Jesus Heals the Brokenhearted

Introduction - Good morning family and friends and welcome to the celebration of life for Matthew Lawrence Lopez. Were celebrating his life here on earth and most importantly his life now in eternity with Jesus.

For those of you that don’t know me I’m Brian and I grew up here in Commerce City with Matt. We started off as friends that quickly turned into becoming like brothers.

-Pray

Share the memories I had of him - Matt was a loyal friend. Matt was the type of friend that would be there for you in any time of need. And of course his laugh. You knew he was in the room by his unique laugh.

Share the memory I will cherish the most - Sharing my testimony with him about the love of God and how God changed my life. Matt broke down in tears and said he wanted that and needed God’s love.

I cherish the times when he would come to church and the most excellent way addiction ministry and how he quickly fit right in to the family of Christ.

There was a time we were in worship in the back of the sanctuary and he was lifting up his arms in praise and worship to God.

-Pray

A boy and his father were traveling in a car when a bee flew through the open window. The boy was so highly allergic to bee stings that both he and his father knew that his life was in danger. As the boy frantically jumped around and tried to avoid the agitated bee, the father calmly reached out and grabbed the bee. When he opened his hand, the bee began to fly again, terrorizing the boy once more. The father then said, “Look, son,” holding up a hand with an implanted stinger, “his stinger is gone; he can’t hurt you any longer.” As a bee loses its stinger when it stings, so death lost its sting when it stung Jesus.

Death has lost its sting on us because of what Jesus did for all of us on that cross, he took on all of our sins. Jesus conquered death when He rose again on that third day so that we may have eternal life with Him.

Fear of death is removed from us when we put our faith and trust in Jesus who is our good shepherd. The good shepherd protects His sheep (us) and we are completely dependent on Him to guide us through our lives and provides what we need.

Psalm 23 speaks to us about how Jesus is our good shepherd and in our relationship with Him - he provides for us, guides us, restores us, leads us, comforts us, protects us, and gives us the way to eternal life.

The sheep recognize and hear His voice by putting our faith and trust in Him and drawing closer to Him. ——— Illustration of the shepherd calling His sheep.

As sheep sometimes we can wonder off and do our own thing, sometimes we can be lead astray by desires in the world but Jesus will leave the 99 safe sheep to search for the one lost sheep. It’s a demonstration of how much he loves and cares for us individually.

The loss of a loved one brings on all kinds of emotions - grieving, regret, anger, fear, and so on.

Jesus is our healer through our times of grieving. ——-We have a great reminder of that on Matt’s memorial card.

Psalm 147:3 NKJV

He heals the brokenhearted And binds up their wounds (healing their pain and comforting their sorrow).

Jesus fully man and fully God knows our pain as He himself had a broken heart when his friend Lazarus died.

In the book of John it simply says “Jesus wept.”

This shows the love and compassion that Jesus had for His friend and He has that same love and compassion for all of us.

We can also find comfort in our grieving because Matt is no longer in pain and suffering because he is with the Lord in Heaven now.

In the book of 2 Corinthians it says “to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord”.

We can have confidence knowing as a believer in Christ once we take our last breath we are immediately in the Prescence of the Lord!

No more pain no more suffering

Our life here on earth is very short the older we get life seems to go by even faster. In the book of James he refers to our life as a vapor- we are only here for a little time on earth and then it vanishes away.

So I encourage you if you haven’t given your life to Jesus don’t wait ———-we don’t know what today holds let alone what tomorrow holds. Jesus can return at any moment no man knows the day or the time.

Some of you may be thinking to yourself people have been saying that for thousands of years but remember God is outside time.

The bible says “But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” 2 Peter

The Lord is not slacking on the promise of His return. When the Lord gives us a promise he fulfills it 100% of the time it’s a guaranteed promise. He is patient with us His will is that none should parish and that all would come to repentance.

We can think about our own lives and how patient God has been with us and continues to be patient.

It’s still up to us to come to repentance. Repentance is a changing of our mind. It’s changing our mind about sin in our lives and that change in our mind naturally leads to turning away from the sin. Sin no longer becomes desirable or fun to us.

Repentance leads us to salvation. Let’s look what salvation looks like in the book of Ephesians.

Ephesians 2:8–10 NKJV

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

We are saved by faith not by our good works but we are saved for good works through Christ. We can’t earn our way into heaven simply by being a good person in our own eyes.

We don’t earn salvation by doing good deeds, attending church every week, giving faithfully and son on. While are these things are good and we should do them it still doesn’t earn our way into heaven.

Salvation is a gift of God’s grace received through faith that Jesus died for our sins and rose again on the third day so that whoever believes in Him shall have eternal life!

This is the Good News! It’s a gift that we don’t deserve —- we can’t earn it ——but because of the great love that God has for us it is freely given to us all we have to do is humble ourselves to accept the greatest gift we will ever receive.

Matt humbled himself , had faith and accepted that gift.

In closing —-We can be encouraged that the Lord our God loves us and is with us during this difficult time.

Psalm 34:18 NLT

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.

The Lord is close to us to comfort us during our mourning for Matt, and he will heal us over time.

John 15:13 NKJV

Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.

Jesus showed us that great love by laying down His life for each one of us here in this room.

We also be encouraged with the hope that the bible speaks about in 1 Thessalonians.

1 Thessalonians 4:13–14 NLT

And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died.

Matt was a believer and we can have comfort knowing as believers will see him again in heaven.

If anyone needs prayer today, please come see me or one of the leaders here. We would love to pray with you before you leave today.

-Let’s pray before we eat . We will show the video of Matt before we head downstairs for those who weren’t able to see it early.