DEPARTED SAINTS YET LIVING – Charles Spurgeon
DEPARTED SAINTS YET LIVING
Luke 20:37-38: “But even Moses showed in the burning bush passage that the dead are raised, when he called the Lord, ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ For He is not the God of the dead but of the living, for all live to Him.”
A Great Loss
During the past week, the Church of God and the world at large have sustained a very serious loss. In the taking home to Himself by our gracious Lord, the Earl of Shaftesbury, we have, in my judgment, lost the best man of the age. I do not know whom I should place second, but I certainly would put him first—far beyond all other servants of God within my knowledge—for usefulness and influence. He was a man most true in his personal piety, as I know from having enjoyed his private friendship. He was a man most firm in his faith in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; a man intensely active in the cause of God and the Truth of God. Take him whichever way you please, he was admirable. He was faithful to God in all His house, fulfilling both the first and second commands of the Law in fervent love to God and hearty love to man. He occupied his high position with singleness of purpose and immovable steadfastness—where shall we find his equal? If it is not possible that he was absolutely perfect, it is equally impossible for me to mention a single fault, for I saw none. He exhibited Scriptural perfection, inasmuch as he was sincere, true, and consecrated. Those things which have been regarded as faults in him by the loose thinkers of this age are prime virtues in my esteem. They called him narrow—and in this they bear unconscious testimony to his loyalty to the Truth of God. I rejoiced greatly in his integrity, his fearlessness, his adherence to principle in a day when the Revelation of God is questioned, the Gospel explained away, and human thought set up as the idol of the hour. He felt that there was a vital and eternal difference between the Truth of God and error and, consequently, he did not act or talk as if there was much to be said on either side and, therefore, no one could be quite sure. We shall not know for many a year how much we miss in missing him; how great an anchor he was to this drifting generation and how great a stimulus he was to every movement for the benefit of the poor! Both man and beast may unite in mourning him! He was the friend of every living thing. He lived for the oppressed; he lived for London; he lived for the nation and he lived, still more, for God! He has finished his course and though we do not lay him to sleep in the grave with the sorrow of those that have no hope, yet we cannot but mourn that a great man and a prince has fallen this day in Israel! Surely the righteous are taken away from the evil to come and we are left to struggle on under increasing difficulties. It must always be so. The godly must die, even as others. Though our life is perfectly consecrated, yet it cannot forever be continued in this world. It is appointed unto men once, to die, and that appointment stands. We expect the present rule to last till He shall come who shall destroy the last enemy.
The Certainty of Eternal Life
We are not troubled with Sadducean doubts. To us, seeing that Christ rose from the dead, it is a matter of certainty that all His followers must rise, also. And seeing that Jesus always lived, it is equally a matter of certainty to us that all the saints are still living, for He has said, “Because I live, you shall live, also.” Yet, if no infidelity is permitted to creep into our brain and disturb our belief, it may penetrate into our heart and cause us great sadness. We who believe in Jesus should rise into an atmosphere more clear and warm than that of the sepulcher, for the Lord Jesus has “abolished death and brought life and incorruption to light through the Gospel.” We are not now sitting in the shadow of death, for eternal light has sprung up! Children of God, it is in the highest degree proper that you should think of things as your Father thinks of them—and He says that “all live unto God.” Let us correct our phraseology by that of Scripture, and speak of departed saints as Divine Inspiration speaks of them! Then shall we come back to the simple child’s talk which Wordsworth so sweetly turned into rhyme—”Master, we are seven,” and in our family we shall number brothers, sisters, and friends, whose bodies lie in the churchyard and shall speak of those who have crossed the border and passed within the veil as still our own! Like Jesus, we shall say, “Our friend Lazarus sleeps.” Like Paul, we shall speak of them as absent from the body but present with the Lord and regard them as part and parcel of the one family in Heaven and earth!
