Daniel Matthews Funeral

Ronda and Jenny and Tammy and Darleen, grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. God said unto the prophet Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you." The Lord Jesus Christ Himself said, "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies, and not one of them has forgotten before God. Even the hairs of your head are all numbered, fear not. You are of more value than many, many sparrows." God could have said these precise things and more directly to Daniel. He created Him in the womb. He knit Him together precisely and perfectly as He willed. He numbered the hairs on His head in love. He was interested in Daniel. He delighted in Daniel's personality and his interest, his quirks and his delights. If he went so far as to number the hairs on His head, that He was certainly delighted with Daniel's interests in rocks or in plants or in plants or in the trees. Plants or even flea markets. You may not have been delighted in some strange new rock that Daniel brought home or something like this. You may have even at times thought that it was dumb or a waste of time or that he ought to have focused his efforts in more productive ways. But if Daniel was interested in a thing, then God was interested in it because God is interested in Daniel. Now, I know you loved Him and these have been very difficult days for you and complicated and very sad ways. But you did not love Daniel more than God did. Now, of course, Dan inherited the sin of his own father who himself had already inherited the sin of his father going generations all the way back to Adam in the Garden of Eden. So it's not surprised to us that Dan was not a perfect man that he at times made some foolish choices and perhaps alienated people that he loved or act in thought and ways that he might regret later on. But if didn't surprise you that Daniel was a falling creature, then surely didn't surprise God. He was not surprised or shocked by this. So, already before he was born and formed all the way back in fact in the Garden of Eden, God resolved to save Dan to make a tonement for his sins. No matter how serious those sins might be or even how costly the price and the price, of course, was very steep. It was the price of the blood of God's own dear son Jesus Christ, our Lord, who breathed heavily upon the cross in great torment and was forsaken by God the Father in heaven for the guilt of old mankind. That was the price. Now it is true, the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ died for all people. He died for everybody. Oh, people, you name it. You have never many billions and billions of people. They've ever been in all the world and everyone today. Jesus died for all of those people. I'm afraid though when we use that kind of a language and sentiment, we imagine that Jesus died on the cross for some sort of massive blob of nameless faceless humanity. And we conclude, well, I guess that must mean that I'm included and you're included because somehow or another were one teensy little percent of everybody of that great abstraction. We get, I guess, sort of thrown into the mix. So Jesus died for me because I'm one part of the great whole. But that's a little bit misleading, I think. Jesus in fact died uniquely for each individual person. Therefore he died specifically and on purpose for Dan. He knew it when he was dying there on the cross. He knew specifically. He didn't say, I'm just doing this for everybody. He knew that he was doing this for Daniel. And in fact, to demonstrate if it had been that Dan was the only one in all the world who needed this sacrifice, who needed this gift, then he'd have done it. He'd have paid the price if it was just Daniel. He'd gone before Pontius Pilate. He'd have been mocked. He'd have been crowned with thorns. He'd been drilled with nails. He'd have been forsaken by the Father, even if it was just for Dan because Dan was worth it to him. He was determined, despite any waywardness or stubbornness, whatever. He was determined to have Dan forever with him in heaven. And so he did it. He went all the way. He did what it took. Now, this salvation, which the Lord Jesus Christ has won, is given to people uniquely through faith in Jesus Christ. Faith just means it's given through a promise. So God promises to us, I will forgive all of your sins and I will save you for the sake of what my son Jesus has done on the cross. It's a promise. I promise I'll do that. So the only way that you can receive a promise, you either can trust it or not trust it. So we receive the benefits of this promise through trust, through faith, through believing that it's a gift for you that the Lord loves you specifically for the sake of Jesus, that there's nothing to be afraid of, nothing to be angry about. Faith in Jesus is what saves nothing else. We're not what's called universalists, which is a doctrine that teaches that God just kind of yons and just lets everybody kind of haphazardly meander on into heaven so long as you're not Hitler or something like that. Just everybody will come on in salvation is through Jesus. And if a man rejects Jesus, even if Jesus died from even if Jesus loves him dearly, if he rejects Jesus and his saving work on the cross, he does not go to heaven. That's what Jesus himself taught more than anybody else. He was said, wide is the gate and broad the road that leads to destruction and many enter through it. But narrow is the gate that leads to life and only a few find it. That's Jesus, Matthew chapter 9. And so Jesus says, enter by the narrow gate, not the broad gate. And the gate he's talking about there is faith in Jesus Christ so that the way to heaven is not through money. Where they have a lot of it or none of it if you're poor or rich, it's not through good works where they have a lot of them or none of them are you're a terrible sinner, it doesn't matter through. It's not salvation is not because you have a certain family name. You don't get to heaven because you meant well or you tried hard or you did the best you could or you were going to get around to it. And for as hard as this is for us, you don't get to heaven because your family loved you and they wanted you to go to heaven. It comes to you through personal faith and Christ and through faith alone. So what did God do? He gave Daniel faith, faith in Jesus Christ, living an active faith in Christ. And by the way, God did not sit up in heaven on his throne, waiting, twiddling his thumbs, hoping that Dan would come to senses or decide somehow to have faith in him. God gave