October 24, 2014
Welcome family and friends.
We are here to honor the life and celebrate the homegoing of Charles H. Hedges, Jr., affectionately known as Pastor Chuk (C-H-U-K), and of course to exalt the God that he trusted in, worshiped, and served. To do one without the other would be like praising the vine branch for bearing fruit while ignoring the vine itself.
Heavenly Father, we dedicate this time to you this morning to honor and remember our friend Chuk Hedges, We ask your blessing upon this time and upon the memories that are shared and the words that are spoken. We ask this in Jesus name and for His sake.
I worked alongside Chuk for about 40 of his 45 years in ministry. Up until a very short time ago, Charles was physically the strongest person I’ve known. He seemed as strong as an ox, and I suspect that if he had had a wrestling match with an ox he would likely have been the winner. He lifted a lot of weights. I’m pretty sure there are apocryphal tales of him lifting diesel locomotives. Well, I’m pretty sure they are apocryphal. And he was too young to have been the inspiration for the legendary tales of Paul Bunyan. But he was very strong. He was such a tower of strength that many of us thought he would be going strong decades into the future.
But his health problems of the past several years are testimony to the universal truth that our physical bodies wear out and eventually cease to function. The Bible refers to it as “going the way of all the earth.” [Josh 23:14; 1 Kings 2:2] We may live for more than 74 years, or much longer – I read about someone who recently died at 113 years old – but the years are passed very quickly. The future is quickly tomorrow, tomorrow is today, today is yesterday, and yesterday is suddenly long ago. As the Bible states “For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.” [James 4:14] If you are older than about 30 you probably realize this by experience.
When someone we are close to dies, it raises many questions about life and death. Why do we live? Why do we die? What is life? What happens after death? Job, in the distant past, asked “He who dies, shall he live again?” [Job 14:14] We mourn our loss, and rightfully so. But as believers in Jesus, “we do not sorrow as those who have no hope.” [1 Thess 4;13] When someone close to us dies, or falls asleep in Jesus – that’s the biblical language for a believer who passes away – it leaves a space, a vacancy. There is a missing piece. When we received word that Chuk had passed, the world felt like a different place. Even though Chuk was limited in his ability to communicate for some time, a world without Chuk in it seems different than a world with Chuk in it. If you’re also feeling that vacancy, the Lord desires to graciously fill that void with His presence – “… there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” [Prov 18:24b] Not that the sense of loss ever completely passes.
Jesus understands the sorrow of losing someone he loved. He wept at the grave of Lazarus, even though He knew that He was about to raise Him from the dead. Perhaps somewhat because He knew, since Lazarus would be one of those rare individuals in history who would pass through the door of death twice.
We do not sorrow as those who have no hope. We know that God will raise to life those who have died in Jesus. True sorrow is for those who die without trusting in the Lord, and how deep that sorrow is. But for the believer, we will see our loved one again in a reunion of great joy. And Pastor Chuk is now experiencing a joy that one can only know in the presence of the Lord. As C.H. Spurgeon said “In his presence is fullness of joy; in his absence is depth of misery.” What a contrast!
When we look into the casket before us, we may think we are looking at Pastor Chuk, but we are only seeing his recently vacated residence. He has moved locations – changed addresses – but he has not ceased to exist. Death is not the end. The material part of you is not all there is. You will continue on when your brain waves cease or your heart stops beating, when your next breath doesn’t come.
The Bible says, “to be absent from the body [is] to be present with the Lord.” [2 Cor 5:8] When it says this, it is not speaking of every person, but of the ones who have trusted in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins. The same passage says, “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” A tent is a temporary dwelling. A building from God – a house that God has built – is permanent. Eternal.
The body is not who we are, it is where we live, and we have a lease that will expire. We don’t know when it will expire. We don’t know our expiration date, but we all have one. It is good, when your lease expires, to have somewhere to move to. This passage speaks of the body as a tent, and just as a tent, the body will wear out over the course of time. It starts out as a brand-spanking new tent, but it gets used, sometimes abused, and begins to become threadbare. It may have a few patches applied. Finally, it is no longer habitable, and we can no longer dwell there. It can only be a temporary dwelling place. Early in our marriage, Charlotte and I visited a Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum. One display was the reproduction of the gravesite of a man named Solomon Peas, P-E-A-S. His epitaph read, “Peas is not here, only the pod, Peas shelled out, went home to God.”
