Memorial Service for Barry Wyatt

1. Invocation

Revelation 7:9–10 ESV

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Revelation 7:13–17 ESV

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. “Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

What amazing and comforting thought it is, to think of our brother Barry standing now in this great multitude, clothed in pure white robes....

.....staring with awe and wonder into the face of Jesus and singing with all of heaven, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Let us then also come before our Great God in prayer.

2. Prayer

Our Great Father in Heaven,

What a privilege we have to be in your presence this afternoon and to address you, our Great King, as Father.

All of creation bows at your feet and responds without hesitation to your voice.

We are then compelled to ask then Lord, just as David did, who are we that you should be mindful of us?

We who have many times not responded to your commands and have done all that you have commanded us not to do.

We bow our heads before you today again in humble repentance, look to you again for mercy, and are eternally grateful to you for grace.

May our Saviour who bore our sins on the cross and secured our adoption through His blood and resurrection be the central focus of our gathering today, Lord.

Even as we grieve the loss of our brother Barry, we rejoice in the grace you have given him and give you all honour, all praise and all glory for his life.

We do ask, Lord, that while we spend this time together in memorial of Barry and in worship of you, that you would make your presence known and your peace felt among all of us, but especially on the Wyatt family.

Help us to find your light in our darkness...

Your life in our death...

Your joy in our sorrow...

Your grace in our sin...

Your riches in our poverty...

And your glory in our valley.

And we ask this in the name of Jesus, so that He would be glorified in all that we do and say here today.

Amen.

3. Scripture 2

Job 1:21 ESV

And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD

4. Welcome

Gratitude for all support, messages and gifts - response has been overwhelming

Jesus has been glorified this week - as has been seen in the unity and beauty of the Church in the midst of sorrow and grief.

Barry Thomas

IN CHRIST ALONE

Though we are grieving the loss of our beloved brother, we are at the same time rejoicing for God’s grace in his life.

Some don’t understand how Christians can rejoice at a time like this.

But we rejoice because even in the fiercest storm, we have a depth of peace.

Barry’s hope was in nothing but Christ Alone. The cornerstone of our faith.

We have the peace of knowing that because we stand in the love of Christ, nothing could remove Barry or us from His hand, and he has been called home and is staring into the face of Jesus right now while we sing.

So now that God has called Barry home, we can sing with joy

IN THE QUIET, NONE BUT JESUS

When we lose someone we love, it can feel like there is chaos and confusion all around us, but we know that God is sovereign still....

… and all of our delight, all of our hope, all of our strength is in him

MY HOPE IS BUILT ON NOTHING LESS

The reason our hope is a certain hope, and that Barry’s hope was a certain one, is because our hope is built on the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Because we stand clothed in His righteousness, we know that we stand faultless before the throne of God.

THIS IS AMAZING GRACE

Who brings our chaos back into order? Who makes the orphan a son and daughter? The King of Glory, Jesus our Redeemer

5. Message - ONWARD!

​Hebrews 12:1–2 ESVTherefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Introduction

This was one of Barry’s favorite passages of Scripture. He would quote it often, and if anybody forgot that they were meant to be leading prayer meeting and didn’t come prepared with a Scripture, Barry would lead us through this one.So then, as we are remembering Barry’s life today, I couldn’t think of a more appropriate text that would both gives us the theme of his life, and serve to point us forward.So let’s get straight to the text.The writer of Hebrews uses the famous Greek and Roman Games of the first century as a picture of the Christian life.He calls it a race, but this not a sprint race like the 100m that is one of the main attractions of the modern day Olympic Games. This is a grueling long distance marathon that needs to be run with endurance to reach the finish line.The writer is using this metaphor as a means of application, applying the previous chapter to the life of the believer.

