment of our sin to make our salvation possible.
What I find to be the most comforting thing is the simplicity of it all.
God made it easy for us because you see He did it all for us.
He made the booking and He paid the price.
All we have to do is believe.
Jesus said, “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”. (John 3:16)
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6)
It’s that simple. Anyone can understand that, even I can understand that, and I find that in that simplicity, a great comfort as we are once again faced with death and our own mortality.
Again Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John11:26)
A jailer in Philipi asked the apostle Paul, “What must I do to be saved?”
And the answer he got was, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved”. (Acts 16:29,30)
Doesn’t get any simpler than that, does it?
Tragically some people refuse to believe God and their hope is founded on, well, nothing.
There’s a verse in ch.1 of John’s gospel that says that Jesus came to His own but that His own did not received Him.(John 1: 11) That’s tragedy.
But the next verse is pure glorious, “Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His Name, He gave the right to become children of God… (John 1:12)
Isn’t that amazing? Doesn’t that just warm the cockles of our heart today to be reminded that all our loved ones who died in the Lord are with Him now, sons and daughters of our eternal God in His eternal glory.
Oh let’s not mourn for John. He is with his beloved Saviour today and for ever in the place prepared for him for all eternity because he believed and there was no room for doubt about that.
But as always the gospel divides. It divides people everywhere into two camps. Those who believe and those who don’t.
Do you believe? Do you have the sure hope of glory in your heart? If you do, rejoice in your salvation and your Saviour today.
But, please, please, for your soul’s sake, let it really bother you if you don’t.
