7/28 – Funeral for Maxine Mae Brady

Grace, peace, and mercy be yours in the name of our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The message I have for you today is based on three short readings from the Bible. The first is Genesis 3:15 where God says:

I will make you and the woman hostile toward each other. I will make your descendants and her Descendant hostile toward each other. He will crush your head and you will bruise His heel.”

In this verse God is speaking. He is speaking to Satan who has just brought sin to the Garden of Eden, and with it a future that hold nothing but death and Hell for Adam and Eve. Satan thinks he has won. Satan thinks he has destroyed the very thing God loved most – humankind. Satan knew God would not endure anything but absolute perfection in His presence. Satan knew God demanded that everything, and everyone, that came into His presence had to be wholly, totally and utterly perfect. Adam and Eve died that day in the eyes of God. They were now no longer perfect, and so forever separated from God.

That is all Satan wanted to do, to tear you away from the God who loves you. That is what he wanted and that is what he did. There is not one person here who would be so bold as to claim that they are perfect. Satan was right, unless you are perfect you are lost forever. There is nothing you can do to fix what you are. You cannot get good enough to get yourself back to God, or into God’s good graces. Satan however did not fully understand the depth of God’s love for us. In the book of Romans 8:38-39 we read about God’s love for us. There it says:

I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love which Christ Jesus our Lord shows us. We cannot be separated by death, or life, by angels, or rulers, by anything in the present, or anything in the future, by forces, or powers in the world above, or in the world below, or by anything else in creation.

God would not be separated from His most cherished creation. In the very same sentence in which He cursed Satan, God made a promise. Did you hear it? He said, “…He will crush your head,…” Who will crush the head of Satan? Jesus Christ.

It is right here, in this verse, in the very first few pages of your Bible that we find the promise of One who would come. One who would repair what Satan had broken. One who would redeem you, that is make you perfect again, make you alive again in God’s eyes. In doing so Satan’s failure would made complete.

We now know who that promised One would be, Jesus Christ the Son of God. It in is John 3:16-17 that we read the fulfillment of that ancient promise made by God so very long ago. It reads:

God loved the world this way: He gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in Him will not die but will have eternal life. God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but to save the world.

There in that short passage the fulfillment of God’s first promise is made. Our Lord Jesus came to Earth to walk upon it just like you and me. To endure all of the hardships that life can bring. Then ultimately to go to a place of torture called Golgotha (which means: The place of the skull.) There He would stretch out His hands and say to us all, “I love you this much.”

It was on that cross that He fixed what Satan broke. It was on that cross that He paid the ultimate sacrifice. It was on that cross that He made you what you could never make yourself – perfect. What you could never do, God did for you.

That is the wonder of the Christian faith. That is the very thing that sets it apart from all other religions. In every faith invented by humankind you have to go find god; you have to make yourself right with god; you have get yourself good enough to get near god. Only in the one true Holy Christianity faith is it God who does all of the work. Only in Christianity is it God who cleans you up. Only in Christianity is it God who comes to you because you could not go to Him.

God did that for you because He would not be separated from you forever. He would not have death be the end. That is the promise of the Sovereign, Holy and Almighty, Most High God to you. Death is not the end, for all who believe that Jesus Christ is the Redeemer of the world.

Death from this life is the beginning. For those who believe, death is the place where you will realize paradise is real, and has been prepared for you.¹ We know that because Jesus told us so. Listen to His words from John 14:1-3

Do not be troubled. Believe in God and believe in Me. My Father’s house has many rooms. If that were not true would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again. Then I will bring you into My presence so that you will be where I am.

You see that is the work Jesus did for you on that cross. He was nailed to it. He suffered not only the wrath of humankind, but the full unfettered wrath of God. Jesus endured Hell while He yet breathed. Hanging there on that cross He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”² Utterly and whole abandoned by God the Father, bearing up under the weight of all of His rage.

Then there was silence, and that followed by a gasp and a shout.³ Then those wonderful words were spoken. “It is finished!⁴” Those words were not exasperation and defeat. They were words shouted out through exhaustion and exultation. Those words, “It is finished!” did not mean He was finished, they meant the work was finished. The work that was required to set you free, to make you perfect, to make you alive again, to make you holy in the sight of your Heavenly Father.

Those words, “It is finished!” also proclaimed Satan’s failure was wholly and utterly complete. Everything that he had tried to destroy Jesus had restored. The ancient promise, made thousands of years ago to Adam and Eve, had now been fulfilled. Now the work was finished.

That is the reason we gather here today. Because in Hebrews 10:24-25 we read:

We must also consider how to encourage each other, to show love and to do good things. We should not stop gathering together with other believers, as some of you are doing. Instead we must continue to encourage each other even more as we see the day of the Lord coming.

We are gathered here because that promise was made to Maxine Brady. It is here in this house that we learn of that promise, and how to live a life that is pleasing to the God who made us, and has saved us. It is here in this house the Holy Spirit works through those Words to keep us in that faith, just the way He kept Maxine in that faith, until our own time on this Earth is complete.

It is that same Holy Spirit who came as a rushing wind and tongues of fire on the disciples.⁵ The same Holy Spirit that at Jesus’ baptism came down as a Dove as the Father spoke from Heaven.⁶ It is that same Holy Spirit that at Maxine’s Baptism gave her the gift of faith, which the Holy Spirit preserved in her. Though her mind and body failed her, God did not. Her faith is secure because it is God who gives faith, not we who build it, or earn it.

That is the reason we are here. That is the promise you have been given. The promise that for all who believe death is only the beginning. That promise is for you, for your children, for your children’s children, and for all who are far off, it is for everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself.⁷

In Jesus’ name.

Amen.

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