Friends, I want to welcome you as well. My name is Ted Wagner. I'm a nephew and your presence is a comfort to the whole family. We thank you for coming.
Let me invite you to consider the hope that we have this morning from 1 Corinthians chapter 15. We have gathered here to remember Bob and to grieve our loss, but also to seek comfort from the Lord and his assurances, his promises. So Bob, I think, would want us to open and hear God's word. I know that he would.
He loved the scriptures and to focus on his Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. And so let me have you here, then 1 Corinthians 15, some selected portions of God's word. Beginning at verse 1, 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.
For I delivered to you as a first importance, what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Sefas and then to the 12, and then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time. Most of whom are still alive, but some who have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, he appeared also to me. And then the apostle says, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. The first fruits of those who have fallen asleep, for as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead, for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father, after destroying every rule and every authority and power, for he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death. But someone will ask, how are the dead raised with what kind of body do they come? The apostle writes, what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bear kernel, perhaps of wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.
So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable. What is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor.
It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown in natural body.
It is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, the first man Adam became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural, then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven, as was the man of dust. So also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven.
So also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.
In a moment, in the twinkling of the night, at the last trumpet for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable. This mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on immortality, and the mortal puts on immortality, the perishable puts on the imperishable, then shall come the same that is written. Death is swallowed up in victory.
Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
Let's look to the Lord in prayer. Our Father in heaven, we bow before you, the Lord and giver of life from the God who is, and who is to come in rules and reigns not only in heaven above, but on the earth below. And we praise you for the good shepherd of the sheep, our Lord Jesus, the Savior of the world. And we thank you for the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the holy comforter.
And we ask for your ministry to us this day. You would speak to us, that you would draw near to us, that you would comfort us and that you would build our hopes for we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. These are words of hope to us.
They were words of hope to Bob, and I invite you to consider just a few things from them this morning. The first is this. The gospel, Paul says, secures our acceptance before God. And that is a reason to hope.
He says, I brought you the gospel. And what is the gospel? He says, it is this, that Christ died for our sins. And he was buried, and he was raised from the dead.
In other words, Paul says, the good news is an event that has already happened, something that has already transpired that brings good to us and a reason for hope. Now suppose you say to me, Ted, I have good news for you today. I'd like you to become a billionaire. I'd say, well, thank you very much.
What's your plan? And you would say to me, well, here it is. I want you to get a second job and I want you to work really hard for a thousand years and save everything you can. And then one day you'll be really rich.
And I would look at you and say, well, thank you for wanting me to be rich. But that sounds exhausting. And that sounds like slavery. And I don't have a thousand years.
And I don't think I can make a billion dollars in a thousand years. Oh, friends, that's not good news. That's bad news. But what if you came to me and said, I have discovered someone who is interested in you and he is rich and he loves you and he has died and he has given you everything that he owns.
Then I would say that's good news. And that is what Paul speaks of here. He tells us the gospel is not something we must do, but something that Christ has already done for us in our place and all the good things of God, forgiveness for our sins and fellowship and friendship with God are purchased for us by Jesus. This is what the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus gets us.
Paul wants us to fix our hope that not on ourselves or pine the sky, but on the accomplishment of Jesus. He did it for us. In other words, what we're saying is that Jesus has lived the life that we have never lived, the life that we ought to have lived. Jesus loved God with all his heart, soul, strength and mind.
And he loved his neighbor as himself, something we have not done. More than that, friends, Jesus died our death, the death that we deserve. Jesus has borne the cross in our place so that we don't have to die that death, so that we can be pardoned for our sins. This was Bob's hope.
It's the only hope for any of us. It's the hope that Bob had the whole time I knew him just some 20 years. He struggled though his whole life long with sin. Bob was a sinner and he knew himself to be a sinner.
He struggled in his heart with sin. He committed since he was not a perfect man. He knew temptation to sin and we don't come today to celebrate him because of his perfection. He wasn't perfect, but we come to celebrate the perfection of Christ on behalf of his people and because of Christ, Bob and any and all of us who believe in Jesus receive pardon and acceptance with God.
So our hope today is not in our works and not in Bob's but in Christ. That's the first thing. That's our hope of acceptance with God. The second is this, the gospel secures our victory over death.
Did you catch that language? He says that the end death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting?
Oh, friends, we gather to grieve our loss of Bob. We have lost a husband and a father and a grandfather and a great grandfather and an uncle and a friend and a brother in Christ and it hurts. But Bob is no longer hurting. He sees the face of Jesus, his Savior, the risen Lord who rules over all things and his Savior to all who look to him and who will one day come back and make everything wrong.