Jesus said to his followers, “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions [dwelling places]; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” [John 14:1-3] We are also told that “our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.” [Phil 3:20-21]
As you probably know, Pastor Chuk was called to preach the gospel, the good news of Jesus the Christ. [1 Cor 15:3-8] He never wavered from that calling or shirked that task. He did not, as we so often see today, bring disgrace upon the pulpit of Jesus or upon the church. Instead he was a true servant to the church. He did not “look out only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.” [Phil 2:4] He lived for Jesus’ sake. Paul the apostle wrote, “Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful.” [1 Cor 4:2] Pastor Chuk was faithful in the work to which he was called.This is the greatest commendation we can give to him today. It is the greatest commendation that any person can receive, even from the Lord Himself, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Chuk was faithful. He was not only physically strong, he became spiritually strong. I think his physical strength was far outweighed by his spiritual strength.
But his faithfulness and spiritual strength are not the reasons that we are confident that Pastor Chuk is in the presence of his Lord. He was a good man by human standards, but goodness has not earned him a place with God. No man can stand before God in his own works or his own goodness. No, we are confident that Chuk is with the Lord only because he believed the gospel that he preached.
The gospel, the good news, is often not understood or accepted today because the bad news is not understood or not believed. The true history of the world is not believed.
The world is not in the condition in which God created it. He finished the work of creation and said of all that He had made, it is very good. We do not see the very good creation that God made today. There is still much beauty and goodness in the world, but the world has been marred by what the Bible calls sin – missing the mark of perfection.
Our first parents disobeyed God in the garden of Eden and sin and its consequences, e.g. disease, suffering, and death entered the world. Mankind itself is fallen from the moral goodness of God and the sentence of death has been passed upon us. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” [Romans 5:12] Death was not originally part of the creation. It is not very good. It is called an enemy whose defeat will be fully accomplished at the end. [1 Cor 15:26] It entered because of sin. Death is the great equalizer. It does not matter whether you are rich or poor, famous or unknown, it doesn’t matter how attractive you are, or how attractive you think you are, or how attractive others think you are. When it comes, no man can stave it off or delay it. Our values radically change when death begins to knock on our door. Many things that were important become inconsequential, and vice-versa. But, as we’ve said, death is not the end.
The good news is that God entered the world in the person of Jesus. He came to solve the problem of sin and death, a problem that mankind could not solve. He stated that He “did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” [Mark 10:45] He would take the death penalty to which mankind was subject. The prophet Isaiah, some 700 years before Jesus was born, writes “Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” [Isaiah 53:4-6]
Jesus defeated sin and death through His cross and His resurrection from the dead. Those who trust in Him are also conquerors of sin and death and are granted everlasting life. As one of the most famous verses in the Bible says, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. [John 3:16]
The gospel is the difference between death and life. Jesus said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.” [John 5:24] True life is believing Jesus.
Chuk has entered into heavenly habitations not because of any work he has done, not even because of his faithfulness or spiritual strength. Those things were a result of his faith, not the source of it.. He has entered in only because he trusted in the one who promised eternal life to those who trust in Him. He would say with Paul…
2 Timothy 1:12
“ … I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.”
If you have never trusted in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, you can do so today right where you are. Just talk to Him from your heart. Nothing would please Chuk more than that. Jesus said that He “came to seek and to save that which was lost. “ [Luke 19:10] If you know that you are lost, Jesus is seeking you so that you may be saved.
We are here to honor and remember Pastor Chuk. It was wonderful having him with us. But we are also here about the eternal story of his and our Creator and Redeemer, the one Mediator between God and man, Jesus the Christ [1 Timothy 2:1] who is worthy of all honor, glory, and praise. And Chuk would say “Amen.”
Please join me in prayer,
We thank you, heavenly Father, for Pastor Chuk, for giving him to us for this time, for the example he is to us in living for you, in laying down our lives on your behalf.
Thank you Lord, that you are good. Much that we see in the world is not good. We give you thanks that the day will come when you will make all things new and all things right by your return to set up your kingdom.
We pray that you would comfort Chuk’s wife Mary, his children, his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren, and the church he pastored in their loss. Thank you that you are the Father of mercies and God of all comfort. [2 Cor 1:3]