Gospel Message at Elder Bradley’s funeral
It is my privilege as we are gathered here to remember and honor the memory of Elder Lasserre Bradley, Jr. to have been asked to give the gospel message. It is entirely fitting that we should do this, because this was Elder Bradley’s life work, to make Christ known and to preach far and wide the gospel message of the sovereign grace of God. What you may not know, however, is that in these last years of his life, when he couldn’t do much anymore, when he couldn’t drive or go out as he used to be able to do, he was still driven by that same passion for sharing the gospel with others and in some ways even more bold and aggressive in his evangelistic efforts. For example, in these last years, if you were meeting Elder Bradley for the first time and you had at least five minutes with him, he was going to ask you a question. It was the old Evangelism Explosion question, and he asked it of everyone – physical therapists, occupational therapists, doctors, nurses, or repairmen, others. The question was this: “If you were to die today and appear before God in heaven, and God were to ask you, ‘Why should I let you into heaven?’ what would you say?”
Elder Bradley told us often that way more than 90% of people he asked this question of answered along these lines: “Well, I think I’ve been good enough. I’m basically a good person and I think God will let me into heaven.” One lady he encountered even went so far as to say that she had been to two churches, both of which told her she was a sinner, and that it was her conviction that she had never sinned and so never went back to church! But even if folks are not that deluded, even if we are willing to admit to sin, nevertheless the fact of the matter is that most people in our culture really do believe that they are going to be okay in terms of heaven and hell because they are “good enough.”
Of course, it was at this point that Elder Bradley would begin to correct such thinking and give them the gospel. That is what I want to do with you for a few moments, and I would like to direct your attention to the words of the apostle Paul in the second chapter of his epistle to the Ephesians. I want to ask every one of you here today to ask yourself this question: “If you were to die today and God was to ask you why he should let you into heaven, what you would say?” What would your answer be? Is it that you are good enough? What is the Biblical answer to this question? On what basis does God let people into heaven?
You are not good enough
First of all, the Bible tells us that we not in fact good enough to make it into heaven. No one is. In fact, not only are we not good enough, but we are bad, every bad. In fact, it’s even worse than that. Before God, we are all spiritually dead. Here is how the apostle describes the state of every single person in this world as we are by nature:
“And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1).
What does that mean? It means that we are fundamentally unresponsive to God. We are dead to God. We are unresponsive to his majesty; we do not taste and see that the Lord is good. We are more interested in golf than God’s word, more interested in food than fellowship with Christ, more interested in nature than in nature’s God. We are unresponsive to his sovereignty over us. We all want to do our own thing, to have our own way. We don’t want God telling us what to do with our lives, thank you very much. We are dead to God.
What does that look like? Paul helps us to see what spiritual death looks like, not so much in terms of what animates us as in terms of who rules us. And in verses 2-3, Paul tells us that every spiritually dead person is bound and enslaved to three terrible masters: the world, the devil, and our own lusts:
“Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others” (2-3).
We are enslaved to the world, we walk “according to the course of this world.” We all like to think that we are individualists. We live in a society and culture that values individualism. But the fact of the matter is that we all like to be in a bigger crowd. We all wear mass-produced clothes, drive mass-produced vehicles, and eat mass-produced food. We think we are our own people, but we are really all on a path following a lot of other people.
And this is bad because of the next thing Paul mentions. The course of this world is not in the right direction. As D. A. Carson is wont to say, the Bible doesn’t speak of the world in terms of its bigness but in terms of its badness. And the world is evil because of the evil one, the devil. The course of this world is not the course of democratic enlightenment, but the course of demonic enslavement: we walk “according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” You don’t have to believe in the devil to serve him. You simply have to join him in his rebellion against God. And that’s what we all do by nature.
How do we do that? We do it by following our desires, by making our own lusts the thing that rules us: “Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.” We might like to hold onto the idea of God and think of ourselves a basically religious. But we want God the way Europeans want their monarchies: we want God to be subject to the parliament of our lusts. We are not servants of God; we are slaves to our lusts. And not just the lusts of the flesh, but also the lusts of the mind – pride, bitterness, envy, unforgiveness. They entangle us, enslave us, destroy us.
The result of this is even more terrible: we are “by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” In other words, this is the way the world is. This is our natural state. This is the natural and universal state of mankind. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” And as a result, we are exposed to the just and holy wrath of God, which is what Paul means when he says that we are children of wrath.
No one can presume that they will just go into heaven. Heaven is not our natural destination; hell is. You can’t just assume that when you die you will be okay. The assumption, according to the apostle Paul, is that you will not be okay.
In other words, we need to be saved. We need to be saved from our death in sin, our enslavement to the world, the devil, and sinful desire, and, most of all, from the wrath of God that will consume his enemies.
How can we be saved? What is the Biblical answer to this question?
