John Piper's Funeral Prayer for a Family of Five
00:00:00.000 | Last Sunday morning at around 1130 AM, an entire family entered heaven together.
00:00:09.000 | Jameson and Catherine Powell and their three small children were driving from Minneapolis
00:00:13.440 | to Colorado for final preparations as missionaries to Japan.
00:00:18.080 | They planned to leave in October.
00:00:20.320 | But in an interstate construction zone in western Nebraska, a semi-truck rear-ended
00:00:25.040 | the family vehicle.
00:00:26.680 | Tragically, the entire family died at the scene, including Jameson and Catherine, both
00:00:31.920 | 29, and their three young children, three-year-old Ezra, 23-month-old Violet, and two-month-old
00:00:39.320 | Calvin.
00:00:41.600 | The 53-year-old trucker was arrested and charged with five counts of felony motor vehicle homicide.
00:00:48.600 | But today, the life and the faith and the obedience of Jameson and Catherine was celebrated
00:00:53.760 | at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis.
00:00:57.000 | John Piper was asked to deliver the pastoral prayer, and here's what he said.
00:01:03.680 | Would you pray with me?
00:01:07.640 | O Lord, God of might and mercy and mystery.
00:01:19.820 | You have driven the arrows of your quiver into the breast of your people, your beloved.
00:01:31.760 | You have filled our throat with bitterness and gall.
00:01:37.820 | You have made our teeth grind on gravel and laid us down with wounds in the ashes of dreams.
00:01:48.680 | You have taken away our sleep and replaced our gladness with groaning.
00:01:53.780 | You have covered us with shadows and the shadows of those we love, and we have reached out
00:02:03.860 | in vain to touch their bodies.
00:02:08.340 | Happiness has fled through the window where the rain pours in.
00:02:14.740 | Peace has put her hand on the latch, and endurance wavers at the threshold of our soul.
00:02:24.940 | A voice is heard like Rachel's, lamentation and bitter weeping.
00:02:33.260 | Where is the comfort for her children because they are no more?
00:02:39.780 | You have spared us, us, who have lived out the fullness of our days through no merit
00:02:47.280 | of our own, who would happily have finished our course and taken their place, but you
00:02:55.380 | have not spared even the children or the valiant young lovers, your most loyal servants.
00:03:09.740 | O Lord, our eyes are on you.
00:03:16.020 | We do not look to another for hope, to you alone, to you we cry.
00:03:23.400 | Remember our affliction, remember the bitter wormwood and the gall.
00:03:29.140 | You have not made us drink this cup in vain.
00:03:37.020 | Peace we call to mind, and therefore we have hope.
00:03:41.480 | Your steadfast love, O Lord, never ceases.
00:03:46.980 | Your mercies never come to an end.
00:03:49.460 | They are new every morning.
00:03:53.140 | Great is your faithfulness.
00:03:55.580 | You alone, O Lord, are our portion, and therefore we will hope in you.
00:04:03.580 | You are good to those who wait for you, to the soul who seeks you.
00:04:10.300 | You are good today, and you were good last Sunday.
00:04:17.540 | So we are waiting.
00:04:21.140 | We are looking for the salvation of the Lord.
00:04:25.240 | We are not running from the yoke of this dark providence or throwing off the burden of your
00:04:31.500 | good sovereignty.
00:04:34.540 | We are waiting and looking for the yoke to be made easy and the burden light.
00:04:45.780 | You do not hide yourself forever.
00:04:49.580 | Though you cause grief, you will have compassion according to the abundance of your steadfast
00:04:56.980 | love, for you do not afflict from your heart or grieve the children of men.
00:05:08.100 | We know your heart, O God, for there is nothing in the world more bright, more blazing, more
00:05:15.620 | terrible, more beautiful, more bloody, more hopeful than the revelation of your heart
00:05:26.260 | in the death and triumph of your Son, Jesus.
00:05:31.660 | Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
00:05:36.940 | Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, but he was pierced for our
00:05:41.780 | transgressions, he was wounded for our iniquities.
00:05:45.180 | Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
00:05:52.300 | For we, like sheep, have gone astray, we've turned every one to his own way, and the Lord
00:05:58.340 | has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
00:06:01.820 | This is the great and glorious rock where we stand or lie, prostrate, and on which we
00:06:14.980 | give thanks for the lives of Jameson and Catherine and Ezra and Violet and Calvin, who did not
00:06:22.140 | count their lives to be more valuable than obedience.
