By Pastor John M. Taggatz 11/12/13
1.
May
the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in Your
sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.
Amen. Dear family and friends of LaVerna,
today we grieve with you over her death.
LaVerna will be deeply missed, but we know that this day isn’t the end
for her, but just the beginning of a new life that she shares with her Savior
Jesus in heaven! For this reason we’ll
be looking at LaVerna’s confirmation verse she received on March 25th,
1943 at St. Peter Lutheran Church of Campbell Hill, which is from Psalm 27:1. The message is entitled, “Jesus: The Light, Salvation,
& Stronghold of Our Lives,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
I
will miss LaVerna. Though she had lost
her memory later in life, that didn’t stop her from being very active at Three
Springs Nursing Home in Chester, where she resided for the last few years. LaVerna was a very active lady. Being the wife of a farmer, she kept her home
in order, caring for her husband, Clifford, and her children, Dale, Allen, and
Janet. Not only did LaVerna look after
her home, but she also worked outside of the home to help provide for her
family. LaVerna was very family oriented, being a devoted wife, mother, aunt,
sister, and grandmother. She was
talented too. LaVerna was known for her
skill of sewing. She sewed many of the clothes
for her husband and children from coats, to shirts, to blue jeans. She even made special Barbie doll clothes as
well. She was a real talented “get up and go” person. And even though LaVerna had grown older over
the years and lost her memory to do these things, God her Heavenly Father didn’t
forget her. Just as the LORD remembered Noah before He sent the worldwide
flood, He remembered LaVerna and her baptism, in calling her to be His child
through water and His holy Word.
3.
LaVerna
knew that she was a sinner in need of a Savior, and that’s why she confessed
her faith in Jesus. Whenever I made my
visits to see LaVerna, whether at her
home, the hospital, or at the nursing home she would always have a smile on her
face. She knew that she would receive
the preaching of God’s Word and the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper from me her
pastor for the forgiveness of her sins and that these gifts of God promised her
the wonderful gift of eternal life. In
my visits with LaVerna I could tell that she knew what it meant that Jesus had
died on the cross for her sins, but she also knew of the hope that we have in
the resurrection of our Lord Jesus.
Because Jesus has risen from the dead, we too shall rise to live with
God for all eternity in heaven with both our body and our soul when the Lord
returns at the final judgment. This was
the faith that LaVerna remained in
all 92 years of her life. She believed
that Jesus was her light, salvation, and the stronghold of her life.
4.
Laverna’s
confirmation verse from Psalm 27:1 says, “1The Lord is my
light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of
whom shall I be afraid?” As sinners
who live in a fallen world, we know what the author of Psalm 27 knows: troubles
and trials abound. The Bible tells us in
Romans 6:23 that, “the wages of sin is
death.” That things go badly is well established in this sinful world we
live in. From early morning to late evening, from the early years to the late
evening of life, anxiety persists. A child worries about an upcoming move to a
new school. A father fears the pending diagnosis of his adult son’s illness.
Pangs of anxiety seize an elderly woman in the wake of her husband’s death. The
trouble we face today is compounded by the uncertainty of tomorrow. Anxious questions choke statements of faith.
Will my cancer return? What if I lose my job, my health insurance? And yet in the midst of all of our worries we
can look to our Lord Jesus who is our light, salvation, and the stronghold of
our lives. Jesus says in Matthew
11:28-30, “ 28Come
to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29Take
my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and
you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my
burden is light.
5.
The
first three verses of Psalm 27 express the soul’s confidence in God on the
basis of the psalmist’s previous experience of him. King David says that God
has been three things to him: his light, his salvation, and his stronghold. When any of us think of God, maybe we try to
visualize him, the best we can do is to think of light, remembering Paul’s
teaching that God “lives in
unapproachable light” (1 Tim. 6:16). For this reason, it’s a bit of a
surprise to learn that, although God is often associated with light in the
Bible, this verse is the only direct application of the name light to God in the Old Testament. Job
speaks of heaven as the “abode of light”
(Job 38:19). Psalm 104 says that God “wraps
himself in light as with a garment” (v. 2). Several verses affirm that “the Lord
turns my darkness into light” (2 Sam. 22:29; cf. Ps. 18:28). Psalm 36:9
declares, “In your light we see light.”
