“Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.”
Two Fridays ago an old soldier of the cross
suffered a stroke and passed into the eternal regions a little more than one
week later. He was in his 80’s and had preached Christ as man’s only Savior and
sovereign Lord for seventy years. His church family could not have been
shocked, but they are surely grieving the loss of their friend and shepherd
until the dawning of that great Day. Indeed, the Day of the Lord will be all
joy to the redeemed.
For now, these are days of reflection. Days to
remember. Family, church family and friends now consider the life and death of
a man of God who ran his race and ran it well, a man renowned for love and kindness.
His sons, while suffering the pain of loss, are surely comforted by the
confidence that their father’s entire hope of heaven was Jesus, His blood and
righteousness, His cross, His empty tomb.
He was a pastor before I was born. When I knew I
had been called to preach the everlasting gospel as a youth, he was the first
to welcome me to his pulpit on a Lord’s Day morning. He too had been called as
a youth. He understood my passion to preach the glorious gospel, for it was the
passion of his soul too. While I never sat under his regular ministry, I never
forgot him through the years. My remembrances of him are all good
memories of joys together as we worshiped the matchless Redeemer King.
He was a guileless man. He rested his soul in the
perfect righteousness of Another.
There is a whole generation of God’s children that
grew up in the church under his ministry. Their whole world will seem very different
from now on. Sundays will never be quite the same. I hope they won’t lose their
balance. I hope they will stand firm and carry on, as their beloved pastor
would have wished. May God comfort His hurting people in these days and bring
glory to the Savior. –TSA
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