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Everything Beautiful
Saturday, July 19th, 2025
Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Ecclesiastes 3:1–11

Prayer

Father, we thank you for the life of your servant Ron Vernon. We thank you for giving him a long life, a life within the church, a life amongst friends, a life of seeking to follow Jesus, even unto death. We thank you for the promise of Revelation 14:13, which says, “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.” We thank you for giving Ron rest in Your peace. And now we ask that we who still labor in this world, may take heed to our own death, to the state of our own soul, and so we ask in the words of Psalm 90:12, “Teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Grant us such wisdom now, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Introduction

For the 2.5 years that I was privileged to be Ron’s pastor, I had many opportunities to ask him, “Ron, are you ready to meet the Lord?” Sometimes I would ask him what books he was reading, or how his prayer life was going, but as his health started to wane, I increased the frequency of this question whenever I saw him, “Ron, are you ready to meet the Lord?”

Most of the time, he would answer with something like, “I’m not sure,” or I’m not quite ready yet,” or “I’m trying but I’m struggling to pray,” or “I’m not where I ought to be.” On one occasion, he expressed that he was reading some books by the puritans, and he observed that their relationship with God seemed a lot more intimate and familiar than what he was presently experiencing. And so Ron, like most authentic Christians, desired greater assurance that he was forgiven, that he belonged to Jesus, so that he could be ready to meet the Lord.

And so this morning as we remember Ron’s life and celebrate that he now has rest from his labors, and full assurance of God’s love for him, I want to pose this same question to you: Are you ready to meet the Lord?

• However ready or not you feel, the truth is that God wants you to be ready at all times to enter His glorious presence. And He has given you in His word many truths to help prepare you for judgment day, whenever the day may be. And so this morning I want to consider briefly just three of those truths, so that you might have greater assurance that you belong to Jesus. Or if you do not yet know Jesus, may receive Him from all that He wants to give you.

Truth #1 – You are going to die, and you don’t know when.

• We see here in Ecclesiastes 3:2, that there is a time to be born, and a time to die. And then in verse 11, we see that those times of birth and death and everything in between belongs to God.
• It says later in Ecclesiastes 8:8, No one has power over the spirit to retain the spirit, And no one has power in the day of death.
  • That is to say, no man is a self-sufficient being who gives life to himself. All of us are on divine life-support, and God is the one supplying oxygen to our soul, breath by breath, and we have not power over our soul to retain it or remove it. Even those who have attempted to end their life, sometimes find that God’s mercy does not permit them.
  • For God says in Deuteronomy 32:39, I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: Neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.
  • And in 1 Samuel 2:6, Hannah prays, The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: He bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.
• So just as you did not choose the moment or day of your birth, God chose it. So also, with the day of your death. No man knows with any absolute certainty, the day or the hour.
  • Jesus says of the rich fool in Luke 12:20-21, But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have stored up?’ “So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”
  • The Apostle James warns likewise of such presumption, as if life will go on as usual saying, Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin. (James 4:13-17).
• What is the good that God has told you to do?
  • In the words of Jesus, it is to repent and believe the gospel (Mark 1:15)
  • Or in the words of Ecclesiastes 12:13-14, Fear God and keep His commandments, For this is man’s all. For God will bring every work into judgment, Including every secret thing, Whether good or evil.
• And so God’s Word to you today is, Have you confessed all your sins to Him? Have you repented of all the evil you have ever done? Have you forsaken the old and unhappy way of living in sin, and committed yourself to following Jesus come what may. That is what it means to repent and to believe the gospel, to fear God and keep His commands.
  • David models for us what such repentance looks like in Psalm 51, For I acknowledge my transgressions, And my sin is always before me…Hide Your face from my sins, And blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
  • Jesus says likewise in Luke 15:7, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.
• And so if you would become ready to meet the Lord today, you must first bring joy to heaven by your repentance. You must name your sins and forsake your sins and follow Jesus instead.
  • Jesus says in Luke 9:62, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.
  • This means that repentance is not just a one-time decision at the beginning of your Christian life, but is also an ongoing commitment (we call faith) to forsake what will drag you to hell, and by the grace of God get back up whenever you stumble.
  • Paul describes this resolve in Philippians 3:13-14, 12 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended [perfection]; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus… I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.
  • Jesus wants you. He has laid hold of you even now by putting this word into your ears. And if you would become ready to die, ready to meet him face to face, then you must take hold of him with both hands. That means releasing, letting go of all the other things you treasure more than Him. You must let go of your grudges, your bitterness, your anger, your envy, your pride, your hatred. You must no be obstinate to the grace God wants to give you. Only then, with empty hands, can you with Paul lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.
• That is truth number 1. You are going to die, and you do not know when, and therefore you must make ready by repenting and embracing Jesus.