1. A Great Host of Witnesses

He refers back to the Old Testament saints mentioned in chapter 11, calling them a cloud of witnesses from which we can draw inspiration and motivation to run the race with endurance.As any endurance athlete will tell you, the support of the crowd is a tremendous help - especially when the race is becoming difficult.When you are exhausted and feeling as though you couldn’t possibly take another step, it is often the cheering of the crowd that keeps you putting one foot in front of the other.I can’t claim to be an endurance athlete myself, but I did run the Surfers Marathon once. A key moment in the race for me was when I arrived in Gonubie. It would have been easy to give up and get someone to collect me right there, or to go to a mate’s house. But the support of the crowd inspired me and motivated me to keep going.The writer of Hebrews encourages us - since we are surrounded by so great a host of witnesses, let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.In chapter 11 we are reminded of: Abel, who by faith offered an acceptable sacrifice to God.Noah, who by faith built an ark to save his household from an unseen flood.Abraham, who by faith left his life behind him and went to the place God directed him to go....and who by faith offered up Isaac, believing God would raise him from the dead.Moses, who by faith rejected the royal life of a son of Pharoah’s daughter to go and live among the slaves.But these are not just spectators as one might think of a crowd cheering on the athletes at the Olympic Games. Spectators look to the athletes for inspiration. But in our case and in the author’s metaphor, this crowd is there for our inspiration and motivation.There are called witnesses - these are men and women who bear witness to something.They have already run the race to completion and are now giving testimony and witness to something for the benefit of those of us who are still in the race.And their witness and their testimony is this: that their faith was not in vain.They are testifying to the faithfulness of God, and serve to inspire us and motivate us when our own faith is weak and stumbling.We live in a broken world, devastated by the effects of sin. As we have been reminded so suddenly last week, this post-fall world is full of grief and sorrow, disappointment and heart-break.Christians are not immune to the effects of sin in the world.When tragedy strikes, the race can feel like it is too much to bear, and our legs no longer want to carry us. Our faith takes a beating and we start to stumble.It is at times like this that the host of witnesses that have gone before us inspire us and motivate us to continue the race, because they are declaring to us....“Keep running! God is faithful!”Look at our testimonies and see that God is faithful to the very end.

2. Lay Aside Every Weight

Secondly, the writer instructs us to lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely.Obviously, no serious athlete, no matter how serious he is into fitness, intentionally runs a marathon carrying a 20kg dumbell in each hand.But that is how we are often running our race, except the burden is heavier.Christians and non-Christians alike sometimes have this idea that once we come to faith in Christ, we no longer have any battle with sin.Unfortunately, that is not the case.Temptation and sin will continue to follow us as long as we are in this race. When an athlete gets a stitch or leg cramps, or the heat of the sun is too much for him to handle, he begins to doubt he can finish the race and is tempted to give up.He forgets the prize and starts to think about the comforts of the couch at home and a cold shower.In our Christian life, when hardships, pain and suffering come our way, we can also be tempted to doubt and to take our eyes off the prize.Our thoughts turn to other comforts, and before we know it we have substituted the joys of God for the joys of food or material things that offer no lasting satisfaction.When we do this, we are forgetting God’s promises and even rejecting them outright...…and instead of giving us relief, those temporal comforts we turn to become more weight, more burdens that cling to us and weigh us down.We have to shake off all that weight and sin if we are to run the race to completion.But how can this be done? To what then shall we cling, and to where should we run?The right question to ask is not to where, but to whom.And the answer, of course, is....

3. Look to Jesus

The professional athlete knows that the key to finishing the race well is to avoid all distractions and keep your eyes focused on the prize.If we allow our focus to drift to the crowds, or to dwell on the hardships of the race, or the weight of the burdens that cling to us, we will struggle to finish the race.The key is to keep your eyes fixed on the prize and nothing but the prize.Here the author tells us plainly that the key to this race and to enduring to the end victorious, is to keep looking to Jesus.The writer describes Jesus in 2 ways: as the Founder of our faith and as the Perfecter of our faith.

Founder

That Jesus is the Founder and the Cornerstone of our faith is clear throughout Scripture.Every page from Genesis to Exodus points to Him.He is the foundation of our faith and the unshakable ground on which we stand.All of our hope for salvation rests entirely on Him and His finished work on our behalf on the cross.Without Jesus, we have nothing.

​1 Corinthians 15:14 ESVAnd if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

The entire Christian faith rests on the validity of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Perfecter

The writer also describes Jesus as the Perfecter of our faith - He completes our faith.Jesus has done all things necessary to secure our salvation, and He will see His work through to the end.As Paul writes to the Philippian church:

​Philippians 1:6 ESVAnd I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

I believe this is the central focus of this passage.If we are not looking to Jesus as the Founder and Finisher of our faith...leaning on Him, trusting in Him, fixing all of our hope on Him to endure to the end of the race, ...then all of your best efforts and everything else will be useless and you will fail.

