I want to thank you all for coming today. I'm thankful to the Lord that we got the roads cleared off for the most part. It means a lot to Dina and the kids that you're here today. I always think it's important to go to weddings and funerals if you can at all, because that's when you look around and you see these are the people who care about us. And so your presence here means a lot to them. In the same region, there were some shepherds staying out on the field and keeping watch over their flocks at night. And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terribly frightened. But the angel said to them, do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy, which will be for all the people. For today in the city of David, there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. You know, there's an old Chinese parable about a farmer who was talking to his neighbor, and he mentioned that a few days before that, his horse ran away, and his neighbor said, oh, that's bad news. He said, no, actually, it was good news, because when the horse came back, he brought five wild horses with him. He said, well, that was really good news. He said, no, actually, that was bad news, because when my son got up on one of the horses to break it, it threw him off and he broke his leg. He said, well, that's very bad news. He said, no, that actually turned out to be very good news, because the emperor's soldiers came by this morning to get men for the war effort. Because my son had a broken leg, he didn't have to go. The last two years of Jeff's life has been one of a good news, bad news story. It started with some bad news. He was having some stomach issues, and he thought it might be an ulcer or his gallbladder. And when he went to the doctor, they told him it's neither, and that was good news. But there was also bad news, because he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The good news was that prostate cancer is pretty treatable, and most men survive it. The bad news came a little later, when a scan revealed that the cancer had already spread to his bones. Worse yet, it was all over his body. More bad news. They told Jeff that at this point, chemotherapy wouldn't help him. The doctors told him that he probably had six months, maybe to a year to live. That's sobering news. Very sobering news. The good news, though, was he wouldn't have to endure chemo treatments. Instead, he decided to try some alternative therapies, some of which the doctors had had pretty good success with. Well, there was more good news. His numbers for his prostate cancer started to drop significantly. That was great news. Now, the other cancer for his bones, the numbers went up slightly, but the doctors told Jeff that might actually be because the cancer cells are dying off. At that point, we were thinking, well, this is great news. It looks like God's going to answer our prayers to heal Jeff. But then came the bad news. The numbers for his prostate cancer had dropped by two-thirds, but now they went up higher than what they were when he was first diagnosed. But there were still some glimmers of good news, because his bone cancer numbers started to decrease. Now, during that time, Jeff had good news and bad news regarding his job. He had to take a medical leave. That was bad news. But he was able to later go back to work. And his company, XL Energy, was very accommodating to him. He was able to work up until September of this year, and he was allowed then to take another medical leave, and that was good news. Well, emotionally it was up and down for Jeff as well. We all know that someday we could hear that we have cancer, but it's still a shock when you're told that you're the one who has it. And bone cancer in particular can be a painful way to die. But the good news was that Jeff While he had pain, most of it was just in the last couple of months of his life. And in the last several weeks, the pain medication worked pretty well. But he still knew the end was coming. And that was bad news. A couple of weeks before he died, when we were talking, he said, you know, Doug, this is really strange. He meant dying. I said, that's because you've never done it before. And the good news is, Jeff, you're not going to have to do it again. Jeff was a Vikings fan, and one of the podcasts that I listened to, they do their introduction by saying, we just want to see the Vikings win a Super Bowl before we die. And I said to Jeff, you know, Jeff, I don't think you're going to see the Vikings win a Super Bowl before you die. And he looked back at me very seriously and said, neither will you. Jeff had a sense of humor even to the end. You know, towards the end when he's on the drugs and stuff, Dina's talking to him, and Jeff, do you want to eat this or do you want to eat that? And he'd get that confused look on his face and all that kind of stuff. And I told Dina, I said, just give him one option. Tell him what you're going to feed him, all that kind of stuff. One time she was trying to explain something to him, and he was not getting it at all. And she was fine. She went off to the side. He leans over to me and says, I don't think she has a clue what she's talking about. Now some of you here may have noticed if you came up before they closed the casket that there was a Bible in there. Did you see the Bible in there? That Bible he got as a discount place for very cheap. And we used to always tease him about the fact that he had a pink Bible. It's one that was available and it was cheap. And he always corrected us by saying it wasn't pink, it was dusty rose. And I said, because that's more masculine, right Jeff? You know, in the story when the angels appeared to the shepherd that first Christmas morning, he said he brought him good news of great joy. And the one thing that Jeff wanted me to make sure I did at his funeral was give you the good news, the gospel message. But you'll only hear that as good news if you first hear and believe the bad news. The bad news starts back in the Garden of Eden with our first parents, Adam and Eve. were created by God to bring glory to him and to enjoy him forever. He placed them in that garden and told them they were free to eat from any tree of