Chapter Eight

Chapter 8.
The Blessedness of the Holy Dead A Sermon Delivered by Rev. Arthur T. Pierson, D.D. In the Metropolitan Tabernacle On Lord's-day Morning, February 7th, 1892

"And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them."—Revelation 14:13. From the beginning of this great sorrow there is one text, and one only, to which my mind has turned, and which therefore I take to be the message of God to his bereaved people.

Very seldom in the course of human history has a voice ever been heard from heaven, but never unless some most august and important announcement was to be made. Heaven is not opened in vain: and the celestial voice that speaks with divine authority is never heard unless the occasion justifies the utterance. There are three remarkable signs that something is contained in this verse which is of no ordinary moment and magnitude. First, there is the voice from heaven: secondly, there is the command to record the message, for permanence, in the body of Holy Scripture, "saying unto me, Write": and thirdly, there is the "Yea" of the Holy Spirit, as though the Spirit must add his emphatic testimony, that, in the mouth of two witnesses, both of them divine, every word shall be established. One feels a certain sense of awe in approaching a text surrounded by such magnificent evidences of its superlative importance: a voice from heaven; a command to write; and the "Yea" of the Holy Spirit. Let us therefore, in the spirit of little children, seeking not so much to frame a discourse, as to open our ears while God discourses, look at the individual phrases of this remarkable text.

I. In the first place, "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth." That latter expression, "from henceforth," is one of the most difficult that exegetes, or expositors of the Bible, have ever confronted. It may refer to a new point of departure with regard to the blessed dead; it may refer to a new point of departure with respect to the revelation of that blessedness; and it may refer to a new point of departure in reference to the testimony of the Spirit. We may connect it with the second part of the verse instead of the first. "I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; Yea, saith the Spirit, from henceforth; that they may rest from their labours." But you perceive that, while there is some doubt as to the application of the phrase, we are in this case embarrassed by riches, for the applications of the phrase are so many and possibly so varied. It may be that, being put in the middle of this verse, it looks both backward to the beginning of the verse and forward to its conclusion, so that it indicates somehow, alike in the redemption of God, and in the revelation of Christ, and in the testimony of the Spirit, a new point of departure—"from henceforth."