But, Psalm 27:1 is the only Old Testament text in which God is actually called light.
6.
We
have to go to the New Testament to find a good parallel, and when we do, we
find that light is a name for Jesus
Christ: “The light shines in the
darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. … The true light that gives
light to every man was coming into the world” (John 1:5, 9). John, who
makes this identification, also says, “God
is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). What is this image supposed to mean? In the
gospel of John it has to do with understanding, which is why it is applied to Jesus.
Through our Lord Jesus we need not fear sin, death, or the power of the devil,
because He is the light that can dispel such fearful darkness.
7.
The
Hebrew word for salvation means “deliverance,”
so in Psalm 27 this probably has to do with deliverance from the king’s
enemies. The very next psalm expresses the same idea when it says, “The Lord
is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation for his anointed one”
(Ps. 28:8). So too, our Lord Jesus has
come to be our strong deliverer. If we believe in Him as our Savior through His
Word, then we have the promise that He will deliver us even from eternal death
and damnation in hell, just as He has done for His dear servant, Laverna.
8.
The
final image that we have in Psalm 27:1 is that our Lord Jesus is the refuge and
stronghold of our lives. David clearly needed a refuge from his foes. He had
had it in the past. Therefore, he won’t fear any future dangers. Even if his
foes should attack, an army should besiege him, or war should break out against
the nation, David won’t fear as long as God is his stronghold.
9.
As
we read Psalm 27 we can see that light
can speak of spiritual understanding. Salvation
points to the greatest of all deliverances, namely, deliverance from sin by the
death of Jesus Christ. Stronghold
refers to that spiritual refuge from the pains and troubles of life which God
himself is for his people. The
theologian John Stott puts our understanding well when he says, “The Lord is my light, to guide me; my
salvation, to deliver me; and the stronghold of my life, in whom I take refuge.”
10.
There
is no fear where there is love because love casts out fear (Romans 8:15). In the midst of death, we might fear the
unknown, but thanks to Jesus’ crucifixion we know where death leads. Death is now a refuge for us, providing for
us a rest from our suffering. The pain
and suffering in life can’t hurt us anymore.
Even in the midst of death we’re not afraid, because God first loved us
in His Son Jesus (1 John 4:9). The love
of God is perfected in the death of His saints because our own death is the
portal to the immortality of Jesus Christ’s resurrection. Jesus is waiting for you to welcome you home
to your Heavenly Father. He is your
light and your salvation. In Him there
is no fear.
11.
But,
the reality is that our dear loved one, LaVerna, has died. The whole truth doesn’t end there
though. For we know that Jesus died
LaVerna’s death on the cross, just as He has died the death that you deserve
because of your sin. LaVerna did all the
dying that needs to be done in her baptism, when she received Jesus’ death as
her own and His resurrection as well (Romans 6:4). From that moment, Jesus took LaVerna’s hand
to lead her through all trials and travails of life. And, Jesus didn’t let go of LaVerna, even as
she traveled into death, for her death was swallowed up in the victory of
Christ’s cross (Isaiah 25:6-9). Death is
a stop, not a destination, on the way to the room Jesus has prepared for
LaVerna in His Heavenly house (John 14:3).
12.
If
we believe in Jesus as our light, salvation, and stronghold, then we too are a
part of the land of the living. Jesus is
the door to eternal life in the Heavenly Promised Land. In His kingdom there is no death, pain, or
suffering, for Jesus will wipe away all tears and calm all fears so that you
may gaze upon the beauty of our God (Rev. 21:4), just as LaVerna is doing now
in the gates of paradise. We look
forward to that day when we will be reunited with LaVerna and all the saints of
God who have gone before us in the Christian faith, when we too will see our
Lord Jesus who is our light, salvation, and stronghold face to face. Amen.
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