Solid Comfort (Buzz Robinson Memorial Service)

SOLID COMFORT

A Message for the Memorial Service of Buzz Robinson

By Pastor Brian Wilbur

Date: June 22, 2024

Series: Memorial Service Messages

Note: Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard   Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

As I stand before you this morning and have this opportunity to bring a message of comfort, I want you to know that the only comfort that matters in the long run is the comfort that the Lord gives. Every other comfort, every pseudo-comfort, every fleshly comfort, every conveniently imagined comfort, will ultimately fail. And I don’t want to be a preacher who brings you a message of comfort that will ultimately fail. Instead, I want to give you some solid comfort from the Word of God. Isaiah 40 begins, “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.” (Isaiah 40:1) Ten verses later we are told that the Lord “will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather his lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.” (Isaiah 40:11) Isaiah 40 ends with the everlasting God giving strength to the weak (Isaiah 40:27-31). We must not settle for anything less than the comfort, gentle care, and strength that the Lord gives to those who trust Him.

In Paul’s Second Letter to the Thessalonians, he wrote:

“Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.” (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17)

When Paul writes these words, he is not referring to every human being on the planet; instead, he is referring to people whom God chose out of the world and called to Himself, as the preceding verses make clear:

“But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.” (2 Thessalonians 2:13-15)

Then he says: “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts” (v. 16-17).

So let me briefly walk through this “eternal comfort and good hope” that God gives to His people “through grace”. I would like to walk through this in five steps:

• the comfort at the beginning of creation;
• the loss of comfort when mankind fell into sin;
• the restoration of comfort through the Lord Jesus Christ;
• the everyday comfort that the Father gives to His people now;
• and the everlasting comfort that believers will enjoy in eternity.

THE COMFORT AT THE BEGINNING OF CREATION

First, consider the comfort that God bestowed upon mankind at the beginning of creation (see Genesis 1-2). In six days, God fashioned and formed the world and everything in it. It was all very good. God created man and woman special, making them in His image and giving them dominion over the rest of creation. The first man and first woman were together in a blessed and joyful marriage, unashamed and untroubled. Most importantly, they were in fellowship with the Lord. Nothing was broken. It was shalom, wholeness, and peace in every direction: between human beings and the Lord, between man and woman, and between human beings and their environment. The comfort was manifest and palpable.

THE LOSS OF COMFORT WHEN MANKIND FELL INTO SIN

Second, consider the tragedy and loss of comfort, which came about when our first parents, Adam and Eve, plunged the human race into sin (see Genesis 3). After they had disbelieved, dishonored, and disobeyed God’s Word, fear and shame, followed by hardship and conflict, rushed upon the human experience. God is the Giver and Sustainer of life, and when you walk away from Him and reject His instruction and design, you are cutting yourself off from the source of life. And so, when you move away from the Lord, you are moving toward darkness and death, confusion and moral chaos, guilt and shame, and all kinds of anxiety and insecurity. Of course, mankind’s fall into sin brought with it hundreds of practical problems, but the deepest problem is the loss of fellowship with God, and the sentence of death that hangs over us.

Many people operate on the assumption that death is a natural part of life. But this is a faulty assumption. Of course, death is a natural part of this sinful world, but that’s just the point. At the very beginning, when God created the world in Genesis 1-2, sin wasn’t part of the picture, and death wasn’t part of the picture. Death is unnatural. Death only becomes part of the picture after we sinned in Genesis 3. God had warned that disobedience would facilitate death (Genesis 2:17), and after man’s fall into sin, death is assured:

“By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19)

Indeed, sin and death are tightly connected: “the soul who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4); “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).

THE RESTORATION OF COMFORT THROUGH JESUS

Third, consider the restoration of comfort through the Lord Jesus Christ – a restoration of comfort that is not automatic, but is only given to those who trust in the Lord. In that passage I read earlier from 2 Thessalonians, we were told that God “loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace”. Scripture makes much of this love that God has for His sinful people:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

And again:

“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:9-10)

What is obvious is that without the Father’s love-gift of His Son, we will not live, we will not have eternal life, but we will perish in our sins.

How does this salvation work? It works by the principle of substitution. Each and every one of us is a great sinner who has sinned against the Holy One, and we deserve to be condemned to hell for our sins. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus came in order to save His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). How did He remove our sins? By dying for our sins in our place on the cross (Romans 4:25, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Isaiah 53:4-6). There are the cross, the punishment that should have been placed upon us, was placed upon Christ; the judgment that should have been poured out upon us, was poured out upon Christ; the death that should have been imposed upon us, was imposed upon Christ. Jesus, bearing the sins of His people, entered into the presence of God’s righteous judgment, and He was treated as if He was guilty of all of His people’s sins. If you or I must carry our own sins to the day of judgment when we appear before the Just Judge to give an account of our life, we will be utterly undone, and we will be unable to defense ourselves or vindicate ourselves before the Righteous One. The only way to be saved, is to have someone else carry your sins for you – and there is only One who is qualified to do this.