Certainly there is one very conspicuous fact, namely, that the resurrection of Jesus Christ appears to mark a new epoch with respect even to the terms used about the departed saints of God. Stephen was the first martyr, and, in fact, his death was the first which is placed on record in the pages of Holy Scripture—the first recorded death of a believer in Jesus—subsequent to Christ's resurrection. And, notwithstanding the agony in which he must have died, under the stoning of his enemies, his death is manifestly a typical death, and the description of it has a typical significance. For we read, He, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God; and said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God." "And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." "And when he had said this, he fell asleep." Three marked features are there, evidently typical: in the first place, a vision of heaven and of Christ; in the second place, perfect peace of mind, even amid the agonies of a violent death; and in the third place, a new term applied to death—"he fell asleep." From the time of the resurrection of Christ to the last chapter of the Apocalypse you will scarcely once find the death of a believer referred to as death, without some qualifying phrase attached to it. There is one exception. In the ninth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we read of the death of Dorcas, or Tabitha, and the word "died" is used with reference to her, although she was a believer. But the reason is obvious. Peter was about, in the name of Christ, to call her back from death to life, and therefore it was important that the actual fact of her death should be unmistakably stated. Had it been said of her that "she fell asleep," it might have been thought that Peter simply roused her from a trance; but when it was declared that she "died," there could be no doubt of her actual miraculous resuscitation from the dead. But in every other case that I have been able to trace in the New Testament the death of a believer is never once referred to as "death," except with some such qualifying phrase as we find in this text—"die in the Lord," which at once separates such death from the death of an unbeliever. So important is this fact, as bearing upon the phrase "from henceforth" in this text, that it will amply repay us to examine more fully and in detail the terms used to describe the decease of God's saints. For instance, take the first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 15, which contains a long discourse on the subject of death and the resurrection. In the sixth verse we read that Christ "was seen of about five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present but some are fallen asleep." Then in the twentieth verse, we read, "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and is become the first-fruits of them that slept." Then, again, in the fifty-first verse, "Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment." In the second epistle to the Corinthians, fifth chapter, we have another reference to the death of a believer, but again the word, "death," even the thought of death, is avoided: "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved"—a tent falling to pieces, and the inhabitants going out to take another habitation. "Not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon": the death of a believer is being unclothed as to the vesture of mortality, and being clothed upon with the vesture of immortality. And then, again, in the eighth verse, "We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body"—out of home from the body—"and to be present with the Lord"—at home with the Lord. Then we turn to Paul's letter to the Philippians, chapter first, and the twenty-first verse, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." There the word "die" is used, but in connection with gain; and immediately, as it were, Paul abandons the word "death," and says in the twenty-third verse," For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and to be with, Christ, which is far better." And then, again, in the first Epistle to the Thessalonians, chapter four, thirteenth and fourteenth verses, "I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." Then we turn to the second epistle to Timothy, and in the fourth chapter and the sixth verse, we read, "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand." The Greek word for departure means to let loose, in order to depart, as the cables that hold a vessel to her moorings are loosed, in order that she may sail out for her haven. "I am ready to be offered; and the time when my bark unloosens from her fastenings that she may enter the eternal harbour, is close at hand"; and yet he was looking forward to decapitation in the arena under the orders of Nero. And once more—without further prolonged study of this topic—Peter says in his second epistle, chapter 1 verse 14, "Knowing that shortly I must put off," or lay aside, "this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me." This somewhat detailed examination may help my fellow believers in this congregation to appreciate the fact, which possibly they have never appreciated before, that the resurrection of Jesus Christ marks a new departure in the death of believers, as least, as to the revelation of the blessedness and the glory into which they have entered; so that, after Christ died and rose again, it was necessary to have a new nomenclature, a new set of terms, to describe the departure of the saint to be with his Lord. It would no longer do to call it "death," for there has been a new apocalypse of the glory of those that "die in the Lord."

II. In the second place, notice that qualifying phrase, "in the Lord." It is no exaggeration to declare of that one phrase, "in the Lord," that no more important single phrase is to be found in the New Testament Scriptures. Any student of the Word of God in the original tongues will know that the little phrase, ἐν Χρἰστῷ ("in Christ"), is the key to every epistle of the New Testament. The magnificent thought, suggested by those two or three little Greek words, is something beyond the power of any man to set forth properly: "in Christ Jesus." Christ seems to be imagined and pictured forth by the Holy Ghost on the pages of Holy Scripture as a great divine sphere, vast as immensity and eternity, vast as the love and grace of God. And the circumference of that sphere marks the difference between sin and holiness, between condemnation and justification, between hell and heaven. By faith in Jesus, the penitent believer enters into that sphere, and thus crosses the line of circumference that separates between a state of sin and condemnation and judgment, and a state of holiness and justification and salvation. He is now henceforth "in Christ." We have no term to express the grandeur of this thought—insphered in Christ. "Who is he that can harm you if ye be followers of that which is good?" What dart or arrow can penetrate the circumference of that sphere in which the believer is embraced and hidden with his Lord? "The Only Begotten of God keeps him that that Wicked One toucheth him not." And if you are thus in Christ Jesus, you are saved, already saved. The moment that you enter into that sphere you are in God. The world is outside of you, the broken law outside of you, the gulf of perdition outside of you. You are in holiness if you are in him, you are in justification if you are in him, you are in sanctification if you are in him; you are already, virtually, in heaven if you are in him. And so in the epistle to the Ephesians we have that strange expression, ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις translated into "heavenly places." But there is no word for "places" in the original; it is "in the heavenlies." We are not in the heavenly places yet; we are in the earthly places. But if you are a child of God and a believer in Christ, you are introduced to the heavenly states and experiences and joys and privileges; and, when you go to heaven itself, there will be scarcely a joy absolutely new to you, except the actual sight of your Master himself; for you will have had, as in gentle droppings from above, a foretaste and an earnest of what you are going to have in fall perfection there. That phrase, "in the Lord," must have at least three great interpretations. In the first place, a redemptive interpretation, to which we have referred. The penitent believer goes from the world, and from sin, and from Satan, and from condemnation, redemptively, into this divine sphere of safety, holiness and happiness. In the second place, actively and actually; for a believer's life is taken into the life of Christ, his work taken up into the work of Christ, his destiny taken into the destiny of Christ, his life-plan embraced in the eternal plan of God. So the apostle says (Romans 14:7-8.): "None of us liveth to himself; and no man dieth to himself; for whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's." Oh, the magnificence of the thought! Would to God we could rise to it, and feel its glorious reality! While you live you are in this sphere in Christ Jesus. Are you any less in that sphere when you die, when you fall asleep as to your body, and, as to your spirit, you are at home with the Lord? The apostle says, that the disciple that lives unto the Lord, dies unto the Lord; the Lord has not surrendered his control of him when death comes upon him. Neither has the believer lost his identity and unity with Jesus when he falls asleep. We are thus redemptively in the Lord, and actively and actually in the Lord. And what shall I call this other, but being immortally in the Lord? We are still in the Lord when we fall asleep, and it is unto the Lord that we die, even as it is unto the Lord that we have lived.

