Roger "Pappy" Snyder Funeral

Welcome

Lamentations 3:22–25 CSB

22 Because of the Lord’s faithful love we do not perish, for his mercies never end. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness! 24 I say, “The Lord is my portion, therefore I will put my hope in him.” 25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the person who seeks him.

We have come together today to honor, remember, and celebrate the life of Roger “Pappy” Snyder.

On behalf of Pappy’s family I want to thank you for being here today and for supporting this family through this difficult time.

We are reminded in this verse that:

God’s love for His children never runs out.

His mercy toward us is new every morning.

And that He is faithful even in the most challenging times of our lives.

So this afternoon, as we gather to remember, honor, celebrate and mourn our father, brother, grandfather, and friend, may the Lord be our portion and our Hope, for He is GOOD to those who seek him.

Message

Today we come to remember the life of a husband, a father, a grandfather, a friend, and a child of God.

I went to visit Pappy last week at Signature Care.

When I got to the window the lady looked up at me expecting me to tell her who I was here to visit.

I quickly realized I didn’t know his “real” name.

I have only known him as Pappy, which is a name I know he was very proud of.

32 grandchildren, 47 great grands, and 9 great great grands called him by that name, not to mention the countless others like myself who knew no other name to use.

He also really loved to be called Daddy, even by those that didn’t share his blood.

But equally, Pappy took very serious his title as husband to his beloved wife Sue, whom he would have celebrated 40 years of marriage to just this past Saturday.

His girls shared with me how hard he worked to provide for Sue and found great joy in showering her with gifts whenever he had the opportunity.

Those 3 titles give us a glimpse at the person Roger “Pappy” Snyder was, but there is so much more we could say about him that a funeral service like this one isn’t able to capture.

But what we can do in our time together is turn to God and His Word to help us to grieve, lead us to truth, and comfort our hearts as we mourn.

Some of the most helpful and comforting words for times like this come from Jesus himself in the Gospel of John.

John 14:1–6 CSB

1 “Don’t let your heart be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also. 4 You know the way to where I am going.” 5 “Lord,” Thomas said, “we don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Don’t let you heart be troubled

Jesus is talking to his disciples when he tells them to not let their hearts be troubled.

There hearts are troubled because He has just told them that He is going away.

This conversation happens the day before Jesus is nailed to a cross and dies for the sins of those who would trust in Him.

The disciples are troubled because the one they had grown to love and had placed so much hope in was telling them He was leaving.

But don’t take Jesus’s words the wrong way.

They aren’t the empty platitudes we often hear people say when someone we loved has died.

“Don’t worry, time will heal.”

"Don’t cry, be strong.”

“At least you got to ________.”

No Jesus’s words are rooted in an imperative/a command.

“Don’t let your hearts be troubled, instead BELIEVE in GOD and ME.”

Jesus says the way to overcome a trouble heart is to trust in God and to trust in Him.

Pappy was not a troubled man. He lived with a lot of joy, a lot of laughter, and in the last few years, a lot of adventure.

Don’t get me wrong here, like all of us, Pappy had his fair share of worries, struggles, and mess ups, but his faith in the Lord was a place of refuge, a source of strength, and a reminder of God’s grace.

Mandy shared that up until recently, Pappy would end his night by spending time reading God’s Word.

I trust that what calmed Pappy’s heart and gave him hope and peace were the promises he read those evenings with the Word.

Jesus points us to three of those promises in our passage.

1) There is room in God’s house for anyone who believes.

Get that picture in your head. God has a huge house in heaven and room enough for anyone who would trust in Him.

He will never run out of rooms.

There was a worry in the disciples that once Jesus left they would have no place to go, no hope left in their life.

Jesus’s assurance here is that His departure is good news for them.

There is a reason for hope that goes beyond the things of this world.

We live in a world that continually offers us temporary securities and comforts, a world that keeps our eyes fixed on the things right in front of us, that distracts us from them reality of our mortality.

Here Jesus directs our attention to a much greater security and comfort.

Our true home, our complete security has already been built for us by him in heaven.

Pappy believed this, and he lived it too.

The hope that Pappy lived with, that allowed him to live with joy and cheer even in hard times, even as he faced death, was the confidence he had that Jesus had already prepared a place for Him.

The home he and Sue had was a refuge for many, a gathering place for anyone who desired to come, and there was always enough room.

How neat a picture they created of the heavenly home God promises those who believe.

2) Jesus is there to meet us.

One of the things us preachers often do in funerals is focus all the attention on heaven being a reunion with all our loved ones.

Don’t get me wrong, I long for that great reunion, and am confident that Pappy was welcomed into heaven by a crowd of people and that it was quite the celebration.

But the thing that makes heaven such a glorious place is not mansions, streets of gold, or even all our loved ones being there, it is that Jesus is there.

Jesus tells his disciples, “Don’t let your heart be troubled friends, I am going to prepare a place for you and then I will come take you there myself.”

Pappy loved Jesus, and I can’t help but think that the moment his eyes opened in heaven, all those there to welcome him were quick to guide him to the one he longed to see.

3) Jesus is the way.

I can’t help be read Thomas’s words here hasty and worried. “Jesus we don’t know where you are going, we don’t know the way? How will we ever get there?”

It is a troubling feeling to not know the way to where you are going. To be lost.

But there is such a confidence in knowing the way.

Jesus answers Thomas’s troubled heart with one of the most wellknown statements in all of the bible.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

You know the way already Thomas, because you know me. I am the way. I will be enough for you. You don’t need to look elsewhere; you don’t need to supplement me with anything else.

You’re disoriented, and I am the way. You’re confused, and I am the truth. You’re fearful, and I am the life.

Knowing me is enough, and will be enough, he says. Your search can end with me.

Pappy wasn’t troubled because he knew the way.

And in his life, in his words, and in his witness, he has shown us, each of us, the way.

Invitation

Do you know the way?

Is your heart troubled today, weighed down by the worries and struggles of the world?

Bring your troubled heart to Jesus.

He has prepared a place for you.

He is there to bring you home.

He is the way, the truth, and the life.

In Him and Him alone will you find the comfort and security you desire, the same comfort and security we all witnessed in Pappy.

Come to Jesus.

Song-

Graveside

1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 ESV

13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

I think Paul wanted us to read these words more often than just at funerals, but I especially think he wanted us to read them on days like today.

The world fears a place like this, not because of the undead or paranormal activity, but because they fear death.

But this is not a place to be feared, it is a place that reminds us of what is to come.

“Therefore encourage one another with these words.”

Death is not the end for those who have died in Christ.

The body we are laying in the ground today is only a shell of who Pappy was in whole.

But one day the dead in Christ will rise.

One day this place wear we shed so many tears will be a place of rejoicing as all those who have died knowing Christ are reunited with their glorified bodies to live out their eternities in the glory of the new heavens and new earth.

So as we lay Pappy to rest today let us grieve, but let us not grieve as others who do not have hope, “for we believe that Jesus died and rose again”

And we confess with Paul:

1 Corinthians 15:55–57 ESV

55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Prayer