Gospel Memorial for Vincent Callendine

Okay, please bow your head as I pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this beautiful day that you have created. Help us to show supreme honor to you as we honor my earthly father and the blessing he was to us.

Help your people to have ears to hear as I bring a message from your word. Please guide me as I speak today. Help me to be accurate in all that I say and bring glory to you. In Jesus' holy name I pray, amen.

Thank you all for joining us today as we remember my father Vincent. A special thanks to the Army National Guard for their presentation and the National Memorial Cemetery for giving us this opportunity to meet here under the freedom this great country enjoys, doing a significant part to those who are buried all around us.

The Brevity of Life and Our Mortality

We're here for several reasons. One is to properly and formally say goodbye. The finality of death is pretty obvious to everyone. Someone we love is no longer walking or talking. We can't call them on the phone or visit them to give them a hug.

Death is a depressing topic. Most choose not to think about it. We prefer to stay busy and when it cross our paths, we try to look the other way. Days like today force us to deal with it, especially when we consider our own mortality.

The Bible compares our lives here on earth to many things to help us see the temporary nature of it. Vapor, think of the flash of steam when you take the lid off a pan on a hot stove. Grass, it grows quickly and then when the cold weather or drought comes, it's gone just as fast.

Shadow, as soon as the sun goes down or the clouds come out, it disappears. Flowers, how nice they look and smell for a few days in a vase or maybe a few weeks planted in your garden. Hebrews 2 .14 tells us that in our fallen nature, we are in bondage all our lives because we fear death and that fear is appropriate because God has placed in all of us a conscience.

Psalm chapter 90 is a prayer of Moses. In it, he says, you have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance for all our days have passed away in your wrath. We finish our years like a sigh.

The days of our lives are 70 years and if by reason of strength, they are 80 years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow for it is soon cut off and we fly away. Who knows the power of your anger for as the fear of you, so is your wrath.

So teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Thinking about death is actually a good thing for us. That would be as the passage I just read, numbering our days. That's another one of the things we're here doing today.

My father's days have now been numbered. He was born in 1939 during the Great Depression, just two years before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He grew up in very tough circumstances. His mother died before he was a teenager and Vincent was left with an alcoholic father who was emotionally abusive and most likely physically as well.

My dad did his best to help raise and protect his younger brother Fred and sister Nancy. Before his mother passed, she shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with him. Mothers don't ever forget how important you are in the spiritual lives of your children.

Vincent proudly served his country as you saw earlier. He was a hard worker. I remember him going to work even when sick. He worked about six days a week with Saturday being a half day of only about six hours.

Our parents sacrificed a lot to send us to Christian school when they were able to afford it. The coolest job he ever had was as an ice cream man from the perspective of a nine-year-old kid anyway. I don't know if he made much money doing that but hey, free ice cream for the kids.

When I was a little older, he had a potato chip route and he would let me go with him to work on Saturday mornings. We would take a mid-morning break at Dunkin' Donuts and he'd buy me a hot chocolate and let me pick out a donut.

Later when I got a car, he and I took a short trip out to the White Mountains together. Also, I don't know if anyone but my wife knows this but when we were living in Juarez broke with three young children, my dad sent us the money we needed to get her visa application going again after we had pretty much given up.

Sin, the Curse, and the Reality of Death

My dad was first and foremost a Christian but Christians still sin and that is why he died. That is why we will all die someday. Romans chapter six says that the wages of sin is death. That's the paycheck we receive for being a sinner and sinning.

Everyone by nature is born a sinner and therefore sins. We inherit our sinful nature from our fathers. I was born a sinner because my father Vincent was a sinner and his father Vernon was a sinner and on and on all the way back to Adam.

Then to Adam, God said, because you have heeded the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I command you saying, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken for dust you are and to dust you shall return.

That's in Genesis chapter three. So we die and return to dust because of the curse of sin and think about it, cursed is the ground. So not only do we die, but we also live on a cursed earth that makes life difficult while we're here.

Pain, sickness, sunburns, cancer, floods, forest fires, on and on, all come from this curse because of Adam and Eve's one disobedience. So what is sin? In short, it's a breaking of God's law. Summarize for us in the 10 commandments.

And Jesus said, for from within out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness, all these evil things come from within and defile a man.

God is perfectly holy and must punish sin. Psalm five says, for you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, nor so evil dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand in your sight. You hate all workers of iniquity.

And as bad as death appears to us, that is not what we should fear. Jesus says, and do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

What is hell? At the very end of the Bible in Revelation 21, we are told of a second death and that all of the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone.