III. But we turn now to look at the concluding part of this great text, "Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them." The first part of this statement, "they rest from their labours," is to occupy our thoughts hereafter more fully, and we may pass it now with a word. There is absolute rest, for every believer who is at home with the Lord, from everything of the nature of vexation, of task, of toil, of physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual limitation; from infirmity, sickness, disappointment, and disaster. All these and all else, which mar the perfection of our service in this world and interfere with the perfection of our joy in God, we leave behind us when, absent from the body, we are present with the Lord. But let us fasten our thoughts for a moment on the last expression, "and their works do follow them." That is another difficult phrase to interpret: difficult, as has been said before of another phrase—only because of the embarrassment from the various applications which may be made of it. There are three prominent applications which may be suggested. One is that the works, which are done in Christ Jesus, survive the departing saint and remain as his memorial and monument in this world. A second suggestion is, that the works which he has done here follow after him into eternity as witnesses before the throne of God to his fidelity, and as the means of increasing the measure and glory of his reward. And there is a third interpretation, which I venture to propose, and which, I believe, will commend itself to your approval. The Greek word translated "follow" may mean "to follow as one who goes immediately behind and treads in another's footsteps—to accompany." It is like the following of a disciple, close on the heels of his Master just before him; the following of companionship and fellowship. This interpretation is both suggested and confirmed by the difference in the terms of the original, which appears also in the English translation: "they rest from their labours;" but "their works do follow them." What is the difference between labour and work? Labour, both in the Latin and in the English word derived from it, as also in the original Greek word in this text, suggests the idea of toil amid hindrance and difficulty and weariness—burden bearing. It suggests the thought that one is doing a task that taxes his strength, and fatigues him so that he comes from his work, wearied and worn; it carries the notion of strength unequal to the task, so that one faints at times, or feels himself circumscribed with limitations that he is impotent to throw off. But the word "work" means simply activity, doing, endeavouring, performing.

How blessed is the thought that the Holy Ghost suggests to us! When a saint of God falls asleep as to his body, and enters into the presence of his Lord, as to his spirit for evermore, the labours, the toils, the vexations of this world, he leaves behind him; but he carries with him into immortality his service. He goes to carry on his work for God, for that is as immortal as God himself. He goes where no limitations exist, where no vexations and hindrances circumscribe his activity, where "they rest not," because they are never tired nor fatigued; where, as they wait on the Lord, they renew their strength, mount up with wings as eagles, run and are never weary, walk and never faint. The tireless and endless activity of a redeemed soul partakes of the tireless energy of an untiring God. Let us not suppose, for a moment, that when a man who has spent his life in seeking to serve God, who has stored his mind with all manner of accumulations, and, with the tension of persistent effort, sought to acquire and achieve all that is possible for his Master; who has laid the foundation-stone of great institutions, has scattered abroad throughout the world the testimony of his faith and his courage for his Master's sake—let us not suppose for a moment that, when such a man falls, as we say, at the blow of death, his service ceases. God is a better οἰκονόμος, economist, housekeeper, than that. He is no such wasteful keeper of his eternal house. When a saint departs to be with Christ, instead of leaving service behind, he enters on a new sphere of service, where, instead of sacrificing acquisitions and attainments, he rather finds an absolutely perfect scope for the exercise of them all; instead of ceasing to work for his Master, he rather begins his work anew in the tirelessness of celestial energy.

