Hebrews 9:27

Hebrews 9:27

I. It is appointed unto man once to die, but after that they are still men. No affection, no principle of human nature, is lost. The form of man is not lost. Before death, men are covered with the opaque earth-form, and therefore they cannot be judged. Death removes the earthly mask, and then they can be truly judged.

II. These two appearances of man correspond with the two appearances of Christ, the representative Man of the race. As Christ inherits to eternity what He acquired in His earthly humanity, so shall we. Our brief planetary existence is quite long enough for the inner and essential man to take the stamp, spirit, and general character of His endless after life. The progressive law of our being requires the opening of the books. Our lives make a nature in us, and as is the nature made, such will be the sphere of our existence, and such our associates.

III. A man is under no absolute necessity of considering the bearings of his present life, on his future standing in the eternal world. If he prefer he can allow himself to be fully absorbed, by desiring and minding the things that pertain to his ephemeral flesh. And if he does he will simply find himself, after death, made and formed according to this world, and wholly unfitted for association with kingdom of heaven men. There is no fear of his being judged unjustly. He will appear what he is. The dominant affections that are in him will manifest themselves whether we are made out of heaven, for heaven; or made out of more dusky elements, for the dusky world and its dusky associates. We shall have to keep the appointment that is made for us. All the laws without us and all the laws within us will urge us on to our own place.

IV. It is every way wise and friendly that time should close with us and eternity open. Time is the reign of appearances, eternity is the reign of truth. Death opens a new door, and we pass from behind our curtains and disguises into the great sunlight. God is the eternal sunlight. God is truth. If, with the unveiled face of our heart, we form the habit of beholding His face in Jesus, the glory of His face will change us into the same image, and our glorious Lord will be glorified in us.

J. Pulsford, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xv., p. 401.

I. There is no undoing the past altogether. When the books are opened, we shall be judged out of the things which are written in the books, notwithstanding the book of life. The days of swine-keeping leave their mark. The woman of the city, to whom much was forgiven, loved much. But who that knows what repentance is can doubt that in the deepest depths of her love dwelt ever an earnest longing, which nothing in the present or the future could satisfy, a longing for the innocence that had been lost, and for a memory unscathed by sin?

II. There has set in of late a strange foolhardiness, as if in the present age it were an agreed point among all people of discernment that judgment to come is an idle tale. Very seductive this must be to the young. Even if there be a judgment after death, death to them seems a long way off; and they have heard that divines themselves do not nowadays paint the judgment so terribly as they used to do. God is good. May they not leave Him to bring goodness out of all things in the end?

III. Our Judge is human, not a piece of mechanism. But His judgment is even more exquisitely true than that of man's most exquisite workmanship. Let us look to Him now, that we may fear Him then. Let us seek to be one with His righteousness now, that we may then be one with His sentence.

J. Foxley, Oxford and Cambridge Pulpit,Dec. 6th., 1883.

References: Hebrews 9:27. W. Pulsford, Trinity Church Sermons,p. 182; Saturday Evening,p. 276; W. R. Thomas, Christian World. Pulpit,vol. xxxv., p. 37; Preacher's Monthly,vol. x., p. 342.Hebrews 9:27; Hebrews 9:28. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. viii., No. 430; H. P. Liddon, Advent Sermons,vol. i., p. 69; Ibid., Christian World Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 369; J. Pulsford, Ibid.,vol. xv., p. 401; Ibid.,vol. xxvii., p. 374; Homiletic Magazine,vol. ix., p. 44.Hebrews 9:28. Preacher's Monthly,vol. x., p. 100; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ix., p. 278.