Joan Palmer and Jack Post

Visitation: 8/1/2026: 1:00-2:00 PM (New Life Bible Fellowship Church)

Service: 8/1/2026: 2:00-2:45 PM (New Life Bible Fellowship Church)

Luncheon: 8/1/2026: 3:00-4:00 PM (New Life Bible Fellowship Church)

Interment: 8/3/2025: 2:00-3:00 PM (Delaware Veterans Memorial Cemetery)

Agenda of Main Funeral Service: (about 45 minutes)

Welcome & Prayer (Pastor Dick Bickings)

Obituaries (Pastor Dick Bickings)

Song: “Ancient of Days”

Song: “I Will Sing of My Redeemer”

First Scripture Reading: (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18) (Stacy Palmer)

Eulogy: (Friend/Family Member)

Second Scripture Reading: (John 14:1-6) (Pat Petrecca)

Message of Hope: (1 Cor 15:50-58, Pastor Dick Bickings)

Song: “Great is Thy Faithfulness”

Closing Prayer & Benediction: (Pastor Dick Bickings)

Main Funeral Service Detail:

Welcome & Prayer (Pastor Dick Bickings)

On behalf of the Palmer and Post families, we welcome you this afternoon as we celebrate the life of Joan Palmer and Jack Post, and more importantly, celebrate God’s greatness and goodness as we magnify his glory. Lets pray:

Our Father and our God, we come this afternoon to remember the ones whose lives have touched so many of us, and celebrate how you our God are able to begin and complete your good work in our dear brother Jack and his wife Joan. We grieve this morning for our loss, but we do not grieve as the world grieves for we grieve with hope, the hope of both Jack and Joan presently being with you, and that we shall join them some day and together with one voice, worship you in a way that we could only have dreamed. I pray that you would provide comfort through the Holy Spirit to both the Palmer and Post families, and for all those who are also grieving, and that as we proceed through this service, you would be seen in all of your glory, in Jesus name, amen.

Obituaries

Jack Kenneth Post, Jr., age 81, of Millsboro, Delaware, passed away peacefully into the loving arms of the Lord on April 24, 2026, at Accent Hospice at Christiana Care Wilmington Hospital following a courageous battle with lung cancer.

Jack was born in Brookhaven, Pennsylvania, to Jack K. Post, Sr. and Edna Mae Stewart. When Jack was just five years old, his father made the ultimate sacrifice while serving during the Korean War. Inspired by his father's service, Jack enlisted in the United States Army in 1963, where he served in communications and ammunition. He received an honorable discharge after three years of faithful service.

Following his time in the Army, Jack worked in a machine shop in Upland and later as a security guard. He was known as a hardworking, dependable handyman who took great pride in helping others. Whether painting, landscaping, clearing snow, repairing homes, or lending a helping hand to friends and neighbors, Jack quietly served those around him through countless acts of kindness.

On June 5, 2010, Jack married the love of his life, Joan Palmer. Together they enjoyed their home in the Pot-Nets Lakeside community, where they attended community events, built lasting friendships, and shared many happy years together.

One of Jack's greatest passions was his treasured collection of antique hand-wound clocks. He lovingly maintained each one, ensuring there was rarely a quiet moment in the house. He also enjoyed woodworking and creating handmade gifts for family and friends. Jack was devoted to Joan, helping her with gardening, canning, and preparing for community craft sales. Although Joan was known as the family's accomplished cook and baker, Jack proudly took charge of brining the Thanksgiving turkey for their holiday gatherings.

Jack was a devoted member of New Life Bible Fellowship Church, where he faithfully served alongside his church family and lived out his Christian faith through service, generosity, and a willing heart.

Jack is survived by his sisters, Joan and Kay (Susie), and his nephew, Joey. He was also survived by his stepsons, Don (Stacy), James, John (Lauren), and David (Leah); his step-grandchildren, Chrissy (Adam), DJ (Stef), Matthew (Katina), Andrew, Tristan, Jackson, Luna, Noah, and Jason; and his step-great-grandchildren, Kayla, Ava, Sienna, Theo, and Harley.