What man may think about this is of no consequence; what does the Word of God testify concerning it? I have gathered together some few of the precious testimonies of the Word on this subject for my own comfort, and for your comfort as well. In the twentieth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, verse 38, Jesus Christ, rebuking the errors of the Sadducees, who said there was no resurrection, and no separate existence of angel or spirit apart from the body, says, referring to Moses, who at the bush called the Lord the God of Abraham and of Isaac and Jacob, "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living: for all (even all the dead) live unto him." That phrase, "Live unto him," is used scores of times in the Word of God to express the idea of service. "Whether we live, we live unto the Lord," &c. In this Book of Revelation itself testimonies are massed upon this subject. In chapter 7, verse 15, John gets one of the first and most glorious glimpses into the blessedness of departed saints when the elder answers, when asked as to the white-robed throng, "They are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple." In the fourteenth chapter of the Book of Revelation we find the text itself: "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their vexatious toils: but their activities go with them." In chapter 22, the closing chapter, we find the sevenfold description of the glory of the heavenly host and the heavenly home. "And there shall be no more curse"—perfect sinlessness. "But the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it"—perfect government. "And his servants shall serve him"—perfect service. "And they shall see his face"—perfect communion. "And his name shall be in their foreheads"—perfect resemblance. "And there shall be no night there"—perfect day. "And they shall reign for ever and ever"—perfect glory. In the midst of this sevenfold description there stands that central and commanding sentence, "And his servants shall serve him." Surely service is the centre of the blessedness of heaven, service in its perfection! This congregation is today staggering under the weight of an irreparable loss. It is admitted, on all sides, that the century in which we live has seen no other man that, as a gospel preacher, was the equal of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. I am profoundly convinced that we shall never again see another like him. I should be untrue to myself and untrue to you if I attempted in the slightest degree to conceal the fact that the shadow of an almost inconsolable grief has fallen upon the largest congregation of believers within the bounds of Christendom. But it is not the office of a Christian minister to aggravate such grief. We are bidden to "comfort one another with these words" of God, and I have sought, being providentially thrust into this responsible position without my own will, to point you to the testimony of the Word of God, that it might be possible, leaning on the arm of a divine and unfaltering strength, to avoid being utterly prostrated and wrecked in hope by this unspeakable loss. Suffer me, beside those words of comfort which I have already brought to you from the precious Word of God, to suggest two or three closing reflections.

We are not now attempting to exhaust the testimony to this beloved Pastor. This day is but the beginning of a week of funeral services, at which the tributes to him will cover every department of his character and his career. But just now, in sympathy with the theme we have considered, may I pluck a few sweet "apples" from God's blessed tree of consolation, and put them into your hand?

"The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away." It is all "the Lord's doing." A gardener walked through the conservatory and looked upon the valuable plants that had just come into bloom, and, seeing one of the flowers freshly plucked from its stem, he said to his servant, "Who plucked that flower?" The servant said "The master," and the gardener held his peace, and answered never a word. "I was dumb with silence, I opened not my mouth because thou didst it." The Master has plucked one of the fairest flowers of the century, and we must answer never a word. We bow in awe before what is, perhaps, the most mysterious dealing of God with his church that has come to our knowledge in this generation. But, blessed be God! what is a mystery to us is no mystery to him. And he says to us, "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." It is God's doing. It behoves us to keep silence; to accept the mystery and wait patiently for its explanation. But your departed Pastor belongs from henceforth to the blessed dead which die in the Lord. It will go far to wipe the tears away from your eyes, to think of your Pastor as having been seven days in heaven. He knows more today than all the philosophers and wise men on the face of the earth. Even the knowledge that he had, in this world, of his Saviour, has comparatively vanished away, for now he stands face to face with him in the glory. He has kissed the feet that were pierced for him; and, full of the ecstatic vision of the Master whom he loved, not even the wants and woes of this congregation would bring him, from that hidden glory, down to the toils and vexations of earth again. His works have gone with him, and they are already rewarding him in the presence of God.