Daniel some choices in life and with those choices, he made some good choices, made some not so good ones. But with the God of the choice about whether to have faith in Jesus Christ, God was not going to leave that to his choice. He was going to take that choice on himself. He didn't trust Daniel to make the right choice. So he just made it himself. He came and he got him. He pursued him. He gave him faith in the one way that the Lord God gives faith and that is through the promises of the gospel, through the gifts that are given in the Lord's church. Do you think going to church is necessary? Yes, it is because it's at the church and this is by God's design that the Lord gives His word by which comes through faith. And so, darling, you, George, you brought Dan on into a church and if I hear right, ocean side California to be baptized together with the other kids and you made sure then that he learned the catacism and that he was taught the Lord's word and that this very church amount of time, he was taught the Bible and he came forward was confirmed. He confessed his living faith in Christ. He took communion here. God made sure of it. He gave him faith in Christ. I don't know if Dan retained his faith in Christ. I just, I don't know. I'm not saying he did. I'm not saying he didn't. I just don't know. I don't know. I'm not God. So I don't know to read hearts. I can't see into minds. I don't know futures. I just don't know. But I do know that the Lord said to Dan, take and eat, drink of it, all of you have been many, many years since he did what the Lord asked him to do there. Just been a lot of years. You know that. The Lord said, I know whoever keeps my word is truly my disciple and you may know better than I on this, but I can't tell you that Dan was really keeping the Lord's word there all the way up into the end. So I really wish I could say some things here with certainty. I just can't. I do know this with certainty that even if even if Dan wandered at times or even wanted to go his own way apart from God, even if he wanted that. God never stops. to pursuing him. Like the shepherd going after the one lost sheep, he never stopped loving him. In fact, sometimes the Lord will send some real pain and suffering into a guy's life to get his attention and to draw him up close to himself. Some of you know about this. So maybe it is that some of the difficulties that Dan went through and there were many of them, I am aware of only a few, the motorcycle accident when he was young, the disability that resulted from that, the troubles with jobs and other things. These things actually may have been evidence of the Lord's love for him to draw him close to himself. I don't know. I don't know the Lord's will in these things. St. Matthew reports that there were two thieves on either side of Jesus when he was on the cross. Did you notice? I read it specifically at the very beginning there when they were nailed to the cross, all three of them, that too on both sides, both of the thieves reviled Jesus, mocked him and scorned and unbelief. In fact, it says there that they mocked Jesus in the unbelieving, arrogant way that the Pharisees did. So I'd say it's pretty clear that at 9am when those crosses went up, when the nailing occurred, you had two unbelievers on either side of Jesus crucified with him. And their impending physical death really should have been the least of the Pharisees because they're eternal destiny hung in the balance there on that cross. But did you notice then that St. Luke was careful to report that at some point there are one of those two thieves had a change in heart. So I think must have been sometime in the space between 9am and say noon or so that Christ Jesus intervened. Jesus brought one of those two back again. Now you know how Jesus will have been going out after that one thief all the years of his life cared for him, loved and numbered the hairs on his heads and so forth. And he's not going to stop now. He goes after him even now and these last final hours and the hours of his greatest need. The Lord Jesus came to him, pursued him such that that thief cried out, "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom." Do you suppose maybe that the thief on that day had a mom or sisters, a family maybe who was shocked to learn about his death in Jerusalem on that day? And if so, I'd suppose if he did that they might have been very concerned about what that would mean for his eternal destiny, if they knew the state in which he died and they might even have good reason to be concerned. But did they really know? They didn't know. They didn't know. They weren't there for that last conversation. Well, they might have been tempted to draw some conclusions there, but they were not there in those final hours. They did not know what Christ Jesus did there. The last conversation with Jesus made all the difference. And Jesus sends that conversation with the words, "Today you will be with me in paradise." And if that's the way things ended with Dan, God be praised, he's in paradise right now and has been. And I look forward to seeing him there. What a great day it will be. In the meantime, can we all just agree to entrust Dan to the God who knit him together, to the God who numbered the hairs on his head, to the God who died for him, who baptized him, who loved him more than any of us ever could? Just thank God for Dan's life and leave him in God's hands, which is really the best that we could do with anyone at this point. And can we also agree to entrust ourselves to the same loving kindness? We know worse than Dan, than no better than Dan. We all stand equally in need of a Savior, Christ Jesus, a helper, a lover, and we've got one Jesus Christ as indeed died for everyone. He died for our Jesus' died for everyone, but we can be, we can do better than that. We can be more specific. He has died for you. You, he knew what he was doing. He's interested in you. He died on the cross, thought of you. And he bids you not to be distant. He comes after you. He wants to have you to come to him. None of us know when our last hour is going to be. And none of us is so smart that we think that we can time this thing out. And so in our suffering. In any kind of regret we may have on a day like this, and you kind of anger that we may have, and any kind of sadness or grief, we need Jesus. Not someday, we need Him today. And we, in fact, have Him today for us. Thanks be to God. Jesus is for us. In the name of the Father, hand of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We'll continue.