the garden except for one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That's because God is our creator and he's the one who's to set the parameters of right and wrong for our life. But Eve didn't like those parameters and being deceived by the devil, she ate of the forbidden fruit and then she gave it to her husband, Adam, who out of a sheer act of rebellion, joined her. Immediately, they felt their guilt, and they tried to cover their shame and their nakedness by tying fig leaves together to make aprons. When God came to them, they hid in the bushes. And people have been hiding from God ever since. God confronted them with their sin, but each of them tried to shift the blame. Adam to Eve, Eve to the serpent. I can tell you from doing marriage counseling that blame shifting still goes on today. As a judgment from God, the earth was cursed. All tsunamis, hurricanes, devastating earthquakes are simply the earth groaning under the weight of mankind's sin. And God warned them that the day that they ate of the tree, they would surely die. And I'm sure you've been to a lot of funerals where you'll hear people say something like this, well, death is natural, it's just part of life. But it's not part of life, it's the absence of life. And it's not natural, it's supernatural, it's a judgment from God. The result of their sin was not only that Adam and Eve became corrupted in their natures, but they passed down that corrupt nature to their fallen offspring. The next story in the Bible is one of two brothers, their children, one of whom murdered the other. Do you want proof that we're all born with black hearts of sin? Think about it, do you have to teach a child to be selfish or do you have to teach them to share? Have you ever met anyone in your life that doesn't sin? Well, from those two facts, I would say that sin is universal and it's congenital. Now, it's one thing to talk about sin in an abstract way, but it's something else for us to own up to our own sin in our lives. And one of the problems with all of us having sinful natures is that it blinds us to how bad off and how bad we are. I mean, if you're a doctor, and you had a patient come to see you, the bad news might be that the patient has cancer, but the good news is that you have a cure. Would you offer him the cure right away, or would you show him the x-rays? If you offer him the cure first, he might not be willing to take it. He might say, Doc, I feel fine. I've never felt better. He won't be willing to go through the treatments. But if you should show him the x-ray first so that he sees how serious his condition is, then he might be willing to go through it. What I'd like to do for all of us for just the next couple of minutes is put you through a spiritual health examination for you to evaluate yourself. To do so, I want to just ask a number of questions that you can answer in your own mind. And here's the first one. Would you consider yourself to be a good person? Most people answer, yeah, I'm not perfect, but overall, especially compared to others, I'd say that I'm a pretty decent person. But what we think of ourselves is not what matters. What matters is what God's evaluation is. I mean, you've seen those talent programs where someone comes out to sing, and they think they can sing, but the judges know they can't sing. Well, that's kind of the way it is with us. In order to get a correct measurement of our moral health, We have to compare our actions to the commandments of God to see how we measure up. So how do you think you've done so far in keeping them? For instance, how many lies do you think you've told in your entire life? Now, if you're like me, you'd probably have to say more than I can even count. What do we call people who lie? Liars. So what would that make us? Liars. You ever stolen anything in your life, no matter how small? Many people say no, but I think that's because they forget about the many ways you can steal. Cheating on your taxes, taking longer on your lunch break than the company allows. What do we call people who steal? Some people say stealers, but that's not it. It's a thief. One of the commandments is you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Have you ever used phrases like, oh my God, or God damn it, when you get angry? Can you think of anybody in history whose name is used as a swear word other than Jesus Christ? And sometimes they'll put that word right next to a word for human excrement. I mean, do you love your mother? Would you use her name as a swear word? No, because I'd honor my mother. But we don't honor the God who gave us a mother. Another one of the commandments is you shall not commit adultery. But when Jesus spoke about this, he said there's more than just the physical act. There's the thought life as well. He said that everyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in her heart. Have you ever looked at another person with lust? Now, we can sin by what we do, what we say, What we think, I think most of us would be terrified if instead of hymns up there, all the thoughts that we've had over the last two months were plastered for all to see. And it's not so that we just sin occasionally. I mean, think about it. If a person were near perfect, if they only sinned ten times a day, That's 365 days a year, that's 3,650 sins per year. If you lived to be 85 years old, you would have committed 310,250 sins. Would any judge let a criminal go who was found guilty of over 310,000 crimes? Yeah, but what about the good things we do? Try that in a court of law. I shot the bank guard and robbed the bank. But, you know, I also helped with the Boy Scouts. Can that make up for the crime? No good deed can make up for the crimes that we have against God. So if he judges us on the basis of the Ten Commandments, and we've only looked at four, would you be innocent or guilty? The truth is, all of us would be guilty. If we were guilty, would he place us in heaven? or hell. We have a high opinion of ourselves, but God has given his verdict on fallen humanity. The Apostle Paul summed it up in our condition in Romans chapter three when he writes this, what shall we say then? Are we better than they? Not at all, for we have charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin. As it is written, there is none righteous, not even one. There's none who understands. There's none who seeks after God. All have turned aside. Together they've become useless. There's none who does good. There's not even one. Their throat is an open grave. With their tongues they keep deceiving. The poison of asps is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their path, and the path of peace they have not known. There's no fear of God before their eyes. to sum it up in one verse, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That's as much true for a pastor in the pulpit as a prostitute on the street. But there's good news, very good news. It appears that tax dollars were stolen from the Minnesota taxpayers to a tune of perhaps $9 billion in a giant fraud scheme. Do you think that a criminal who was found guilty should be let go and just told not to do it again? I mean, wouldn't you be outraged if they acquit these people? God is holy, so he cannot tolerate sin. God is just, so sin must be punished. The problem is that you and I are guilty sinners. But here's where the good news comes in. In the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, plunging the human race into sin, God not only pronounced a curse on them, but at that time he also made a promise that one of the descendants of the woman would someday crush the head of the serpent and restore mankind to a right relationship with God. And we sing about that at this time of year. Christ by highest heaven adore, Christ the everlasting Lord. Late in time behold him come, offspring of the virgin's womb. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity. Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel. Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn King. He said, I bring good news of great joy which will be for all the people. For today in the city of David there's been born to you a Savior who is Christ the Lord. Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God who became a human being. He was born in Bethlehem as prophesied in the Old Testament. He was born under the law and he kept the law of Moses perfectly. He never sinned, he never sassed his parents, he lived a perfectly righteous life, meaning he always conformed to God's standards. You see, Jesus had to be perfect because he was the sinless Lamb of God. In the Old Testament, they sacrificed animals, sheep and goat and oxen, but all of those sacrifices were symbolic and provisional. They pointed forward to the true sacrifice that Jesus would make of himself on the cross. You see, as Jesus hung on that cross, God the Father placed on him all the sin and guilt of all who would ever trust in him. He then punished him in their place. He paying for our sins. I heard of one woman who was fined for some crime that she had committed, but after leveling the fine, the judge came down from behind the bench, took out his checkbook, and wrote out a check to cover the woman's fine. In the same way, Jesus, who is our judge, himself paid the fine for all who would ever trust him. And so when a sinner turns from their sins and believes in Jesus' death, As the payment for their sins, God imputes our guilt upon him, but at the same time, he takes and credits his righteousness, his record of law-keeping, to our account, so that God accepts us, not because of what we do, but because of what Christ has done. Let me give you an illustration to help you understand this. There's a sheep rancher who had one of the ewes die, leaving a lamb behind. At the same time, he had a lamb die of another ewe. So that seems simple enough. Just take the motherless lamb and give it to the lambless mother. Except there's a problem. When the ewe smells it, it realizes it's not its own, and she won't accept it. So what did the rancher do? He skinned the dead lamb and wrapped the hide of wool around the live lamb. So now, when the ewe smelled it, she recognized it as her own. The Bible says that we're to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, the problem is that many people, including religious people, and sadly, many sitting in church, are actually self-righteous. That is, they're trusting in their own righteousness rather than that of Christ. Story told, an American soldier, they were being held in a North Korean prison camp. And one day there was a package that arrived from the Red Cross. Now the guards stole all the chocolate out of it, but one of the things that they left in the package was a Monopoly game. Monopoly game? They really weren't interested in playing the game, but what they did want was the money that was in there. Because before that, they'd been using cigarettes to barter and to sell with. So what they did was they divided up all the money among the prisoners who were there. And one of the guys was kind of a Wheeler dealer. And so after a while, he amassed a good amount of his currency. Well, a few months after this, they were let go in a prisoner exchange. And so he was sent back, one of these guys, the Wheeler dealer guy, back to his hometown. And while he was there, he decided he was going to open up a bank account. So he went to the bank. He said, I'd like to open an account. She said, well, that's fine. Do you have the money with you? Yes, I do. OK, fill out the paperwork. It's all filled out. And then she says, OK, do you have the money? Yes, it's right here in the bag. And he turns the bag upside down and dumps out all the Monopoly money. And she says, excuse me, sir. He said, yeah, I want to deposit. I've got $5,000 here. He says, sir, is this some kind of joke? He said, no, it's no joke. Do you have any idea what I went through to get this money? Do you have any idea what I suffered?" And she looked at him and said, Sir, I understand that in the camp, that money meant a lot, and I'm sure you went through a whole lot for it. But in this bank, that has no value at all. If you stand before God and say, well, I've tried to do some good things, but that currency is no good because you actually have to have a perfect righteousness, and the only person who has that is Jesus, that would mean the only place you can get the righteousness