This is why John the Baptizer directed everyone’s attention to Jesus, saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) This is the glory of the Christian gospel, that our Lord Jesus died for sinners:

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die – but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8)

Christ died for our sins. But because He was the Holy and Righteous One, death could not hold him, and on the third day He rose again from the dead, thus showing us that sin has been atoned for, God’s justice has been satisfied, death has been emptied of its power, and the gate of salvation is open wide to all who will have Jesus as their Savior (Acts 2:14-41, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11). In Christ, we have the comfort of sins forgiven, the comfort of a heavenly Father who loves us and smiles upon us, the comfort of a Savior who identifies with us and intercedes for us, the comfort of the Holy Spirit sent to live within us and strengthen us, the comfort of sure and certain promises that direct our attention to a glorious future. None of this is the result of our own achievement; we haven’t done anything to deserve the gift of “eternal comfort and good hope through grace”. All we have done are things to not deserve it, and that’s what makes grace grace. In grace, God does not treat us according to what our sins deserve, but instead gives us the compassion and comfort that we do not deserve (Psalm 103:8-14).

THE FATHER GIVES EVERYDAY COMFORT TO HIS PEOPLE NOW

Fourth, for those who have received God’s great love-gift, there is the practical day-to-day reality that the Father gives everyday comfort to His people now in this present life. In the 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17 passage that I read earlier, Paul is expressing his desire that the God “who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace” would now in this present moment “comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.” Another passage says,

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).

The Lord Jesus, who healed diseases and cast out demons and forgave sins and washed feet and fellowshipped with ordinary people and blessed the children, now comforts His people through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. He is with us and upholds us through the whole course of our lives. In the beloved Psalm 23 read earlier, when the Lord is our Shepherd, we have everything we need: He guides us, gives us rest, and restores our souls. And:

“Even though [we] walk through the valley of the shadow of death [or through the valley of deep darkness], [we] will fear no evil, for you are with [us]; your rod and your staff, they comfort [us].” (Psalm 23:4)

We remember that the Lord of glory is not afar off from the human race – not afar off from our sorrow and suffering – but that He became a Man and dwelt among us and demonstrated the glory of His sacrificial love. He said:

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:10-11)

Through His sacrificial death, Jesus has reconciled us to the Father, and once reconciled to the Father, we know that the Father superintends and watches over us all the days of our life. And though believers in Christ must still reckon with physical death, even as Martha had to reckon with it in John 11 when her brother Lazarus died, we have this promise of Jesus:

“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

The Lord’s promises are sweeter than honey and more valuable than gold (Psalm 19:10), but they won’t do you a bit of good unless you receive them, believe them, cherish them, and stand upon them. Notice that Jesus emphasizes the necessity of faith in those above words: “Whoever believes in me”; “everyone who lives and believes in me”; “Do you believe this?”

BELIEVERS WILL ENJOY EVERLASTING COMFORT IN ETERNITY

Finally, we look forward to the commencement and enjoyment of everlasting comfort in the new heaven and the new earth. Jesus directs our attention forward to life in another world beyond the suffering, loss, and death that occur in this present world. One day – and from the perspective of our relatively brief lives of 70 or 80 years on this earth, this day shall come very soon – one day, after the final judgment has taken place and every human being has been either sentenced to hell or welcomed to glory, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and there God will dwell with His people (Revelation 20:11-21:8). We will enjoy comfort and rest in Him forever:

“He will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)

And:

“No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.” (Revelation 22:3-5)

While we remain in this present world, we will have tears associated with grief, loss, and death. But though we grieve, for those of us who are believers in Jesus Christ, our grief is accompanied by hope, because God “loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace”. And so, as Paul teaches us in 1 Thessalonians 4:13, we do not grieve as those who have no hope. We do have hope – the good hope of the resurrection – that those who have fallen asleep in the Lord will rise again to everlasting life and be glorified with Christ forevermore.

A FINAL WORD

If you are here this morning and you are a stranger to the hope of the gospel, there is no better day than today to turn from your sin and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. For those of us who are already alive to the hope that is found in Christ, we look forward to

“that bright and cloudless morning when the dead in Christ shall rise / And the glory of His resurrection share –

When His chosen ones shall gather to their home beyond the skies

And the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there!”

Those words are from the final hymn entitled “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder”, which we will now sing together.