Think of the meeting there at midnight, on the thirty-first day of January, when Charles Haddon Spurgeon heard the voice from heaven, saying, "Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter!" In 1816, William A. B. Johnson, missionary of the Church Missionary Society, went down to Sierra Leone, to labour among the refuse population of that colony of rescued slaves. In 1821, after five years of careful, prayerful toil, he had built his model state and had organized these slaves, gathered from the holds of slave-ships, into a well-ordered and thriving Christian community, where honourable trades and callings and learned professions were represented, and where the colonists, clothed and in their right mind, occupied their own neat, beautiful and well-ordered homes, and assembled in the house of God for praise and prayer. Another cargo of slaves, 217 in number, being landed at the colony, they were sent to Regent's Town, where the model state had been organized, that they might enter as constitutent elements into that colony, under the control of Mr. Johnson. He tells us that, on that day in May, 1821, he saw a sight that, for pathos and for grandeur, eclipsed anything that he had ever seen before. As those hundreds of rescued slaves arrived in the town, the members of the colony, with one mind and heart, rushed forth from their houses to afford these newcomers a cordial Christian welcome; and, as Mr. Johnson was passing along the street, he heard shouts of acclamation that made the very heavens seem to resound with their echo; and his converted colonists came running to him, and one after another said, "Oh, Mr. Johnson! there is my brother! there is my sister! yonder is my father! yonder is my mother! my son! my daughter!" In those freshly rescued slaves, these men and women, who had been redeemed from the filth, the misery, the poverty of their depraved, degraded condition, recognized their long-lost relatives and friends. When the Pastor entered the glory that midnight on last Lord's-day, one can almost imagine that shouts rent the air of heaven, as thousands and tens of thousands who had been brought to Christ, by that loving voice which we are never to hear on earth again, and by those printed sermons that, like leaves of the tree of life, have been borne away as on the wings of the wind for the healing of the nations—that thousands and tens of thousands—and it may be hundreds of thousands—of whom he had never heard, who had found a blessing through his voice or his pen, and had found their way into heaven before him—were at the gate ready with their acclamations to welcome him, through whom they had also "found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." Your Pastor's reward has, seven days ago, begun in the higher and heavenly sphere. Think not that I make light of your grief. God knows I owe too much to Charles Haddon Spurgeon myself for whatever little power there is in my ministry, or strength in my faith, or courage and confidence in my espousal of neglected and despised truths, not to share most keenly in this sorrow. But the time has come for us to look up; we must not look down; we shall go down if we look down. And if we look up by faith we may see the door opened in heaven, and see there that beloved man who shall never more know weakness or infirmity, from whose eyes all tears have been forever wiped away, who shall never henceforth find it difficult to serve his Master, and whose work shall never more be a vexatious and wearisome toil. To him already there have been disclosed the sheaves of a vast harvest, whose seed he sowed beside all waters; much of the seed that he thus scattered was borne away from his own sight, and the results of his own unselfish husbandry were disclosed only when he stood before his Master in the ecstasy of the heavenly life.

"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them." God is saying to this congregation today: "Be up and doing; work while the day lasts; whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." And especially is God saying to the unconverted members of this congregation, "Remember the words that he spake unto you, being yet present with you." If his voice did not bring you to Christ while he lived, will you not let that voice which speaks to you from his coffin persuade you to come to the Christ that he still presses on your believing and affectionate choice? Will you not help to accumulate his reward, even now when he has gone from you, by coming within the circumference of the great sphere of grace, in Jesus Christ? "Being dead, he yet speaketh"; he beseeches you with celestial earnestness to live unto the Lord from this day, and die unto the Lord when the summons comes to you. Then, with him, you shall fall at the feet of your common Saviour in the ascriptions of endless praise. Amen.