Funeral for Paulette Pugh
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Obituary
Obituary
Paulette Mozingo Pugh, age 71 of Northport, passed away Friday, September 24, 2021 at her residence.
She was preceded in death by her children: Mary Ann Johnson, Bodie Johnson, and Shannon Taylor, parents: Ernest and Helen Mozingo, siblings: Kenneth Mozingo, Dale Mozingo, Wesley Mozingo, Kathy Clardy, Alice Lynn, and Peggy Meadows.
Survivors include her husband: Alfred Pugh, sons: Daniel Johnson, and Jason Taylor, daughters: Betty Johnson, and Susan Johnson, sisters: Sandra Mozingo, Jimmie Mozingo, and Faye Miller, thirteen grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
13 And I heard a voice from heaven, saying, “Write, ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on!’ ” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “so that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow with them.”
[Prayer]
[Prayer]
Sermon
Sermon
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Alfred’s son, Rocky.
But for those of you that do know me, you know that I’m a sinner—but a sinner saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
And that’s how I’ll preach to you today, as one sinner talking to another sinner about the forgiveness that God offers to us in Jesus Christ.
Speaking with Dad on the day that Paulette died, he said, “I know that she is walking hand-in-hand with Jesus down those streets of gold.”
But Paulette only gets to walk with Jesus down those streets of gold because she too admitted that she was a sinner in need of a Savior.
[ILLUS] Now to be a sinner doesn’t mean that everything we do is bad. For example, Paulette once asked me a life-changing question. At breakfast one morning, she asked, “Rocky, do you want cheese in your eggs?” Now, to that point in my life, I don’t think anyone had asked me that question, and I don’t think I had ever had cheese in my eggs. But that morning, thanks to Paulette, I did, and ever since eggs and cheese have been one of my favorite food combinations!
You know, the Catholic church declares a deceased person a saint if it can be proven that they performed at least one miracle during their lifetime. I think cheese-eggs were one of Paulette’s miracles!
Now, of course, Paulette did many greater things than that as a wife, a mother, a grandmother, aunt, sister, and friend, but saint though she (not according to the Catholic church but according to God’s grace in Christ), Paulette was nevertheless a sinner.
This seems strange, I know.
What focus on Paulette as a sinner on the day of her funeral?
Why is it that only those who admit they are sinners get to walk with Jesus in Heaven?
In the Bible—Matthew 9—Jesus called a man to leave everything and follow Him; Jesus called him to become one of His disciples.
To leave everything behind and follow Jesus would be tough for most people, but especially so for Matthew because he was a tax collector, which meant that he likely wealthy.
He would be leaving all that wealth behind to follow Jesus who often had no place to lay His head.
But that’s what he did.
And then Matthew did something else.
He invited his friends to come and meet Jesus.
As a tax collector, Matthew wouldn’t have been very popular among his fellow Jews so his friend included other unpopular people—other tax collectors and sinners.
Jesus was eating with Matthew and all his tax collecting and sinner friends when the Pharisees showed.
The Pharisees were the uppity religious Jews who believed that they were close to God when in fact they were very far away from God.
They asked the disciples of Jesus, “Why is your Teacher eating with tax collectors and sinners?” (Matt. 9:11)
But Jesus heard the question—and listen to how He responded—He said, “It is not the those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick,” (Matt. 9:12).
What was Jesus saying?
Well, Jesus is the great physician who came to bring healing to people who had made themselves sick with sin—people like Matthew and his friends.
But some people didn’t think they were sick with sin. People like the Pharisees thought they were spiritually healthy, right with God because of their own supposed good works.
Jesus had not come for those people, people who had deceived themselves into thinking they were right with God.
Jesus had come for people who would admit they were not right with God, people who would admit they were sinners.
Will you admit that you are a sinner today?
Here’s how you know you’re a sinner.
Let’s start with the Ten Commandments.
The first commandment is, “You shall have no other gods before Me.”
This was not just a law given to the Jewish people but a law written on every human heart.
We all instinctively know that we should not have any gods before the one true God.
But we all have.
We’ve all worshipped the idol of self instead of God.
Ephesians 2 even says that we all once followed Satan whether we knew it or not.
Now, we could keep going in the Ten Commandments. A bit later God said to His people, “You shall not commit murder,” and “You shall not commit adultery.”
Jesus talked about these two commandments in His famous Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:21-22, he talked about murder...
21 “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ 22 “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.
What’s Jesus saying?
He’s saying that you don’t have to literally break the “You shall not murder” commandment to break that commandment.
You break that commandment in your heart when you get angry enough to curse them as a good-for-nothing fool.
We’ve all been that angry in the past.
We’ve all sinned by breaking the “You shall not murder” commandment.
Jesus talked about adultery in Matthew 5:27-28…
27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; 28 but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Jesus is saying that we don’t have to literally break this commandments in order to break it.
If we’ve ever lusted after a man or woman, we’ve already broken it.
We’ve all done this.
We’ve all sinned by breaking the “You shall not commit adultery” commandment.
Or think about what Jesus called the greatest and second greatest commandments, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Those two commandments are a summary of all that God commanded in the Ten Commandments, indeed in the entire OT.
But we fall short of obeying these commands.
Have you loved God with everything you’ve got every moment of your life?
You haven’t, and neither have I.
Can you honestly say that you’ve always loved your neighbors as you’ve loved yourself?
You haven’t, and neither have I.
You see, the standard is perfection. Jesus said in Matthew 5:48…
48 “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Are you perfect? Are you without sin? Are you holy, holy, holy as God is?
No, you are not, and neither am I.
Neither was Paulette.
And this is good news because the table where Jesus sits is reserved for sinners only.
Romans 3:23 says…
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Romans 6:23 says…
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 5:8 says…
8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 10:9 says…
9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;
Romans 10:13 says…
13 for “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
You are sinner in need of a Savior, and the only Savior is Jesus!
He lived the perfect life that you and I were commanded to live!
He died for us on a Roman cross to pay the price of death for our sins!
He rose from the dead proving that He forever defeated sin and death!
And now all who call on Him in faith shall be saved!
Will you admit that you are a sinner?
Will you call on Jesus as your Savior?
Will you place your faith in Jesus?
[ILLUS] There are lots people in Heaven with Paulette, one of them I’m certain is a missionary named John Paton.
John Paton shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ with a group of cannibals on remote islands off the coast of Australia.
Of course, he didn’t speak the language when he arrived, and the people had no part of the Bible in their own language.
John Paton set out to translate the Bible into their language, but he got stuck when he tried to find a word in their language for faith.
One day, however, as he struggled to come up with just the right word, he sat in his chair, raised both feet off the floor, and asked one of the local islanders, “What do you call this?”
In the local language, the islander said, “You were sitting. Now, you are resting your whole weight.”
That’s what it means to place your faith in Jesus, to rest your whole weight on Him to save you from God’s wrath on account of your sins.
In Matthew 11:28-29 Jesus said…
28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29 “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
Paulette’s soul is at rest. She knew that she was a sinner in need of God’s grace, and she received the only grace that God offers in Jesus Christ.
Is your soul at rest?
Have you admitted that you’re a sinner?
Have you received God’s grace in Jesus Christ?
Call on Jesus for salvation and when your time comes, you too will walk down those streets of gold hand-in-hand with Jesus.