The Glorious Relationship of the Saints
Our text was fashioned in a place which has the air of death, burial, and resurrection about it. The voice came to Moses in the desert. This was a strange place for Moses—the living, active, well-instructed mind of Moses, mighty in all the wisdom of Egypt and full of noble thoughts concerning the living God—was buried in a desert. It is singular to see the foremost mind of the age in the remotest part of the desert hidden away among sheep! He who was a born king is here feeding a flock. It is death to Moses. Rest assured that Moses cannot be kept in this living tomb—he must rise to life and leadership. While there is a God and a Providence, Moses cannot continue in obscurity. There are certainties wrapped up in him which cannot fail. A man need not be a Prophet to stand at Horeb and prognosticate that Moses will emerge from the desert and shake Egypt by his resurrection! While Moses is in the desert, he is thinking about another case of death, burial, and resurrection, namely, Israel in Egypt. The people of God, the favored nation of Jehovah with whom He had entered into Covenant, saying, “I will be their God and they shall be My people”—these were in Egypt, ground down by relentless oppression, begrimed with brick dust and black and blue with the blows of taskmasters. It has come to this, that they are compelled to cast their male children into the river and so to be the destroyers of their own race! The children of Israel have become a herd of slaves, yet they are God’s elect people, God’s favored family! It does not require a Prophet to declare that this death in Egypt cannot last—the elect nation must live and rise and go forth free to serve the Lord! No, Israel, you shall never perish! The voice must yet be heard—”Thus says the Lord, Let My people go, that they may serve Me!” And so, while Moses in the desert is thinking of Israel in Egypt, he sees a bush, and that bush is all ablaze. An ordinary bush upon the heath needs only to be touched with a match and, in one moment, there is a puff of flame and then all is over—nothing is left but a trace of ashes. Yet here was an extraordinary thing—a bush that continued to burn and was not consumed! Here was life in the midst of death, continuance in the midst of destruction! This was an emblem of God abiding with a people and yet suffering them to live—or of the fires of affliction being rendered harmless to the children of God. He who then spoke to Moses was the God of Life, the God who could sustain in the midst of destruction! He was the God who could preserve even a bush from being devoured by the intense fury of flame! Said I not truly that the surroundings of Moses and the bush all favor a display of life in death and resurrection out of death?
The God of the Living
Now we come to the central matter. Out of the midst of the bush there came a Voice, a mysterious and Divine Voice which said, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” From this Voice our Divine Lord teaches us to gather this fact—that God’s people live when they appear to have been long dead—for He who cannot be the God of the dead, or non-existent, still avows Himself to be the God of the long-buried Patriarchs! Our Lord proved from that utterance at the bush, the continued life of the Lord’s chosen and also their resurrection—how did He do this?
A Glorious Relationship Declared
We will not go straight to the answer, but we will beat about the bush a little, that the reasoning may the more gently enter our minds. I would say, first, that in these words we have a glorious relationship declared. Moses called the Lord, “The God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” The glorious Lord did, at the bush, as good as say, “These three men have chosen Me to be their God.” So they had—through the Grace of God they had deliberately chosen to part with their natural kindred in the country of the Chaldees and to journey to a land of which they knew nothing except that God had promised that they should afterwards receive it for an inheritance. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were three very different characters, yet this was common to the three—that they believed God and took Him to be their God, alone. They nestled in the bosom of Jehovah while the rest of the world went after their idols. In all their troubles, they flew to Jehovah; for the supply of all their needs they resorted to Him, alone. They were men who had, through Divine Grace, deliberately attached themselves unto Jehovah, the Most High, throughout the whole of their lives. It is a sublime sight to see a man trust in God as Abraham did—and obey the Lord fully as he did in the matter of Isaac, when he accounted God to be able to raise him up, even from the dead. Surely there must be everlasting life in a being who could thus confide in Jehovah! I call you to admire the fact that God called the Patriarchs into the noble position of following the Lord fully, of fixed and settled choice. Being men of like passions with ourselves, they nevertheless cast in their lot with the Lord and for His sake preferred the life of strangers and pilgrims on the earth to the comforts of settled residence in Ur of the Chaldees and to the sinful pleasures of Canaan. We, also, take this God to be our God, even the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. There is a nobility about the choosers of the true God which will surely secure them from annihilation.
Eternal Life Implied
Next, these three men had learned to commune with God. How wondrously had Abraham spoken with God! Full many a spot was consecrated as “the place where he stood before the Lord.” Isaac also walked in the fields at eventide and, doubtless, there entered into secret fellowship with God. The Lord also appeared unto him at night and led him to build an altar and call upon the name of Jehovah. The good old man, even in his blindness, found solace in communion with the Lord God Almighty. Jacob, also, was favored with heavenly visitations. We can never forget that mystic dream at Bethel, nor the wrestling at Jabbok, nor the many times when he turned to the God of his father Abraham and his father Isaac—and God spoke with him as a man speaks with his friend! It is a wonderful thing that the Lord should thus commune with men. He does not thus show Himself to the beasts which perish. He does not thus reveal Himself to the lifeless stones of the field. Those are strangely honored beings with whom God enters into close communion as He did with these three men!