00:06:27.380 | We praise you that they did not snatch a few vain years of life on this earth in exchange
00:06:36.260 | for allegiance to their King, but set their faces like flint toward Japan in finishing
00:06:45.580 | their course in the ministry they had received from the Lord Jesus.
00:06:49.980 | And we praise you they did finish it, like your Apostle Paul, who wrote from Rome, "I
00:06:58.940 | have finished my course," though he never got to Spain.
00:07:08.620 | We stand on this mighty rock of Christ and his shed blood for our sins and the sins of
00:07:15.900 | the Powell's family, and on this victorious triumph over death, and standing on this rock
00:07:23.260 | we pray for these parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, who sit with pieces of thread in their hands
00:07:33.740 | from a fabric of life woven from the womb and then consumed.
00:07:40.180 | Father, we ask that you would sustain in their hearts, as we have already seen, an unshakable
00:07:51.260 | confidence that the countless hours of investment in Jameson and Catherine and the children
00:07:58.780 | were not in vain.
00:08:02.900 | Because your promise in 1 Corinthians 15, 58, that their labors were not in vain, is
00:08:08.740 | built on a mighty "therefore," and on the mighty, glorious, greatest foundation of the
00:08:18.820 | best chapter in the Bible about the resurrection of Jesus and his people from the dead.
00:08:24.980 | And we pray for these brothers and sisters, the brothers and sisters of Jameson and Catherine,
00:08:35.220 | that in spite of the sudden and horrific severing of priceless sibling ties, they will feel
00:08:44.180 | the unbreakable bond that binds them through the brotherhood of Jesus, who said, "Who are
00:08:54.780 | my brothers and sisters?
00:08:57.500 | Here are my brothers and sisters.
00:08:59.740 | Never does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."
00:09:05.500 | Lord, cause this family to know and feel this circle is not broken.
00:09:18.180 | And I pray for the cousins, these children, oh God.
00:09:24.380 | Make the risen, living, reigning Jesus real to them.
00:09:30.100 | And as they taste what we could wish no child would ever have to taste, grant them to know
00:09:38.500 | and feel that the arms of Jesus are strong and that in his arms all are well.
00:09:48.060 | For he did not promise, "I will be with you to the end of your life," but to the end of
00:09:57.300 | the age in death and life.
00:10:03.380 | And Father, I pray for the young people in this room and around the world who remain,
00:10:13.180 | that they would find the love of their lives, their Catherine, their Jameson, and embrace
00:10:20.340 | together the second proposal that Jameson made to his beloved, to lead the family in
00:10:29.540 | obedience whether it is life or death or discomfort or disappointment, to take up our cross just
00:10:36.420 | as he did to suffer and die.
00:10:41.580 | Lord, in the name of Jesus and by the blood of these five, I ask, raise up, raise up a
00:10:52.460 | legion of replacements for the global glory of his imperial majesty, Jesus Christ.
00:11:02.420 | Forbid that any of your children when they hear this news would waste their lives on
00:11:09.380 | trifles.
00:11:14.140 | And again, Lord, we pray for Tony Wheatley, whose head is covered with shame, whose hands
00:11:22.260 | are stained with blood.
00:11:25.540 | And we stand in awe that the heart of this family is not a vengeful heart.
00:11:33.780 | And we pray that Mr. Wheatley will find the one and only remedy for shame and guilt, Jesus.
00:11:41.860 | And we ask that in time, through Christ, he would make his way to heaven and know the
00:11:52.580 | indescribable miracle of reconciliation with those already there.
00:12:00.460 | And finally, we pray for Japan, that the great idols of gold and silver and material success
00:12:07.380 | would fall before the blood of this family, that these five, even these three little ones
00:12:16.940 | who have now grown to the fullness of their glory and the perfection of beauty, not through
00:12:22.780 | the trials of three score and ten, but in the twinkling of an eye, that these all, these
00:12:29.220 | five might be found among the champions of the victory of the gospel in Japan.
00:12:40.020 | In the name of Jesus and his great mercy and for his glory, we pray.
00:12:47.580 | Amen.
00:12:48.580 | That was John Piper's funeral prayer today at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis
00:12:56.120 | at the funeral of Jameson and Catherine Powles and their three young children, Ezra, Violet,
00:13:01.860 | and Calvin, all laid to rest today.
00:13:05.860 | Please keep their families and extended families and their many friends in your prayers today.
00:13:10.420 | Amen.
00:13:11.420 | Amen.
00:13:12.420 | Amen.
00:13:12.420 | Amen.
00:13:13.420 | Amen.
00:13:13.420 | Amen.
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