Meditation for Andre Lim's Memorial Service
Notes
Transcript
A miktam of David. 1 Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge. 2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.” 3 I say of the holy people who are in the land, “They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.” 4 Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more. I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods or take up their names on my lips. 5 Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. 6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. 7 I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. 8 I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. 9 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, 10 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay. 11 You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
17 On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 18 Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, 19 and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. 21 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” 23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27 “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
21 And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ 22 “Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. 23 This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. 24 But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. 25 David said about him: “ ‘I saw the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. 26 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest in hope, 27 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, you will not let your holy one see decay. 28 You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence.’ 29 “Fellow Israelites, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. 30 But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. 31 Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay. 32 God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it.
Yani, Kat Tara, Daryl and Retty, extended family, friends, first allow me to thank you for inviting me to open God’s Word with you on this significant occasion. I’m honored to be here today. My name is Andrew Beunk and I’m a pastor here at the New Westminster Christian Reformed Church. This morning I will be preaching a message based primarily on Psalm 16, which the family requested, especially the last few verses, but also be touching on a few other passages as well.
Perhaps I could begin by saying that no one was more surprised than I was when I received the request from Daryl and his mother to open God’s Word at their father and husbands Celebration of Life service. Daryl I knew quite well. Our church shares the building with House for All Nations Church where Daryl serves as Pastor. It was about 7 years ago when our pastoral staff and the staff of HFAN attended a conference together and shared an AirBnB house for a few days…that’s when I first got to know Daryl. Since that time our churches have been involved in Multicultural Worship Nights and other activities. And Daryl and I are also part of a Burnaby pastor’s prayer group that meets twice a month. I’ve always felt deeply blessed to know Daryl as a brother in Christ and as a faithful servant of the Lord and His Church.
Yani, I had met very briefly at a couple of those Multicultural Worship services, where I learned about her ministry to prisoners and sensed quickly her deep devotion to Jesus and to prayer. I’m thankful, especially in this past week, to have gotten to know you a little bit better.
Andre I had never met and only recently heard about him as Daryl shared with me about his sudden turn in health and being admitted to the hospital. When I heard about his death a few days later I remembered the death of my own father now 20 years ago and the sense of loss that I felt, and prayed that God would comfort Daryl and his family.
So you can imagine my surprise when Daryl reached out to me a couple of weeks later and asked if I would be present today to open God’s Word. But I’ve come to realize that our Lord Jesus often works in ways that surprise us. In fact God says through the prophet Isaiah:
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
God often works in our lives in ways that we could not have imagined. And you know, as I think about that, I suspect that will be true for some of us here today. May all of us gathered here today be open to God meeting with us in a very personal way that perhaps we never would have expected.
This past week as I sat down with Daryl and Yani I saw in each of them a deep and abiding trust in the Lord. I suppose in some sense each of them shared a part of their life testimony, especially as it related to the life of Andre, their husband and father.
And there are a two things that I heard in their testimonies that I want to share with you as we listen to God’s Word and allow Him to speak to us this morning.
The first thing is this: As each of them shared with me about Andre and their relationship with him, they testified to the truth of Isaiah 55. God’s ways are higher than our ways. God often works in ways that we don’t expect and, quite frankly sometimes, can’t understand.
Most of us here know that Andre and Yani’s marriage was a rather unusual one that included much pain and heartache for Yani and her children. For most of their marriage they lived separately. At times the family had no contact with Andre. There marriage you might say was “complicated.” But as Yani shared, “I made a vow in 1972 when I was 19 years old that I would love him in sickness and in health, till death do us part.” And Yani remained faithful to that vow even through the emotional sickness of a fractured marriage. At one point she shared with me, “in my marriage we did not experience the kind of reconciliation and restoration that I had hoped for or expected.... but as a family we now feel like God allowed for a different kind of reconciliation, one that unfolded in His way and according to His plan.” God often works in ways that we don’t understand or expect.
Now is that to say, God planned for this marriage to be complicated and difficult? No, not at all. But it is to say that God is able to work his purpose in and through our dysfunction and brokenness.
