Then, again, the combination of these two words suggests to us that the
one act, in the same moment, is both departure and arrival. There is not
a pin-point of space, not the millionth part of a second of time,
intervening between the two. There is no long journey to be taken. A man
in straits, and all but desperation, is recorded in the old Book to have
said: 'There is but a step between me and death.' Ah, there is but a
step between death and the Kingdom; and he that passes out at the same
moment passes in.
I need not say a word about theories which seem to me to have no basis
at all in our only source of information, which is Revelation; theories
which would interpose a long period of unconsciousness--though to the
man unconscious it be no period at all--between the act of departure and
that of entrance. Not so do I read the teaching of Scripture: 'This day
thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.' We pass out, and as those in the
vestibule of a presence-chamber have but to lift the curtain and find
themselves face to face with the king, so we, at one and the same
moment, depart and arrive.
Friends stand round the bed, and before they can tell by the undimmed
mirror that the last breath has been drawn, the saint is 'with Christ,
which is far better.' To depart _is_ to be with Him. There is a moment
in the life of every believing soul in which there strangely mingle the
lights of earth and the lights of heaven. As you see in dissolving
views, the one fades and the other consolidates. Like the mighty angel
in the Apocalypse, the dying man stands for a moment with one foot on
the earth and the other already laved and cleansed by the waters of that
'sea of glass mingled with fire which is before the Throne,' 'Absent
from the body; present with the Lord.'
Further, these two words suggest that the same act is emancipation from
bondage and entrance into royalty.
'My exodus.' Israel came out of Egyptian servitude and dropped chains
from wrists and left taskmasters cracking their useless whips behind
them, and the brick kilns and the weary work were all done when they
went forth. Ah, brethren, whatever beauty and good and power and
blessedness there may be in this mortal life, there are deep and sad
senses in which, for all of us, it is a prison-house and a state of
captivity. There is a bondage of flesh; there is a dominion of the
animal nature; there are limitations, like high walls, cribbing,
cabining, confining us--the limitations of circumstance. There is the
slavery of dependence upon this poor, external, and material world.
There are the tyranny of sin and the subjugation of the nobler nature to
base and low and transient needs. All these fetters, and the scars of
them, drop away. Joseph comes out of prison to a throne. The kingdom is
not merely one in which the redeemed man is a subject, but one in which
he himself is a prince. 'Have thou authority over ten cities.' These are
the Christian aspects of death.
II. Now note, secondly, the great fact on which this view of death
builds itself.
I have already remarked that in one of my texts the Apostle seems to be
thinking about Jesus Christ and His decease. The context also refers to
another incident in his own life, when our Lord foretold to him that the
putting off his tabernacle was to be 'sudden,' and added: 'Follow thou
Me.'
Taking these allusions into account, they suggest that it is the death
of Jesus Christ--and that which is inseparable from it, His
Resurrection--that changes for a soul believing on Him the whole aspect
of that last experience that awaits us all. It is His exodus that makes
'my exodus' a deliverance from captivity and an entrance upon royalty.
I need not remind you, how, after all is said and done, we are sure of
life eternal, because Jesus Christ died and rose again. I do not need to
depreciate other imperfect arguments which seem to point in that
direction, such as the instincts of men's natures, the craving for some
retribution beyond, the impossibility of believing that life is
extinguished by the fact of physical death. But whilst I admit that a
good deal may be said, and strong probabilities may be alleged, it seems
to me that however much you may argue, no words, no considerations,
moral or intellectual, can suffice to establish more than that it would
be a very good thing if there were a future life and that it is probable
that there is. But Jesus Christ comes to us and says, 'Touch Me, handle
Me; a spirit hath not flesh and bones as I have. Here I am. I _was_
dead; I _am_ alive for evermore.' So then _one_ life, that we know
about, _has_ persisted undiminished, apart from the physical frame, and
that one Man has gone down into the dark abyss, and has come up the same
as when He descended. So it is His exodus--and, as I believe, His death
and Resurrection alone--on which the faith in immortality impregnably
rests.
But that is not the main point which the text suggests. Let me remind
you how utterly the whole aspect of any difficulty, trial, or sorrow,
and especially of that culmination of all men's fears--death itself--is
altered when we think that in the darkest bend of the dark road we may
trace footsteps, not without marks of blood in them, of Him that has
trodden it all before us. 'Follow thou Me,' He said to Peter; and it
should be no hard thing for us, if we love Him, to tread where He trod.
It should be no lonely road for us to walk, however the closest clinging
hands may be untwined from our grasp, and the most utter solitude of
which a human soul is capable may be realised, when we remember that
Jesus Christ has walked it before us.
The entrance, too, is made possible because He has preceded us. 'I go to
prepare a place for you.' So we may be sure that when we go through
those dark gates and across the wild, the other side of which no man
knows, it is not to step out of 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day'
into some dim, cold, sad land, but it is to enter into His presence.
Israel's exodus was headed by a mummy case, in which the dead bones of
their whilom leader were contained. Our exodus is headed by the Prince
of Life, who was dead and is alive for evermore.
So, brethren, I beseech you, treasure these thoughts more than you do.
Turn to Jesus Christ and His resurrection from the dead more than you
do. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that the Christianity of this
day is largely losing the habitual contemplation of immortality which
gave so much of its strength to the religion of past generations. We are
all so busy in setting forth and enforcing the blessings of Christianity
in its effects in the present life that, I fear me, we are largely
forgetting what it does for us at the end, and beyond the end. And I
would that we all thought more of our exodus and of our entrance in the
light of Christ's death and resurrection. Such contemplation will not
unfit us for any duty or any enjoyment. It will lift us above the
absorbed occupation with present trivialities, which is the bane of all
that is good and noble. It will teach us 'a solemn scorn of ills.' It
will set on the furthest horizon a great light instead of a doleful
darkness, and it will deliver us from the dread of that 'shadow feared
of man,' but not by those who, listening to Jesus Christ, have been
taught that to depart is to be with Him.
III. Now I meant to have said a word, in the close of my sermon, about a
third point--viz., the way of securing that this aspect of death shall
be our experience, but your time will not allow of my dwelling upon
that as I should have wished. I would only point out that, as I have
already suggested, this context teaches us that it is His death that
must make our deaths what they may become; and would ask you to notice,
further, that the context carries us back to the preceding verses. 'An
entrance shall be _ministered_ unto you _abundantly_.' We have just
before read, 'If these things be in you and _abound_, they make you that
ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord
Jesus Christ'; and just before is the exhortation, 'giving all
diligence, minister to your faith virtue.'
So the Apostle, by reiterating the two words which he had previously
been using, teaches us that if death is to be to us that departure from
bondage and entrance into the Kingdom, we must here and now bring forth
the fruits of faith. There is no entrance hereafter, unless there has
been a habitual entering into the Holy Place by the blood of Jesus
Christ even whilst we are on earth. There is no entrance by reason of
the fact of death, unless all through life there has been an entrance
into rest by reason of the fact of faith.
And so, dear brethren, I beseech you to remember that it depends on
yourself whether departing shall be arrival, and exodus shall be
entrance. One thing or other that last moment must be to us all--either
a dragging us reluctant away from what we would fain cleave to, or a
glad departure from a foreign land and entrance to our home. It may be
as when Peter was let out of prison, the angel touched him, and the
chains fell from his hands, and the iron gate opened of its own accord,
and he found himself in the city. It is for you to settle which of the
two it shall be. And if you will take Him for your King, Companion,
Saviour, Enlightener, Life here, 'the Lord shall bless your going out
and coming in from this time forth and even for evermore.'