The Law, Repentance, and Justification by Faith

So what do we do? We're all born as sinners and we sin because it's in our nature. We may not be guilty of all the items on that list, but we are certainly guilty of at least one of them. And as we found out with Adam and Eve in the garden, that's all it takes for condemnation.

All sin must be punished and all sin will be punished. And it is appointed for men to die once, but after this, the judgment. There are multiple encounters that Jesus had with men who approached him asking how they can attain eternal life.

One of the encounters is commonly referred to as the rich young ruler. Another is a good Samaritan. Do you remember how Jesus answered for how to not go to hell and instead get eternal life? He told them to keep the law.

He told them, don't sin, always do the right thing. Luke chapter 10, and behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested him saying, teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus said to him, what is written in the law?

What is your reading of it? So he answered and said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.

And he said to him, you have answered rightly, do this and you will live, meaning eternal life. Luke 18, now a certain ruler asked him saying, good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? So Jesus said to him, why do you call me good?

No one is good but one, that is God. You know the commandments, do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your father and your mother. And he said, all these things I have kept from my youth.

Wow, this man says he's never ever sinned. I wonder what his parents would say about honoring his father and mother. Did he not disobey them even once?

Really?

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law that every mouth may be stopped and that all the world may become guilty before God. So we're guilty, our conscience accuses us and we know we've broken God's laws.

What do we do now? Is there any hope for us? Later in Luke 18 it says, also he spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. Two men went up to a temple to pray.

One a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself. God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector.

I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the tax collector standing afar off would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted. So how can a just and a holy God forgive sin?

Listen to the response from the tax collector. He's not telling God how good he is and expecting to be commended. He's admitting how sinful he is and begging for mercy. But there's still the matter of guilt.

Men have sinned and God would be unjust to forgive just because they're sorry. Think of an earthly judge letting someone go after they drove drunk and killed someone. He would be wrong to not punish them just because the guy apologized, maybe even cried, promising to never do it again because he's now a chained man.

Here is how God can forgive sinners. He sent his son, Jesus Christ to save us. But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law that we might redeem the adoption of sons.

Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, not born of human seed like us, of our fathers beginning with Adam, but of holy seed, which was uncorrupted by sin. He took on the nature of man yet remained God, lived a perfect and holy life, never sinned and was put to death on a cross to pay the punishment for the sins of all who believe in him.

For he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Then he rose from the dead, defeating death and proving that God the Father accepted his sacrifice.

Truly these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent because he has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained.

He has given assurance of this to all by raising him from the dead. So we're not saved by keeping the law, but by faith in Christ. Jesus began his earthly ministry by proclaiming, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel.

He also says, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. No amount of law keeping can save you. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.

Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. I understand this is a hard message for some of you to hear and I know that not all of you will believe it. Of course, I pray that you will because it's true.

In fact, the apostle Paul says, for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved is the power of God. And later Paul says, for we are to God, the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.

To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death and to the other, the aroma of life leading to life. But I love all of you enough to tell you the truth. Paul also says, knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.

Hope in Christ, the Resurrection, and the Comfort of the Church

My father Vincent is now in glory. He professed that his faith was in Jesus Christ alone and his life bore witness to that confession. Because of that, he is now in the presence of God Almighty and has no more pain, no more sorrow and is now freed from the battle of sin.

For Christians today is a day of rejoicing. We know that death is only a temporary separation from our Christian loved ones who've died. In the following verses, death is appropriately referred to as sleep because that's a great way to think of it.

But I do not want you to be ignorant brethren concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as those who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus.

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God.

And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.

My dad was hoping to be raptured, but I'm 100 certain he's not concerned about that anymore. I plead with you to number your days so that you will have a heart of wisdom and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you too will be saved.

Please bow your head again as I pray. Thank you Lord for my father, Vincent Caledon. Comfort us as we mourn his loss, but not to sorrow as those who have no hope. Thank you for showing him grace. Thank you for saving lost sinners who deserve your wrath and yet receive your mercy through the sacrifice of your son, Jesus Christ.

Help us to realize how short life is. Help us who are Christians to not fear death as we are confident that to be absent from the body is to be present with you, which is far better. In the name of Jesus, our Redeemer, I pray, amen.

Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorn Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety is applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be biblical, reformed, historic, confessional, loving, discerning Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the Christian faith.

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And may the mercy, peace, and love of our triune God be multiplied to you.