Even Andre himself experienced that. He often came across as very confident and self-assured. A positive appearance and sense of prestige were important to him. But through a season of health struggles, financial struggles, even to the point of being homeless, God humbled Andre, that’s how Yani expressed it. In time Andre starting reading and studying the Bible regularly, he led people to Jesus and expressed a strong assurance in the forgiveness and peace that only Jesus can provide. In the very last days of his life Yani felt him show care to her by releasing her over to the care of God. Here again I heard how God often works in ways that we don’t understand or expect.
As I listened to Yani and Daryl share testimonies of God’s faithfulness, even through what at times was a conflicted and complicated relationship, I heard of the sovereign hand of the Lord bringing blessing out of brokenness.
PAUSE
You know, I’m describing what Yani and Daryl shared with me as testimonies. And I use that word intentionally because really that’s what Psalm 16 is and so much of what we heard the Psalmist declaring in that psalm I heard in what Daryl and Yani shared with me. And that brings me to our text and also to the second point that I want to share.
First, God’s ways are higher than ours so that often we see God working in ways that humanly speaking we did not expect or imagine.....
And second, this from Psalm 16..... God, through the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, is our ultimate source of strength and trust, and it’s His resurrection that gives us ultimate hope and peace.
Now you might be saying, “Pastor, you get all of that from Psalm 16?....it doesn’t even mention the person of Jesus”
Well, let’s briefly go through it together and listen to how the Lord might be speaking to us today and bringing us to the person of Jesus.
Listen to what the psalmist says about the Lord God....
He says to his God, “You are my refuge (v. 1), you are my goodness (v. 2), you are my portion and cup (vv. 5–6), you are my counsel (v. 7), you are at my right hand (v. 8), you are my security (v. 9), you are my guide (v. 11), you are my fullness of joy (v. 11), and in you are pleasures forevermore (v. 11).”
I don’t know about you, but when I hear that I say, Now here is a person who we can say is SATISFIED in the LORD. The Lord God is his ultimate source of security and trust and hope and peace and joy.
As I listened to Daryl and Yani I heard that for Andre there were many years in his life when he did not find that sense of deep satisfaction and trust in God that the psalmist writes about.
Perhaps he looked for it in what he accomplished, in status, or in a certain kind of lifestyle. But by God’s grace he came to a place in his life where he found that deep sense of satisfaction and trust in the Lord.
This psalm today invites all of us to ask where does my sense of ultimate satisfaction and trust in life come from. Who or what do I put my trust in? Who or what provides counsel or direction in my life? Do I experience fullness of joy?
Did you notice what the psalmist says in v. 4? “I will not run after other gods, little ‘g’. We might elaborate, I will not run after other spiritual powers, or we might add, or lifestyles, or things, I will not run after them and put my deep trust in them. When you read the Bible broadly you find that a little ‘g’ god is anything that I put my ultimate trust in or offer my deep allegiance or loyalty toward. The psalmist says, “I will not offer allegiance to them or make sacrifices to them.... finally they will only cause me suffering… they cannot provide what I need, why? Because the Bible says we have been created in the image of God and only a life in relationship with Him will bring true and deep satisfaction.
In the same way that we need bread and water to live, the Bible says we need the spiritual nourishment that only comes from Jesus Christ. In fact Jesus says to us today, “I am the bread of life. I am the Living Water. I am the One who can bring ultimate satisfaction and meaning into your life.”
The psalmist testifies that he has found that deep trust, that place of refuge in God alone. That’s how he begins in v. 1, “Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge.”
I think it is particularly on occasions like this, when we are close to death, I mean the remains of our brother is here with us. When we find ourselves in this moments, most all of us find ourselves asking first order kinds of questions. Where did Andre put his ultimate trust? Where do I put it? Why am I here and does my life have meaning?
The only way your life can have ultimate meaning is if you have a Designer or a Creator that gives your life meaning. I’m reminded of what someone I listened to shared, “if you see a beautiful cake sitting in front of you, a chemist could analyze the cake and tell you all of its ingredients and how they are blended together, a baker could analyze it and tell you the process that was used to form the cake, to bake it, and to decorate, but no matter how many people you brought into the room, no one would be able to tell you, why the cake was made in the first place, only the person who made it could do that.