I argue from it that these beings cannot dissolve into a handful of dust and cease to be. Can those eyes cease to be which have seen the Lord? Can these souls perish which have conversed with the Eternal? We think not! And, just now, I ask you only to meditate upon the glories to which the Patriarchs were lifted up when they were permitted to be the Friends of God. What was still more notable, the Lord entered into Covenant with them. He made a Covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob which He remembered, saying, “Surely, blessing I will bless you, and in multiplying I will multiply you.” You know how the Lord swore to give unto the seed of Abraham a goodly heritage, a land that flowed with milk and honey. Now, it is a wonderful thing that God should enter into compact with man. Does He make an everlasting Covenant, ordered in all things and sure, with mere insects of an hour? Especially, would He give His Son Jesus to die to seal the everlasting Covenant by His heart’s blood with mere shadows who are but for a little time and then cease to be? I am sure it is not so. If God makes men capable of entering into an everlasting Covenant with Himself, there lies within that fact the clear suggestion that He imparts to them an existence which is not for today and tomorrow, but for eternity! Still, I wish you mainly to regard the Glory into which manhood is lifted up when God enters into gracious Covenant with it.
The Glorious Life Unveiled
Moreover, to go further, these men were not only in Covenant with God, but they had lived in accordance with that Covenant. I do not mean that they had lived perfectly in accord with it, but that the main strain of their lives was in conformity with their Covenant relationship to God. For the sake of that Covenant, Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees and dwelt no longer in the land of Haran, but became a sojourner with God in the land of Canaan. For the sake of this, he sent away his firstborn after the flesh, seeing it was said, “In Isaac shall your seed be called.” “By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.” These faithful men had respect to the recompense of the reward and, therefore, they were not mindful of the country from where they came out, neither sought opportunity to return. Jacob, the most faulty of the three, greatly as he erred in his conduct to his brother Esau, was evidently actuated by an intense faith in the Covenant birthright so that he ventured all things to obtain it. In his old age and death, he was anxious not to be confused with the Egyptians, or separated from the chosen household and, therefore, he said unto Joseph, “But I will lie with my fathers, and you shall carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their burying place.” This he made Joseph swear, for he must make sure of it. He was aiming at the promise, despite the errors that he committed in so doing. Now, does God enter into Covenant with men and help men to live in accordance with that Covenant and, after all, shall they miss the blessing? Shall it end in nothing? Hiding beneath the shadow of God’s wings, shall they, after all, perish? It cannot be! They must live to whom God is God. For this was the Covenant, that they should have God to be their God and that they should be God’s people. O Brothers and Sisters, I do not know how to speak on such a blessing as this, though I live in the daily enjoyment of it! This God is our God. All that the Lord is and all that He can do, He has given over to us, to be used on our behalf—the fullness of His Grace and Truth, the infinity of His Love, the Omnipotence of His Power, the Infallibility of His Wisdom—all, all shall be used on our behalf! The Lord has given Himself over to His people to be their inheritance and, on the other hand, we, poor weak feeble creatures as we are, are taken to be the peculiar treasure of the living God! They shall be Mine, says the Lord of Hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels.” “The Lord’s portion is His people: Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.” We are God’s heritage, we are God’s jewels, we are God’s children, we are dear to Him as the apple of His eye! We are to Him as the signet upon His hand and the crown upon His head! He cannot have chosen for His portion a mass of corruption, or a handful of brown dust—yet that is what the body comes to in death. He cannot have chosen for His heritage that which will melt back into mother earth and be no more found—this cannot be! The Covenant has within it the sure guarantee of eternal life. Oh what an honor it is that God should even say to you and to me—”I will be your God and you shall be My people. Beyond the angels, beyond Heaven, beyond all My other creatures, I reserve you unto Myself. I have loved you with an everlasting love. I will rest in My love to you. I will rejoice over you with singing.” In this the Lord has highly exalted His covenanted ones and raised them to great nearness to Himself—and thus to glory and honor. What has God worked? What is man that God is thus mindful of him, or the son of man that He thus visits him? Angels are nowhere as compared with men, yes, cherubim with all their burning bliss and consecrated ardor cannot match with men who are in Covenant with God! Blessed above all other beings are those who have Jehovah to be their God and who are, themselves, the Lord’s choice, care, and delight! Each one of these points, if well thought out, will go to strengthen our belief that the saints must live, must live forever and are, at this moment, living unto God.