Joan Claire Palmer, age 88, of Millsboro, Delaware, passed away peacefully to be with our Lord on May 12, 2026, at Delaware Bay Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center in Georgetown, Delaware.

Joan was born on February 12, 1938, in Media, Pennsylvania, to Jacob Clarence Bonsall and Florence Ethel Harper. She was the older sister of Doris Johnson.

Joan was a talented and devoted mother, homemaker, gardener, baker, and seamstress who found great joy in caring for her family and friends. She had a remarkable gift for making every holiday a cherished celebration for her large family, filling her home with warmth, laughter, and the aromas of her delicious food. She was famous for "Joan's Jams and Jellies," fresh-baked breads, and homemade cookies at local community events. Her home was always open, her table was always full, and no one ever left without feeling loved. She was deeply devoted to her family and lived out her Christian faith each day through her love for her church, her Bible study, and the kindness she showed to her family, friends, and everyone fortunate enough to know her.

Joan's kindness, generous spirit, and unwavering devotion to her family will be remembered by all who knew and loved her. Her legacy lives on in the traditions she created, the values she instilled, and the countless lives she touched. Though she will be deeply missed, her love lives on through her children, grandchildren, and all those who were blessed to call her family or friend.

Joan is survived by her sons, Don (Stacy), James, John (Lauren), and David (Leah); her grandchildren, Chrissy (Adam), DJ (Stef), Matthew (Katina), Andrew, Tristan, Jackson, Luna, Noah, and Jason (Trista); her great-grandchildren, Kayla, Ava, Sienna, Theo, and Harlee; as well as many beloved nieces, nephews, and their families.

She was preceded in death by her daughter, Marcia Bonsall (Kenny); her granddaughter, Jennifer Bonsall; her younger sister, Doris Johnson (George); her beloved husband, Jack Post; and her former husbands, Donald Zepp and Harman Palmer.

Song: “Ancient of Days”

Song: “I Will Sing of My Redeemer”

First Scripture Reading (Stacy Palmer):

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.

Eulogy (Friend/Family Member)

Second Scripture Reading (Pat Petrecca):

John 14:1–6 (ESV)

14 “Let not your hearts 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 go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Message of Hope: (1 Corinthians 15:50-58, Pastor Dick Bickings)

Introduction

Friends, family, we are gathered here today because death has visited us again. It has taken Jack and Joan from our sight, and it has left a hole in this room that only they filled. I will not stand here and pretend that hole isn't real, or that it doesn't hurt. Scripture doesn't ask us to pretend. Even Jesus, standing at the tomb of His friend Lazarus, wept — knowing full well He was about to raise him. Grief and hope are not enemies. They stand together at every Christian funeral.

But I want you to notice something about how the apostle Paul ends his great chapter on the resurrection. He doesn't end it with a vague wish that things will be okay, or a soft sentiment about a "better place." He ends it with an argument — a tightly reasoned, Scripture-saturated declaration of exactly what happens to the believer who has died, and exactly why death had any claim on Jack and Joan in the first place, and exactly why that claim has been broken forever.

That's what I want to walk through with you this afternoon: the “why” of death, and the certainty of the resurrection. Because if all we offer grieving people is a feeling, grief will eventually overpower it. But if what we offer is the truth God has revealed, that truth will outlast every wave of sorrow that comes against it.

Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 15, beginning at verse 50.

1 Corinthians 15:50–58 ESV

50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 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. 58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

I. The Problem Death Exposes — Flesh and Blood Cannot Inherit (v. 50)

Paul begins with a flat statement: "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable."

Now, don't hear that as an insult to the body. Paul isn't saying our physical bodies are evil or beneath God. He spent the first forty-nine verses of this chapter defending the goodness and the necessity of a resurrected body. What he means by "flesh and blood" here is our present condition — the body as we now have it, inherited from Adam: aging, weakening, breaking down, ultimately returning to dust. That body, exactly as it is, cannot walk into the unshakable, eternal kingdom of God. Something has to change. Not be discarded — changed.