that you need to be ready to die is from Jesus. And he only gives it out as a gift. Now, for some people here, You're probably thinking, I've heard all this and I actually believe it all. But let me ask you a question, do you really believe it? There's three components to genuine biblical saving faith. The first one is knowledge. There's some things you have to know. You have to know the facts about Jesus, who he was, who he claimed to be, that he died on a cross, that he rose three days later, he laid down his life as a sacrifice for sins. But the second thing you have to have is you have to actually agree with it. I sometimes listen to a Jewish rabbi on YouTube, and he'll go through the Gospels explaining the teachings of Jesus. He knows and understands the claims Jesus makes. He just doesn't believe any of them. He has plenty of knowledge, but no agreement. But there's others who have both of those components, but they're still missing something. Perhaps they're a church member, but there's still a component of faith that's missing, and that's trust. Charles Blondin, he was a tightrope walker, lived in the 1800s. He was famed for his ability to do things on the tightrope. He would go out on this tightrope and at times he would bring a little stove there and fry an omelet out on there. What he's most famous for was going across the Niagara Gorge And one of the times he did that, he took a wheelbarrow, he pulled off the rubber part on the wheel, so it's the rail, he put it on there, he put his dog in there, and he walked across one side and all the way back to the other. And people are clapping, it's pretty impressive. When he got back, he asked this question, he said, how many of you believe that I could wheel a person across there? And everyone, yeah, absolutely, they raised their hand. He turned on one guy, he said, hey, hop in. You see the difference? It's not just having it in your mind. You actually have to trust Jesus. You have to look to Jesus and say, Jesus, you're my only hope. I'm going to cling to you as I go and make it across the way. All of them intellectually agreed with it, but they didn't actually believe it. What does a person have to do to be a real believer? In order to be saved, in order to be ready to go to heaven when you die like Jeff did, it's kind of as simple as ABC. The first thing you have to do is you have to acknowledge that you're a sinner and you deserve God's wrath. And that's a pretty hard pill to swallow for some people. But it's true, your own conscience tells you that. Second thing you have to do is you have to believe that Jesus died on the cross to pay for your sins and that he rose three days later and that his sacrifice was sufficient to pay for your sins. And the third is you have to commit yourself to him. you have to actually get in the wheelbarrow. This is the good news, and if you accept it, it'll bring you great joy and eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life. Jeff is not the first person in our family to die from cancer. We watched our sister Wendy die of cancer after a 10-year battle. But I want to tell you about two people's deaths, and I'm going to start with Joseph Stalin. Joseph Stalin was a murderous leader of the Soviet Union, responsible for more deaths than Hitler was. He came to the end of his life, and he had been in a coma for two weeks. His daughter related this story. She was there when he died. So the last thing he did before he died was he sat up on his bed, shook his fist towards heaven, and dropped over on the spot. Now, I want to contrast that to the way my sister died. We were all there, and the hospice nurse said, you guys go out. I'm going to clean her up a little bit and whatnot. And when she was there, The hospice nurse, who was a believer, said, you know, Wendy, you don't have to stay around. Why don't you just reach up your arm, give your hand to Jesus, and let him take you home? And she had been in a coma, and she reached out her hand, and she died at that second. Here's what I'm telling you. You're going to end your life in one of those two ways. Either shaking your fists at the God who sent his son to be your savior, or else reaching up to let Jesus take you home. Jeff asked me, he said, what's it going to be like when I die? I said, well, I haven't gone through it yet, but I got an idea. Some of you who are from the Grantsburg area know Joe Levine. He was there when his dad died. And he said his dad was talking, you know, he said, I can see angels. And then the last thing he said was, it's Jesus. And he died at that very moment. I did tell Jeff, I said, by the way, Jeff, when the angels come to take you, you should probably ask their name. That would be the polite thing to do. More than anything else, Jeff wanted the gospel to be preached at his funeral. And as I look around, I know a good portion of you, and I know for a fact that he prayed for you because I was with him when he was praying for you. More than anything else, he wants you to be there with him. I told him, I said, you know, Jeff, a thousand years from now, we'll look back at this. I said, it'll be a distant memory, but the blessings will still be coming. Trust in Jesus and you have eternal life as a free gift. If you don't, you lose everything, because you lose your soul. Let's pray. Father and God, I do pray for grace and mercy. For some, this message has been heard. For some, they've embraced it. They've come to faith in Jesus Christ. For others, this may be foreign, it may be new. They've heard about it, but they've never understood. I pray that you would open up hearts and eyes even now. I thank you for Jeff. I thank you that he was my brother, but more than that, that he was my brother in Christ. I pray, Lord, that you would work in hearts, that you would open up hearts, and that people would believe the gospel and find the eternal life that comes as a gift from you. Bless us and thank you again, Lord, for all the people who've come out today. And I pray for the time that we have afterwards and the memories that we share. We pray these things now in Jesus' name, amen. We're gonna close by singing a song, Victory in Jesus. You can stand if you're able to do so for this one.