The only way your life can have ultimate meaning is if you Designer and Creator tells you that purpose and meaning. If all of us living today are simply the product of random biochemical interactions that go back to an accidental Bang that happened billions of years ago, then our lives have no meaning…we’re just the product of random chance.
But think about that for a moment. If that were actually true…why are any of us here today to remember or honour the life of Andre Lim. If we actually believe our life had no ultimate purpose who cares?
The fact is all of us live with some sense of purpose and meaning and on occasions like today, we find ourselves reflecting more deeply on our lives.
Where can we go with our sadness and sense of loss? Some of us here today come to this service and we carry with us the loss of someone we loved. Many of us come looking for a word of comfort and hope in the face of death. Not just Andre’s death, or the death of another of our loved ones, but our own inevitable death.
That brings me to another of the Bible passages that was read for us earlier. In John 11 Jesus comes to his friends, grieving sisters, Mary and Martha, as their brother Lazarus had become ill and had recently died. Based on other miracles that Jesus had performed they knew he was a very unique person and so they say to Him, “Lord you knew he was ill and and had you come when he was still alive you could have healed him, but now he’s dead. Then remarkably Jesus says to her, “your brother will rise again.” Martha said something like, “I know he will rise at the end of history, but now his body is in a tomb!”
And maybe many of us are feeling that too as we stand close to death....now this person is gone!
Then Jesus says something that no other person in recorded history has ever said,
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Jesus, I suspect, was prepared for the answer that most all of us would likely give, “Lord, it’s very hard for me to believe that!”
Then even more remarkable than saying Lazarus will rise, Jesus calls out to him in his tomb and the crowds see Lazarus alive walking out of the tomb. There could not have been a more tangible way of demonstrating his power than to make actually happen what he had just said a moment ago, “Your brother will rise again.”
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die;
This is how Psalm 16 puts it, a psalm most likely written by David, some 1000 years before Jesus, under the inspiration of God’s Spirit, the psalmist pointed ahead to the death and resurrection of Jesus.
10 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
Now it’s true, the Psalmist did not know about Jesus. Most likely this psalm was written about a 1000 years before him. He did not know that God in the person of Jesus would hang on a cross to take the punishment for our sin and be resurrected from the dead three days later, conquering death itself and giving us forgiveness and eternal life in him. The psalmist did not know that.....but he did know the security of life in God and he did know of God’s promise to preserve his kingly throne, and he did believe that God’s faithfulness and power would even guard him in death.
But actually it was the apostle Peter who saw in this Psalm a clear reference to what Jesus accomplished on the cross for us.
Peter says to the large crowd that was in Jerusalem to celebrate the great feast of Pentecost, after quoting from Psalm 16 vv. 8-11.
32 God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it.
Today dear friends, the Bible through the power of God’s Holy Spirit is a living witness for us. It tells us that indeed, 2000 years ago a person named Jesus, God’s one and only Son, was raised to life and the Bible says that more than 500 people knew it and witnessed it.
Listen again to these words from Psalm 16:11,....likely it was King David who wrote it and David says:
11 You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
Now listen to what the Son of David says…in the NT Jesus is often called the Son of David.
The Son of David says, “I have come that you might have life and have it in abundance.... I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me will live, even though they die.”
Thanks be to God, our brother Andre, knew that life and he is with the Lord.... May all of us today hear those words and receive the life and forgiveness that only Jesus can give.
A very well-known Christian author by the name of C.S. Lewis in his book Miracles, captures beautifully what the resurrection of Jesus from the dead really meant:
“The New Testament writers speak as if Christ’s achievement in rising from the dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the universe. He is the ‘first fruits,’ the pioneer of life,’ He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so.” (ch. 16)
Friends today, the Lord Jesus announces to each one of us that he has beaten the Death. Yes, he died, he went through that door, and 3 days later he came back and appeared to his first followers and said, Look at me, don’t be afraid, it is I. It’s ok. I’ve gone through death and come back to tell you.....trust me....it’s ok, death is not the end. I’ve defeated its power for you. I’ve forgiven your sin so that you can be with me where I am. Put your hand in mine. Unite your life to mine, and you will find deep satisfaction, peace and joy, both now and forevermore.
In the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, AMEN.