The focus is not the host of witnesses -

What good would it be to live a life inspired and motivated by those who have gone before us, if we are not inspired by them to look to the One to whom they looked?If we look to those guys merely as examples of morality, we are not going to get enough motivation to sustain us to the end of this grueling race!They were sinners just like us. In many ways they were failures.If you read through Hebrews 11 you won’t find that any one of them were commended for their works or their morality; but in every example we see that they were commended for their faith.They believed in God. They trusted GodThey are there not as our ultimate example, but as witnesses to Him - and their testimony is that God is faithful - look to Him.

The focus is not on our ability to lay aside the weight of sin -

If the result of our race hinged in any way on our strength or our own ability to shake off sin, then every one of us would be doomed to failure.No believer runs this race on his own strength. We are all weighed down with weaknesses.We are too weak ourselves to fight off the desires of sin on our own. So to find the strength we need, we must look outside of ourselves… we must look to Jesus.Only by looking to Jesus and focusing on Him and His finished work on our behalf, can we find the strength and the motivation to persevere to the end.In 1 Peter 1:5, Peter tells us that we are being guarded for salvation through God’s power.In Ephesians 1:19 Paul is praying that the Church might comprehend the immeasurable greatness of God’s power toward us who believe - and he says its the same power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.

Grace

But friends - he goes on from there in chapter 2 to say that even while we were dead in our sins, God made us alive together with Christ, and seated us with him in the heavenly places.In the ancient games, the prize given to the athlete was a crown. The crown itself was not worth anything - the value of the prize was the fame and prestige that came with it.Because whoever wore that crown, regardless of his pedigree or his bloodline or his past, was granted the honor of sitting with royalty at the feast. Imagine a humble slave who had no hope of ever making anything of his life, winning that crown and sitting with royalty.It would be life-changing, and change their standing forever.Friends, when we complete our race and receive our prize, we will be seated with Christ in the heavenly placesIn fact, in Ephesians 1 Paul says that we not only get to sit with royalty, but that we have already been adopted into royalty...… we have been made adopted sons and daughters of the King, and we are already seated in Him in the heavenly places.How can this be?How can sinners like us be given such a reward, so contrary to what we deserve?It is only because Jesus, the Founder and Perfecter of our faith, for the joy that was set before Him - It brings him JOY to share His joy with us - endured the cross, despising the shame of the cruelest and most shameful means of death.He went before us, did it all for us, paid it all for us.And because he has risen, we have assurance that His payment on our behalf has been accepted in full with no after-reckoning......and that we too will be raised with him when he calls us home.Therefore, brothers and sisters, all who run the race looking to Jesus, can run the race with confident assurance of victory.Because He who calls us to the race is faithful. We have a great host of witnesses who will bear testimony to that.In the midst of our grief, we rejoice today in God’s grace and faithfulness to our brother Barry, who set his hope on Christ. He has gone home to his reward.So friends, ...From this day forward, when we think of Barry, let us see him in that cloud of witnesses testifying to us and reminding us to look to Jesus.

​1 Thessalonians 5:23–24 ESVNow may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

AMAZING GRACE

6. Notices

Family will go to the back of the church to greet congregation

All are invited to refreshments in the church hall

 All are invited to refreshments in the church hall

A Tribute Book will be available in the hall for people to write in

 A Tribute Book will be available in the hall for people to write in

Money given in lieu of flowers will go to Cambridge Baptist Church. Gifts specifically to the Wyatt family should be clearly labelled for them (whether in cash or by electronic banking)

 Money given in lieu of flowers will go to Cambridge Baptist Church. Gifts specifically

to the Wyatt family should be clearly labelled for them (whether in cash or by

electronic banking)

Please do not use the front entrance to leave the premises but go through the Day Care Centre and exit via Brabant Street.

 Please do not use the front entrance to leave the premises but go through the Day

Care Centre and exit via Brabant Street.

Benediction

1 Peter 1:3–4 ESV

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,