Amen. We are love. Oh. Amen. Amen. Amen. Oh, Jesus. Amen. Jesus. Jesus. Amen. you I love you. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. And now I'm home. I'm home. I'm home. I'm home. Good morning. Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who died and was raised from the dead for our salvation. On behalf of the Gill family, I want to welcome you to this service of worship. We especially want to welcome Ronald and Susan Gill who are joining us. That's Paul's parents. They're joining us via our live stream link. So welcome to Ronald and Susan and others who are joining us via live stream. This is an occasion of sorrow, but it's sorrow mixed with hope and great joy. The apostle Paul tells us, For if we believe that Jesus Christ died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who sleep in him. So let us not sorrow as those without hope, but grasp firmly the promises of the gospel in Jesus Christ. The Lord blessed this world with Paul for 57 years. When his earthly work was finished and accomplished, Jesus called him home into his eternal presence on Saturday, February 15th. Paul's life can be best characterized by faithful service and selfless sacrifice. He served his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, his wife, Susan, His daughters, Hannah and Erica. His country, through many years of service in the army, with dignity and pride. Paul loved his church. And what's remarkable, as he declined with Huntington's disease, He made it a point to be at church. Two weeks before his death, he was sitting in that back pew worshiping with the brothers and sisters at Greenville ARP and insisting that Susan gives him a copy of the bulletin and follows along so he can keep up with the service. Amazing. Paul loved his church. Personally, I was most impressed with his joy. And I don't know if you had a chance to see the slideshow of pictures in the fellowship hall. One thing that will always be etched into my memory of Paul Gill is that big smile. Susan, Hannah, Erica, Monica, Steven, rest of the family and friends, As we reflect on Paul's life and grieve his death, let us do so firmly convinced of the truths of the gospel. Jesus tells us, all that the Father gives to me shall come to me, and him that comes to me I will in no wise cast out. Father, I will that they also whom you have given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory. And guess what Paul Gill is doing now. is beholding the glory of his Savior. And that's a beautiful, sweet, and precious thought for us to reflect on. Our call to worship comes from Psalm 95, verses one to three. The psalmist writes, O come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise, for the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods. If you'll please stand with me and take your hymn books and turn to hymn 227, we will sing together, How Great Thou Art. Amen. When through the woods and forest-lakes I wandered, and in the birds seemed to see me in the trees, when I looked How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior, unto Thee, How great Thou art! How great Thou art! And when I think It sings my soul, my Savior, now to Thee. How great Thou art! How great Thou art! It sings my soul, my Savior, now to Thee. How great Thou art! How great Thou art! When Christ shall come, who shall know abomination, and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart? When Christ shall come. Please be seated. if you will join with me in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, merciful and gracious, full of compassion, we come to you in this time of earthly sorrow. We come to bless and to praise you, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions. Remind us of the gift of your Son, who came to cleanse us of all our sins through his atoning sacrifice, the one who is the resurrection and the life. Remind us that through the burial of your son, you have sanctified the graves of your saints. Through the resurrection of your son, you have brought life and immortality to light and given us the sure and certain hope of our own resurrection and eternal life. We ask that you send forth your Holy Spirit in power to be present with Susan, Hannah, and Erica, together with the remainder of the family and friends gathered here today, to comfort our hearts as we grieve the passing of Paul into glory. May your spirit illuminate our minds with the truths of the gospel, May he help us to know that death has no power over Paul Gill. May he point us to the glorious truth that even now his soul is with Christ in glory, enraptured in endless praise and adoration. This we pray in the name of our glorious God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. of two passages of scripture, one from the Old Testament and one from the New. If you would like to follow along, there are a few Bibles in the back of the pews. Page number for our first reading is 511. Psalm 16, verses 12 to 19. What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of his people. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. Oh, Lord, I am your servant. I am your servant, the son of your maidservant. You have loosed my bonds. I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people in the courts of the house of the Lord in your midst. Oh Jerusalem, praise the Lord. Our second reading is from 1st Thessalonians chapter 4. Verses 13 to 18. That's page 987. In the words of our God. Communicated through us. To us through his servant, the Apostle Paul. First Thessalonians 4 verse 13, but we do not want you to be uninformed brothers about those who are asleep. That you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore, encourage one another with these words. Amen. What is death? More specifically, what are we to think of the death of a Christian brother like Paul Gill? The Bible and Christ teach us that it is the final enemy, the last battle that Paul had to fight. It's the door that one must pass through to enter into paradise. And I think from that perspective, it should cause us to rejoice and give thanks. Paul's battle, not only his fight with Huntington's, but his fight with his flesh and the world and the devil, it's all over. He's been liberated from those trials and tribulations. Paul has transitioned from a life of suffering to one of pure bliss. It's really hard for us to even imagine. However, there is another side to death. As you think about the life of Jesus and the gospel stories of Jesus, you are no doubt familiar with the death of a close friend of his, Lazarus. And that deeply stirred his heart and moved him to tears. powerfully communicated in the shortest passage of scripture, we're told that Jesus, the incarnate son of God, wept. So death involves a glorious reunion, but also a sad separation. And for that reason, the apostle Paul reminds us that we must not grieve. We do grieve, but we must not grieve as those without hope. So I want to turn your attention to a few passages to encourage you. I want you to see in this first point of the homily, a mutual desire between the triune God and his child, Paul Gil, a longing to be in the presence of one another. In John chapter 17, We have a record of Jesus' last known, one of his last known words communicated with his father. It's known as his high priestly prayer. He's making final preparations as he is about to depart his beloved disciples and ascend back into heavenly places with his father. In John 17, 24, we read this remarkable statement. Jesus says to his father, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundations of the world. Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am and behold and see your glory. Pretty special to get into the mind and heart of our Savior. and to have exposed to us one of his deep longing desires, that his people who had been given to him by his father before the foundations of the world were even started, the end goal is for them to be with him in glory. It's a remarkable statement if you take a step back and meditate and think about it. It's an expression of God's desire. The will of the Son and the will of the Father are one. It's staggering and comforting to think of death this way. What happened on February 15th, the morning of February 15th? Jesus said, it's time for Paul to be with me. That's what he's saying to us in this prayer. There is a point in history when my desire for them to be with me is executed and acted upon, and it's at death. Death is, for a Christian, a glorious homecoming. Jesus wanted Paul in his presence. He delivered him from years of suffering and ushered him into glory. This is a source of great comfort for us. The Apostle Paul writes in another letter that the Christian's final destiny is to always be with the Lord. He calls the church to comfort one another with these truths. Then we have a statement by the Apostle Paul in Philippians chapter one, verses 21 to 23, The Apostle Paul is in a struggle. An internal tension exists with him. He says, for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose, I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire, you see the mutual desires? Jesus desires for us to be with him. And Paul is saying, my, as a Christian man, my desire is to depart. and to be with Christ, for that is far better. I think you know, Susan, that that's Paul's desire. And I think that is evidenced for us in the fact that he did not want to miss worship. He had plenty of reasons not to miss worship. He was what we could call dedicated. He had a single focus. He wanted to be worshiping his God. Mutual desire. The second thing I want you to notice is Christ's beautification work. This is an unexpected attraction. You ever had someone in your life Maybe it's your wife or your husband today. Well, your initial meeting was not that great. First impressions were not as you had hoped they would be, and there was maybe some friction. And then you worked through that, and you fell in love, and got married, and spent life happily ever after. Who knows? This is an odd mutual desire. an unexpected attraction. God created us in his image for the purpose of living in relationship with him, but something changed early on in those first three chapters of Genesis. Adam and Eve went from enjoying communion and fellowship with God in the cool of the day to becoming estranged from him. They had no desire to be with God. They heard God's presence, God was coming, and what did they do in the garden? They hid from Him. Kind of like in the grocery store, when you see that person that you really don't want to talk