Truth #2 – Jesus died so that when you die, you may rise again.

• The Apostle Paul says in Romans 14:7-9, For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and rose and lived again, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living.
  • None of us knows how sinful we really are. Jeremiah 17:9 says, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
  • And so what the death of Jesus crucified on the cross reveals is that we are so sinful, and so deceived about our true state, that the Creator God himself had to come down, He assumed our humanity, and then He suffered and died in our humanity, to satisfy what we owe to Divine justice.
  • If you want to know what your sins deserve, look at the cross. We all deserve crucifixion. If you want to know how disordered and screwed up your soul is, look at the cross. Jesus died so that you could receive a new nature, a soul renewed by grace.
  • And lest you be too discouraged by how great your sins are and how desperately wicked your heart is, look at the cross. For this is how much God loves you. That with arms outstretched, Jesus invites you with his dying breath to be forgiven and to enter his kingdom. For where sin has abounded (and it has abounded a lot!), the grace of Christ has abounded all the more.
  • It says in Romans 5:6-11,For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.
    • Jesus is the resurrection and the life. And what gives us assurance that we shall rise again with Him, is that He died for us before we did anything good. He died for us when we were still potheads, fornicators, hypocrites, and liars. He died for us when were still hating God and hating one another. And if He died for us then, to reconcile us to God, how can anything now or in the future separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus?
    • This is the hope we have as Christians. It is a living hope and the source of our assurance. We believe the word of promise, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil 1:6).
    • Or as Jesus says in John 10:27-29, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.
• When Jesus Christ lays hold on you, he places you in His Father’s hand. And His sheep hear this, they believe this, and they are comforted by the Good Shepherd.

Truth #3 – God makes everything, even death, beautiful in His time.

• It is easy to see the beauty in the time to be born, it is not as easy to see it in the time to die.
• When a baby is safely delivered, we rejoice because a new life has entered this world. An immortal soul, joined to a little 8lb body is a marvel to behold.
  • Jesus himself says in John 16:21, A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.
  • It is not hard to see the beauty of a woman’s sorrow that suddenly turns into joy with the birth of her child. Few things compare to that moment of relief, of deliverance, when a mother survives the birth and then holds her baby for the first time. This is beautiful. This is what poetry is for.
• However, when someone dies, the death itself is a great evil. There is nothing good or beautiful about the separation of soul from body. The Bible calls death a great enemy, an evil for which Jesus Christ came into this world to conquer. And so we may wonder, How is it that God can make death beautiful in His time?
  • The answer is that death can become beautiful, not for the evil that it is, but for the good that God brings about through it.
    • As Joseph says to his brothers who attempted to murder him, But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.
    • So also does God work the greatest good through the greatest evil, for nothing is more evil than the unjust crucifixion of the perfect man Jesus, and yet this became God’s instrument to raise the whole world from the dead.
  • It says in Hebrews 2:14-15, Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself [Christ Jesus] likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
• The death of Jesus is the most beautiful thing the world has ever known. That God would so love us who are so unlovely, and then make us lovely by His grace. That is the beauty of Christ’s death which conquers death, and which makes Ron’s death (and our death), not the end of the story, but the beginning of a new chapter which is life eternal, resurrection life, life without death, life without pain, life without sorrow.
• This is why God says in Psalm 116:15, Precious (beautiful) in the sight of the Lord Is the death of his saints. Because our God makes death blossom into resurrection, and this is how He makes everything beautiful in His time. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.