God is Gracious
The answer to the question, “How can I be saved?” is not found in anything that we are or do. The Bible, the gospel, doesn’t tell you to look to yourself at all. It tells you to look to God and to his grace in Christ. Twice in verses 4-8, the apostle tells us that sinners are saved by grace (5, 8). We are bad, but God is gracious.
The grace of God was the theme that Elder Bradley never tired of preaching. It is this theme that Paul exults in here in these verses. There are three aspects of this grace Paul wants you to see.
The first is that God’s grace is sovereign grace:
“But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved)” (4-5).
What do we mean by sovereign grace? We mean that God’s grace is not determined or constrained by anything in the creature, but depends entirely from first to last upon the free initiative of God. It is not man’s freedom that is highlighted here; it is the freedom of God in salvation. It is nothing in us that compels God to save, it is his rich mercy and great love. It is not mercy responding to something good in us, for he shows mercy and lavishes love to those who are dead in sins. “It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy” (Rom. 9:16). This is sovereign grace.
Then it is saving grace. What I mean by that is that God’s grace doesn’t just make provision for salvation; God’s grace effects salvation in those to whom it is given. What does God’s grace do? It comes to the spiritually dead and raises them from the dead. It comes to those who are enslaved by the worst bondage of sin and releases them and sets them free. He makes us alive in Christ.
All who are saved are like Lazarus who had been dead for four days, laid bound in graveclothes in a tomb. Christ came to him and by his powerful voice raised him from the dead and freed him from his bonds. Christ didn’t cooperate with Lazarus; he sovereignly saved him!
God brings the spiritually dead to life and raises them to walk in newness of life. He sets them at his own right hand in the heavenly places. This is grace that saves.
Then it is gospel grace. What I mean by that is that all God’s grace comes to us through Jesus Christ, who is at the heart of the gospel proclamation. Note how Paul puts it. God has
“quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus” (5-7).
How are we made alive? In Christ! How are we raised to newness in life? Together with Christ! How are we made to sit in heavenly places? In Christ Jesus! How does the exceeding riches of God’s come in his kindness come to us? Through Christ Jesus!
You see, we still need to reckon with the wrath of God at the end of verse 3. Why is God wrathful? Because he is holy and because we are all cosmic traitors. Because he is just and we are deserving of the ban of his empire. There won’t be anyone in hell who doesn’t deserve to be there. But what verses 1-3 remind us is that we all deserve hell. How then can a holy God let a sinner go from just punishment? How can God remain just and forgive sins?
The answer is Jesus Christ, who is the eternal Son of God, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, but who for our sakes took on human nature, truly God and truly man, in order to do what we could not do. He took our place before God’s law, to fulfill all its requirements, to keep all God’s commandments, and to take the punishment that we deserve. By his life and death, Jesus Christ fully satisfied all the demands of God’s holy law in our place. And because of this, all who are united to him, who are in him, will and must be saved.
This is the gospel. We can be saved, not because of what we’ve done but because of what Christ has done. Not because we are good enough but because Christ was and is.
News that demands a response
This is the good news; this is the gospel of God in Christ. It is news that demands a response. And the response demanded is the response of faith. This is what Paul points out in the next verses:
“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (8-9).
We are saved by grace through faith. Faith in what? Faith in ourselves? No! Faith in faith? No! It is faith in Christ. When in the NT, people asked the question, “What must I do to be saved?” the answer was invariably, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.” To believe in Christ means to receive him as he is revealed to us in the gospel, as Lord and Savior. It means to trust in him as our Lord, for that is what he really is, and to turn from our sins and repent. It means to trust in him as the only Savior of sinners, for that is what he really is. He is the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through him. But all who come to him he will never cast out! The promise of the gospel is that all who trust in Jesus will have all their sins forgiven.
What response will you give to it? Will you ignore it? Will you write it off? Well, then, my heart breaks for you for there is no hope for anyone who is outside of Christ. There is no salvation for anyone who will not embrace Jesus as Lord and Savior. Jesus himself tells us, “If ye believe not that I am he, ye will die in your sins” (Jn. 8:24). As Matthew Henry put it, “Those who will not come to Christ to be saved must depart from him to be damned.”
But if you receive him by faith, then know that even the faith by which you received him is itself a gift from God. And the God who drew you to himself will never let you go. Thank God for the gospel of the grace of God through Jesus Christ!
I want to end here with what I think were the final words of Elder Bradley in this pulpit, and which I think are an entirely fitting ending to this message. It was from a message on Daniel 3 and how God rescues his children from the fires of trials. But he wanted to make sure that we knew about another fire: “Now there is a fire where there is no help. Rev. 21:8 speaks of various types of sinners, ‘and they shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.’ So, the only hope is now in Jesus. If you haven’t come to him, you’re headed for a fire for which there is no deliverance. But if you come to him, you have hope and eternal life.”
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