to, and you turn and go the other direction in the aisle. They hid from Him. And not only that, but God was angry with them. He cast them out of the garden, creating this chasm of separation So why would Paul Gill desire Jesus and Jesus desire him? Why would Paul have confidence that God loved him and that when his time on this earth was ended, he knew for certain with a great assurance that he would be with his Lord? Who was Paul Gill? Well, he was a great man, a devoted husband, Loving father? Yes, to all of those things. But he was also an imperfect person. He was tainted by sin like others, and that's what drew him to Jesus when he was converted later in life. And I think he would be the first to tell you that today if he was standing here. Paul had an interesting hobby that consumed him. If you had a chance to look at the slide show in the fellowship hall, you would have seen what that hobby was focused on. He built a 16-foot Swamp Scott Dory sailboat. He built it from scratch, from the bottom up. And it took him 10 years. How many of us would start a project and get done with it and say, I'm done with this after a couple of months? But he was at it for 10 years, a beautiful, beautiful white and blue with wood trim, 16-foot sailboat. That, outside of his precious family, was his pride and joy. That was his workmanship. And Paul, Paul Gill, was Jesus workmanship. Jesus spent, not 10 years, 57 years, slowly, faithfully, diligently, with spiritual craftsmanship, building a saint. That's why he wanted Paul. because his work of building was over. It was time for him to enjoy his craftsmanship. We're told in Ephesians chapter five, verse 25, that Christ came so that he might sanctify us having cleansed us by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. He's speaking about the whole of the church in this particular text, but the whole of the church is made up of individual parts. He cleansed Paul. so that he could present him in splendor to his father. He cleansed him with his own precious blood on the cross. He transformed his heart and caused him to be born again through this miraculous union with the Son of God, taking part of his incarnate humanity, becoming a new creation in Christ. I love the passage in Zephaniah chapter 3 17 after Israel had gone astray and rebelled against their covenant God and turned astray to idols. Then the Lord reconciled them and saved them and we're told this The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. He will exult over you with loud singing. Now, we typically think of singing being something we give to God, but when we go into heaven, he is singing over us, the prophet says. How valuable and beloved we must be to our Savior. Let me end with this. How can you honor Paul Gill? If you share his faith in Jesus, then I would challenge you and encourage you to take that faith seriously. You never know how God is at work in your life. You never know when he will set in motion a series of events, maybe an illness, an unexpected illness, that is designed to bring you into his glorious splendor. And if you haven't thought much about these things, you don't share Paul's faith, or at least you're undecided at this point, I would encourage you to research that a little more deeply. Think about it. Read the Bible. See what the message of Jesus actually is, because this life is short, but it has eternal consequences. I want to conclude by reading from John 3, 16. Very familiar passage. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already. because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God. Paul would want all of us to believe. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your word, and we pray that you would inscribe it upon our hearts, that you would comfort us with the knowledge that Jesus expresses his desire to the Father that all those whom you have given to him may be with him where he is and behold your glory. I pray Lord that you would remove the blinders from our eyes, the hardness from our heart, enable us to see with clarity who Jesus is, what he's come to do for our salvation, and to cling in faith to him all of our days. Amen. I ask that you please stand and take your bulletins out. We're going to Corporately pray together the prayer of Thanksgiving printed on page three. Join with me. O God, before whom generations rise and pass away, we thank you for all your service and eternally with you. Especially we thank you for Paul, for the gift of his life, for all that in him was good and kind and faithful. We give thanks for all the treasured moments and events he shared with others, making this world richer by his presence. Especially we are thankful for the light of faith that shone forth God's love Again, please take your handbooks out and turn to 476. We will join together and sing. Oh. Amen. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? It is well, it is well with my soul. My soul. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul. It is well. It is well. With my soul. With my soul. It is well. the old man has a soul. The tongue shall resound, and the voice shall descend even higher. Depart now with the blessing of the Triune God. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you now and forevermore. Amen. Amen. Amen. Oh. Amen.