Ester's Funeral

          At 2:00 today, I will be speaking at the funeral service for Ester Barnes. It will be a private service, not for any reason other than that is what the family desires. If I could have had my wishes, they would have invited the entire town, even the entire county. I will tell why.

          One day this week, one of Ester’s daughters asked me to visit her in a Hospice location, which I did. While there, I asked Ester about her relationship with Jesus, being very specific with my questions. Her answers were “spot on,” as far as I was concerned. It was obvious that she was ready to abandon her mortal earth suit and put on immortality. Much to my surprise, the very next day her daughter called me to tell me that she had just died. I was so thankful that I had heard Ester tell me that she believed the gospel, the good news about Jesus, that He had died for her sins, and had given her eternal life.

          The next day, a Funeral Director called me to tell me that Ester’s family wanted me to speak at her funeral. My mind, immediately, went back to an earlier funeral, where I talked about how unbelievable the gospel really is, and I knew, immediately, what I wanted to say at Ester’s funeral.

          In just a few short minutes, I will be leaving my office to drive to the location of this funeral, and everything in me is wishing that a huge crowd would be present, not because of anything I might say, but because of the incredible power that is unleashed in the preaching of the unbelievable gospel.

          This is the foundation for what I will say:

This supernatural Being calls Himself God.

He claims to be the creator and sustainer of the entire universe.

He also claims to have become a man in the person of His only begotten Son, a Son born of the virgin womb of a Jewish woman, named Mary.

He also claims that He lived among Jewish people, as the son of a carpenter.

He claimed that He could walk on water, give sight to the blind, restore the hearing of the deaf, heal the crippled, even raise the dead.

He had so few worldly possessions, that He rarely even had a place to lay His head at night.

He would eventually be beaten, stripped naked, and hung on a Roman cross and left to die a terrible, terrible death, all because of the sins of the Adam’s race.

He claimed to have spent only three days in the tomb, after which He was raised from the dead, or so He claimed. Really!

As if that were not enough, He even claimed to have spent 40 days post-resurrection talking to and ministering to the people of Israel.

And then to top it all off, He claimed to have stood just outside the small town of Bethany and ascended back to Heaven, from whence He came,  promising to return in the same manner.

Amazingly, He claimed to have done all of this in order to rescue everyone who would believe this unbelievable story from the pit of sin and hell, forgive them all of all of their sins, and, thereby, restore them to right relationship with this Holy, Righteous God He called “Father,” and in so doing give them eternal life.

Oh, and one last thing: He even had the audacity to proclaim that He is the ONLY Savior and that God is the ONLY God, and if you desire Heaven, your goodness will NOT get you there, you must come to Him.

Now, you tell me, who in the wide world would ever believe this unbelievable story? Well, I will answer my own question: Only those to whom God gives the faith to believe this story will believe it, and once that faith is given, they can do nothing but believe the story.

Ester believed this story, she told me she did, and that is enough for God and for eternity.

"This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent" (John 6:29 NASB).