Sermon Tone Analysis

On Wednesday, I attended the funeral of a friend whom some of you may remember me talking about a few weeks ago.

On Wednesday, I attended the funeral of a friend whom some of you may remember me talking about a few weeks ago.

On Wednesday, I attended the funeral of a friend whom some of you may remember me talking about a few weeks ago.

On Wednesday, I attended the funeral of a friend whom some of you may remember me talking about a few weeks ago.

Mac was buried in a family plot in a cemetery in Eclipse.

Now, I know that for many of you, Eclipse might as well be Saskatchewan, and it surely isn’t Suffolk — at least not the REAL Suffolk.

So let me tell you a little about it.

It’s an old watermen’s community with skinny roads winding alongside the banks of Chuckatuck Creek.

As in this part of Suffolk, many of the families there — including Mac’s — have been there for generations, and even if they no longer have a financial connection to the water, I believe it still runs through the veins of many people there.

The cemetery where Mac was laid to rest is across the road from a little church, backed up against a line of woods, and Mac’s gravesite is right on the far edge.

So as we stood listening to the eulogies of two fine pastors — including the one who led Annette and me to Christ — we were, mercifully, in the shade.

As we stood listening, I was struck that there could hardly have been a more peaceful spot for Mac to have been laid to rest.

Indeed, Mac knows a peace now that is without compare, but that has nothing to do with where his remains may have been planted.

Grace & Peace

Mac’s peace is a result of the grace of God, and, indeed, he knew some inkling of it even as he suffered through the final days of his battle with cancer.

Mac faced cancer and his impending death as he had faced everything since the time in 1999 when he and Peggy — much like Annette and me a few years later — were led to Christ by a sweet and obedient man of God in their home.

He faced it all in the joy of someone who had absolute confidence in the promises of God to those who have received His saving grace.

His wife, Peggy, told me that the day before Mac died he had expressed the one complaint she had heard from him throughout his long illness.

“Why is He keeping me here?” he asked her.

Mac was ready to go home and meet his Savior.

He was ready to experience the complete peace that awaits those who follow Jesus Christ in heaven.

But that peace is only available to those who admit they are sinners, who believe that only the grace of God can save them from the penalty they owe for their sins, and who commit themselves to following the Christ who died to pay that price.

You see, God’s grace is not the end of the matter when it comes to salvation.

It is intimately connected to other wonderful gifts of God.

Today, we will look at four of those gifts during today’s participatory service.

We will begin with a look at grace and peace.

Grace & Peace

We search for peace in our homes, on our city streets and between nations, and we continually see just how impossible it is to attain separate from God’s grace.

Husbands and wives argue, and divorce is just as common among Christians as it is in the secular world.

We move to the country to get away from crime in the city and find that crime doesn’t recognize the same borders that we do.

And the 20th century is a lesson on tenuous hold we have on peace.

Arguing for the need to stop German imperialism, HG Wells in 1914 published a book entitled The War to End War, and the title became a catchphrase about World War I.

But then the world found itself once again in global conflict in the 1940s.

This time, more than 73 million people are estimated to have died.

And then the United Nations was formed in the wake of that tragedy — in part to assure that such a thing might never happen again.

But there has been no time since then in which wars have not been fought in some part of the globe.

Clearly, we humans are not very good at this peace thing.

But God is good at it.

He will eventually establish His Son’s Kingdom on earth, and we will beat our swords into plowshares.

We will no longer study war.

On this side of the Kingdom of Heaven, however, God brings personal peace to those who follow His Son.

And He does it the way He does so many things — by His grace.

We see the terms “grace” and “peace” showing up together 36 times in Scripture.

Together, they are part of the Apostle Paul’s favorite greeting in his letters.

Here are just a few examples.

The message is clear: If you are a recipient of God’s saving grace, then you should be experiencing peace in a way that the world cannot.

The world for these first-century Christians was anything but peaceful.

They were being persecuted and killed.

But the God of peace could give them the kind of contentment that my friend Mac had, even in the painful throes of end-stage cancer — a peace that passeth all understanding.

The Apostle Peter also wrote about this, urging the church in Jerusalem to obey Christ and experience grace and peace “in the fullest measure” (1 Peter 1:2c)

The very knowledge of God and of Jesus, he wrote, would multiply grace and peace in their lives ().

Remember that this is the same Peter who had denied Christ three times.

If ever there was someone who might have been haunted by his past, it would have been Peter.

But he had found peace in Jesus Christ.

And John, writing from exile on Patmos brought greetings to the seven churches in Asia from Jesus Himself.

The message to us is clear: Whatever you are going through, whatever you have done, God wants you to have peace.

And the only way you will have it is through His amazing grace.

RESPONSIVE READING ()

Leader: I will extol You, my God, O King,

Congregation: And I will bless Your name forever and ever.

Congregation: And I will bless Your name forever and ever.

Congregation: And I will bless Your name forever and ever.

Leader: Every day I will bless You,

Congregation: And I will praise Your name forever and ever.

Leader: Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised,

Congregation: And His greatness is unsearchable.

Leader: One generation shall praise Your works to another,

Congregation: And shall declare Your mighty acts.

Leader: On the glorious splendor of Your majesty

Congregation: And on Your wonderful works, I will meditate.

Leader: Men shall speak of the power of Your awesome acts,

Congregation: And I will tell of Your greatness.

Leader: They shall eagerly utter the memory of Your abundant goodness

Congregation: And will shout joyfully of Your righteousness.

SONG

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me,

I once was lost but now am found,

‘Twas blind but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear

And grace my fears relieved.

How precious did that grace appear

The hour I first believed.

My chains are gone, I’ve been set free.

My God, my Savior, has ransomed me.

And like a flood, His mercy reigns,

Unending love, amazing grace.

Grace & Mercy

God is gracious, and God is also merciful.

The prophet Jeremiah may have understood this better than anyone.

Jeremiah had watched as the people of Judah followed their own passions, chased after false gods and failed to put their trust in the one true God.

And then he watched as Jerusalem was conquered, the temple was destroyed and the people were taken off into exile in Babylon, all as a result of the people’s unfaithfulness to their covenant with God.

Everything he had known — everything he had treasured — was in ruins, and it appeared that God had utterly turned His back on His people.

And in the book of Lamentations, we see this weeping prophet’s devastating description of what this all felt like.

Lam

Have you ever wondered where God is in your times of trouble?

Jeremiah did.

But then, in that same chapter, Jeremiah remembered that God is faithful.

READ

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.”