This is the deepest “why” beneath every funeral. We do not gather here because something went wrong with God's plan. We gather here because Genesis 3 happened — because sin entered the world, and death entered with it, and every son and daughter of Adam since has carried a body that is, quite literally, not built to last forever. Jack and Joan carried that body faithfully for 81 and 88 years respectively. And now it has done what every Adamic body eventually does.

That is a hard truth to sit with. But it is an honest one, and honesty is where real comfort has to start.

II. The Mystery Revealed — Transformation Is Certain (vv. 51–53)

But Paul does not leave us in verse 50. Look at verse 51: "Behold! I tell you a mystery."

In Scripture, a "mystery" isn't something spooky or unknowable — it's a truth that was hidden in God's own counsel until He chose to reveal it. And here Paul unveils it plainly: "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet."

Notice the word "sleep." It's the New Testament's tender, deliberate word for the death of a believer — not because death is unreal, but because it is temporary. You don't speak of someone who is asleep as though they are gone for good. You speak of them expecting them to wake. Paul uses this same picture in 1 Thessalonians 4, comforting believers who had lost loved ones: "that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep."

Jack and Joan are asleep in Jesus. Not annihilated. Not gone into nothing. Asleep — with the certain expectation of waking (not soul sleep but are consciously aware, though bodiless).

And when will that waking come? (verse 52) “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet." Not a slow fade. Not a process. An instantaneous, sovereign act of God, at the same moment Paul describes in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 and Jesus describes in Matthew 24 — when the trumpet sounds and the dead in Christ are raised.

And verse 53 tells us what happens: "this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality." The picture is of clothing — the body is not thrown away like a worn-out coat and left behind forever. It is clothed over. Transformed. Made new, yet still recognizably the same body that lived and labored and loved in this world. Continuity and transformation, together. That is the Christian hope — not merely that a soul survives, but that the whole person, body and soul reunited, will one day stand whole and glorified before God.

III. The Song of Victory — Death Answered at Last (vv. 54–57)

When this happens: 1 Corinthians 15:54 “54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: …”

This is where Paul's argument reaches its height. Verses 54 through 57 read almost like a song — because that's exactly what they are. Paul reaches back into the prophets, into Isaiah 25:8 and Hosea 13:14, and puts a taunt song on the lips of the church, the kind of song ancient armies sang over a defeated enemy:

"Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?"

Death, the last enemy, the one enemy none of us can outrun or outwit or outlive — Paul stands over it and mocks it. Not because it isn't real. We feel its sting here today. But because its power has been broken.

And then Paul gives us the sharpest, most piercing diagnosis in the whole passage — verse 56: "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law."

This is the “why” of death laid bare. Death is not natural. It is not neutral. It is not simply "part of the circle of life," as the world likes to say. Death is the wages of sin, exactly as God warned Adam in the garden: "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." And the law of God — holy, righteous, and good in itself — becomes death's weapon against us, because it exposes our sin and pronounces its just verdict against us. That is the sting. That is what makes death terrifying: not merely that the heart stops, but that sin has a righteous claim against every one of us before a holy God.

I will not soften that for you today, because the gospel does not need softening to be good news. It needs to be heard in full.

Because here is verse 57: "But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

The sting has been drawn out. Not ignored — drawn out, at the cross. Jesus Christ, who never sinned, bore the curse of the law in the place of everyone who trusts Him. Galatians tells us He "became a curse for us." Second Corinthians (5:21) tells us God made Him "to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." The very law that gave death its power has been fully satisfied in Christ. Sin's claim has been paid. And so death, for the believer, has lost its poison — even though, until the resurrection, it has not yet lost every visible mark of its passing through this world.