Eternal Life Implied
We now come to that matter more distinctly under our second head—here is eternal life implied, for “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” It is implied, first, in the very fact of the Covenant of Grace. As I have asked before—Does the eternal God covenant with creatures that shall live only to threescore years and ten and then shall go out like a candle-snuff? How can He be a God to them? I understand how He can be a helper and a friend to men of brief existence, but I see not how He can be a God. Must they not partake in His eternity if it is truly said, “I will be your God”? How can the Lord be an eternal blessing to an ending being? He has power and He will give me sufficient strength; He has wisdom and He will give me as much of His wisdom as I am capable of receiving. Must He not, also, cause me to partake of His immortality? How is He a God to me if He suffers me to be blotted out of existence? When David said in dying, “Yet has He made with me an everlasting Covenant,” his comfort lay in his belief that he should live in the everlasting age to enjoy the fruit of that Covenant. How could there be an everlasting Covenant with a creature who would cease to exist? But next, this Covenant was made up of promises of a very peculiar order for, in very deed, the Covenant that God made with Abraham was not altogether, or even mainly, concerning things temporal. It was not only the land of Canaan of which the Lord spoke to Abraham, but the Patriarchs declared plainly that they desired “a better, that is, an heavenly country” (Heb. 11:16). Even when they were in Canaan, they were still looking for a country—and the city promised to them was not Jerusalem for, according to Paul in the 11th of the Hebrews, they still were looking for “a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” They did not find, in their earthly lives, the complete fulfillment of the Covenant, for they received not the promises, but saw them afar off and were persuaded of them. The temporal blessings which God gave to them were not their expected portion—they took hold upon invisible realities and lived in expectation of them! They were evidently actuated by faith in something spiritual, something everlasting and they believed that the Covenant which God had made with them concerned such things. I have not the time to go into this subject. You get it more fully explained to you in the Epistle to the Hebrews—but so it was, that the Covenant blessings were of an order and a class that could not be compassed within the space of this present mortal life—the outlook of Covenant promises was towards the boundless sea of eternity. Now, if the Lord made a Covenant with them concerning eternal blessings, these saints must live to enjoy those blessings. God did not promise endless blessings to the creatures of a day.
The Glorious Life Unveiled
More especially, Beloved, it is to be remembered that for the sake of these eternal things, the Patriarchs had given up transient enjoyments. Abraham might have been a quiet prince in his own country, living in comfort, but, for the sake of the spiritual blessing, he left Chaldea and came to wander in the pastures of Canaan—in the midst of enemies—and to dwell in tents in the midst of discomforts. Isaac and Jacob were “heirs with him, also, of the same promises,” but they entered not into the pursuits of the people—they dwelt alone and were not numbered among the nations. Like Moses, to whom God spoke, they, “counted the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.” They left kith and kin and all the advantages of settled civilized life to be rangers of the desert, exiles from their fatherland. They were the very types and models of those who have no abiding city here and, therefore, for certain, though they died in hope, not having received the promise, we cannot believe that God deceived them! Their God was no mocker of them and, therefore, they must live after death! They had lived in this poor life for something not seen as yet and, if there is no such thing and no future life, they had been duped and mislead into a mistaken self-denial. If there is no life to come, the best philosophy is that which says, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Since these men put this life in pawn for the next, they were sadly mistaken if there is no such life. Do you not see the force of our Savior’s reasoning?— God, who has led His people to abandon the present for the future—must justify their choice. Besides, the Lord had staked His honor and His reputation upon these men’s lives. “Do you want to know,” says He, “who I am? I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. If you want to know how I deal with My servants, go and look at the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
Conclusion
My Brothers and Sisters, as far as the earthly lives of the Patriarchs can be written in human records, they are certainly full of God’s loving kindness—but still, there is nothing so remarkably joyous and majestic about them from a natural point of view as to make the Lord’s dealings with them appear to be especially wonderful. Others who did not fear God have been as rich, powerful and honorable as they. Especially is the life of Jacob plowed and cross-plowed with affliction and trial! He spoke the truth when he summed up his life in the words, “Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been.” Does the Lord intend us to judge of His goodness to His servants from the written life of Jacob? Or from the career of any one of His servants? The judgment must include the ages of an endless blessedness! This life is but the brief preface to the volume of our history! It is but the rough border, the selvage of the rich cloth of our being! These rippling streams of life come not to an end, but flow into the endless, shoreless ocean of bliss! Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have long been enjoying happiness and shall enjoy it throughout eternity! God is not ashamed to be called their God if you judge of the whole of their being—He would not have spoken thus if the visible were all and there were no future to counterbalance the tribulations of this mortal life! God is not the God of the short-lived who are so speedily dead—He is the living God of an immortal race whose present is but a dark passage into a bright future which can never end!