Right. This is who Bob sees and since God has taken the sting out of death, it's like a bee that has had its stinger removed. Donald Barnhouse tells the story. He's a preacher and he was preaching his own wife's funeral and as he was traveling to it with his young children in the car on the way to the funeral service, they pulled up into a small town where a large truck had come down the road and it came to a stop and it was the biggest truck he says I ever saw in my life and the sun was shining on it in such a way that at the right, it cast a giant shadow that spread across the snow in the field beside it.
And as the shadow covered that field, he says, I said to my children, look children, look at that truck and look at its shadow. If you had to be run over, which would you rather be run over by? Would you rather be run over by the truck or by its shadow? My youngest child said the shadow couldn't hurt anybody.
That's right. I continued and death is a truck, but the shadow is all that ever touches the Christian. The truck ran over our Lord Jesus Christ and only the shadow has gone over mother. That is a comfort friends that the sting to change the metaphor to take Paul's.
The sting of death didn't kill Uncle Bob. The poison of that loss has been drained of its venom. And so death did not have power to hurt him. And in the end, it was a mercy for him in the midst of his suffering that the Lord should take him home to himself and his sufferings should cease.
Death doesn't get the last word about Uncle Bob, nor the last word in our relationship with him. He has gone from us, but he is not gone. He is with Jesus. Paul says elsewhere for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.
My desire is to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better. So death can't keep Jesus from taking us to himself to be with him where he is forever, because he has conquered death for us. So the gospel comes to us as hope. It's the foundation upon which we are accepted with God.
And it is a victory. The gospel is our victory over death, because Christ is alive. And the last thing I want you to consider this is even more than that. There's one other hope in this passage for us today, and it's this that the gospel secures our resurrection with Christ.
Even death itself and the soul going immediately into the presence of the Lord, where there are pleasures forevermore at the right hand of God. Even that is not our final hope, but Christ's own resurrection from the dead guarantees our resurrection from the dead for all who are united to Christ by faith, trusting in Jesus. That's the language he uses here when he speaks of this agricultural term and says Jesus is the first fruits of the harvest. He's the first part of a whole gathering in of all who will be resurrected at the last day, but some will say, but with what kind of body are the dead raised?
And Paul says it is unimaginable to you. It is we will so far exceed your wildest hopes and dreams. It's so imperishable. It's raised imperishable.
It's sown in weakness. It's raised in power. It's sown in dishonor. It's raised in glory, the apostle Paul says.
And so, friends, this is good news and there's reason to hope. Though in this life, there is much weakness and disease and unstoppable aging and death itself. Your resurrection body will not be like your body now. It will be strong and healthy and everlasting.
As many of us who watched Bob in his last weeks and months and even days, we saw his physical health deteriorate. We saw that and it was hard to see. Even those last few years, Bob had been an incredibly strong man. His handshake was like a vice.
He was so strong. The last time I shook it just weeks before, I thought he could have crushed my fingers. He was a strong man and yet his body weakened. And he loved to recite scripture as has been mentioned.
And at the end, his words didn't come out the way that he wanted them to, the way he intended. And that was hard to see. It was hard to feel helpless to help him. But one day, friends, the apostle Paul says, you will see Bob in his glorified body and he will have strength which transcends anything you have ever seen in Bob.
And his mind and his mouth will quote the truth of scripture with ease and with delight. And we'll say that is how Bob Kenny ought to be because that is what Jesus promises to make us because he is risen. We are secure in the promise of our own resurrection. And that is awaiting any and all who are united to Jesus, who trust in Jesus, who look to Jesus for pardon and acceptance with God, who rest in the finished work of Jesus, which secures our home going to heaven.
And we have the promise at the last day that we will rise and our soul and body will be reunited. We will live forever in the new heavens in the new earth in glory together with our Savior. That is our hope I invite you to rest in Christ. Let's pray together.
Our Father in heaven, we bow before you comfort, we pray those who mourn deepen our assurance of these great promises of your gospel. For with you there is no suffering, no weakness, no pain, no tears. For with you there are fullness of joy forever. We pray out Lord that you would help us who remain to consider the brevity and uncertainty of our own lives and grant us grace to rest in Jesus our Savior.
And I ask that you would help us all to cast all our cares on you because you care for us. And I pray you would draw near to meet us in the months and years ahead in our weakness and need for all the family and call them every fear and build our hope in Jesus for we ask in His name. Amen. Friends, let me invite you during the postlude.
If you would like to come and greet the family, you may do so or be dismissed, but the family is going to stay in the sanctuary. Now receive the Lord's own blessing and now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Amen.