Jack and Joan's death was not a payment for anything. Christ already paid it. Jack and Joan's death was a doorway — the last step out of a fallen, dying body and into the immediate presence of the Lord they trusted.

IV. The Charge to the Living — Steadfast Labor in Light of the Resurrection (v. 58)

Paul does not end with theology alone. He ends with a charge — to us, the ones still here. Verse 58: "Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain."

Three words, building on one another. Steadfast — firmly planted. Immovable — nothing can shake this foundation out from under you. Abounding — not merely surviving, but overflowing in the work God has given you.

And notice: this confidence rests on knowledge, not on feeling. "Knowing" — because of everything Paul has just laid out about the resurrection. The doctrine is not detached from real life. It is the very ground that lets grieving people keep living, keep loving, keep serving, without despair.

And here is a particular comfort for today: "your labor is not in vain." Whatever years Jack and Joan spent quietly faithful — in this church, in this family, in this community — none of it was wasted. Not one prayer, not one act of love, not one hour spent serving the Lord. It is sealed up and safe, because the resurrection is certain.

Conclusion and Application

So we return to where we began. Why does death come, even to those who love the Lord? Because sin entered this world through Adam, and none of us are exempt from its wage. That is the sober truth verse 56 will not let us avoid.

But why can we sing, even at a graveside? Because Jesus Christ has already met death's claim and disarmed it, and everyone united to Him by faith will rise imperishable, immortal, whole — body and soul together, forever with the Lord. That is the certain truth verse 57 declares.

If you are trusting in Christ today, as Jack and Joan were, then hear this: your grief is real, and your hope is real, and they are not in competition. Grieve — but not as those who have no hope. And then, in light of this hope, let it press you — like it pressed Jack and Joan — into steadfast, abounding labor for the Lord, however many days He gives you.

And if you are here today and you have never trusted Christ — if death's sting still has its full claim on you because sin's debt is still unpaid — I would not be a faithful minister of this gospel if I let this hour pass without saying plainly: the same Christ who conquered death for Jack and Joan offers Himself to you today. Turn from your sin, trust in Him, and death's sting will be drawn from you as well. If not, there will also be a resurrection of the unbelievers as John describes for us in the book of Revelation, chapter 20:

Revelation 20:11–15 ESV

11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. 13 And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. 14 Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. 15 And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

The unbelievers also are not annihilated, they also will rise again for final judgment only to be cast into conscience, eternal judgment in the lake of fire. Therefore if you are here this afternoon and are not trusting Christ, repent of your sins and trust Christ now.

Let us pray.

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9. Song: “Great is Thy Faithfulness”

10. Closing Prayer & Benediction: ( Pastor Dick Bickings)

Numbers 6:24–26 ESV

24 The Lord bless you and keep you; 25 the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; 26 the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

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At Delaware Veterans Memorial Cemetery (8/3/2026 @ 2:00 PM):

Charge to the Attendees:

John 11:25–26 ESV

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

Job 19:25–27 ESV

25 For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. 26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, 27 whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!

Forasmuch as it has pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear father, grandfather, brother, friend, Richard Sr., here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.”

Prayer:

Father, in your good pleasure and sovereign plan, you have decided that it was time for Jack and Joan to go home to be with you. We know and believe that he presently exists in conscious, everlasting bliss and rest, completely healed of all earthly ills, and is no longer plagued by the curse of sin and this sin cursed world. We know that this body was only his earthly shell, and his soul is with you, and that he will rejoin this resurrected, recreated body upon Christ’s return. We know that this is not the end, but a transfer from one state of existence to another. We pray that the Holy Spirit will comfort us in our mourning, both family and friends. Knowing that we do not mourn as the world mourns, but we mourn for the physical loss and interaction with him, but rejoice in the reality of the resurrection and eternal existence. All because of the atonement of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, on our behalf, in whose name we pray, Amen.

Song:

Amazing Grace

Verse 1 Amazing Grace how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see.

Verse 7 When we’ve been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we’d first begun.