Sermon Bible Commentary
Revelation 14:13
The Immortality of Good Work.
This is a benediction; it is a benediction, too, falling where we are accustomed to look for anything else but felicitation. "Waste," "decay," "death," are words which usually bring only the most gloomy associations; but in the New Testament, more and more as it goes on toward its consummation, the brightest words, the strongest tokens of joy and of triumph, overhang these desolate places; and where men have been accustomed to set fear as a sentinel, to wet the place with tears, there in Christianity we see banners set up for victory, and we see all cheer and all comfort predicated of that which has been the world's dread and the world's curse.
I. We regard it as strange when energetic and useful men are cut off. Men cling to their work by that very force which enables them to be useful. We could not be what we are appointed to be in this life if we were so indifferent to our tasks and responsibilities that we could let them go easily; and this very tenacity, this very life adhesion, becomes at last a hindrance. So long as we are bound to this life, we are bound to be interested in the things of this life; and men cling to their work as if that were nature, when it is nature in transitu,or when it is nature partial or relative to one particular period of our age; and when persons are taken out of life in the midst of strength and function, men marvel. They cannot understand why those who are useful should be removed. But do you forget that dying makes but very little void in this world? Indeed, after Christ died He lived more efficaciously than when He was alive. The death of the Apostle stopped nothing, but sped much. No age was ever left without men. We are poor in our conception, but God is rich. He that could raise up seed to Abraham from the very stones need not look about much, nor mourn that men, one and another, drop out from the functions of life; yet it is natural that we should do so. They who have the responsibility, they who supervise the labour, they who must replace the men that are gone, think it strange that those who are well equipped and of the right spirit should be taken out of life.
II. But the consideration of triumph is that men do not cease their work. They never die. The irksome part of their labour they rest from; but their works go after, go on with, or have gone before them. A man's life is not simply what you see. The effects of a man's life are not simply those things which you can count, measure, or describe. He who lives in earnest, striving to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, or in the spirit of Christ, throws into life elements which never die out even here elements that are not witnesses; that have no report; that come not with observation; that are immeasurable; but that are more real a thousand times than the things which are visible.
H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 60.
I. There seem to be two points to be discussed in the text. (1) What is meant by dying in the Lord, and (2) for what reason or reasons are those who die in the Lord to be pronounced blessed? As to the former of the two, it may be well for us to note that there is a peculiar significance about the expression "in the Lord." The Scriptures of the Old Testament, and even the Scriptures of the New, make much of the lawgiver Moses, and Moses perhaps was the man who more than any other man who ever lived has influenced the fortunes of Israel, and through Israel the fortunes of the human race. But although men may follow Moses and obey the precepts which he gave, you never heard any of them spoken of as being "in Moses." And, again, when we come to the New Testament, we find the Apostle Paul put prominently forward as one of the greatest of the inspired teachers whom God has sent for the instruction and guidance of mankind. Yet neither do you meet with the expression "in Paul" or any conceivable equivalent for it. It is obvious that the expression conveys more than the idea of respecting a teacher, or of imitating an example, or obeying the injunctions of one who has a right to command us. It implies a close and living personal union, which is real, though it may be mysterious, and which shows its existence in certain unmistakable results produced upon our heart and conduct. A Christian is a man who is in Christ, and who abides or remains in Him. The man must die in the Lord as well as live in the Lord, if we are to pronounce him blessed.
II. The reasons for the proclamation of blessedness. They are two in number: (1) they rest from their labours; (2) their works do follow them. The person of the man is accepted for Christ's sake; his works come afterwards. A man cannot take with him his riches, his honours, his worldly position and successes; these things will drop off him as he enters the cold waters of death. All that will go with him is his character and the results of the influence which he has exerted upon the character of others; and in this respect eternity will be but a continuation and prolongation of the present life.
G. Calthrop, Penny Pulpit,New Series, No. 1163.
The Blessed Dead.
I. The dead that die in the Lord. The term hardly needed much nice definition when to live in the Lord meant almost certainly persecution, and possibly martyrdom. To die in the Lord was the end of those who had lived in the Lord, and few were likely to make that profession who had not taken up the cross and followed Christ in the way. To die in the Lord is to die in possession of all that the Lord, by His incarnation and passion, has won for man; to die in the Lord is to pass up to live with Him. What life do you take through death to that world? Is it a fool's paradise which you are dreaming of there, or the Lord's? It is simply a question of at-homeness. Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, who have lived with Him here, talked with Him, wrought for Him, and have pined for more perfect possession of all that makes the holy beauty of His character and glory of His life.
II. Wherein are they blessed who die in the Lord? What is it which transmutes man's great terror into an angel of benediction, and makes that which nature shudders at a birth into a world of bliss? Here we rise into another region: a region of intense, conscious, joyous vitality; a region of intelligent, responsible, glorious activity, in which nothing that makes the dignity, the grandeur, of the burden of life is laid down, but only the pain. (1) Because death is birth to the believer, and birth is ever blessed. This is not the noon of life, but its struggling dawn; not its summer, but its bleak and wintry spring. Our high life is the seed in the ground which is growing, struggling into form. Blessed are the dead, for they are born, exiled from the body, at home with the Lord. (2) Born out of a life which is a long pain to a life which is a long bliss. "We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened." (3) They pass out of relations and fellowships which are ever changing to those which abide and enlarge their ministries through eternity. (4) Blessed are they, for they are for ever beyond the reach of ail that may imperil the prize.
J. Baldwin Brown, The Sunday Afternoon,p. 320.
The Blessedness of the Dead in Christ.
Some years ago, when worshipping in one of the churches of the canton of Glarus, in Switzerland, I could not but be struck with the truth of the remark that there, as in some other parts of that wonderful country, the mountains look in at the windows. Wherever there was an opening, some part of a giant mountain could be seen looking in, as with a lofty and yet kindly eye; and the effect was all the more striking that in that grey and venerable town where I was more than three and a half centuries before the great Swiss reformer Zwingli had begun that work which was to have such consequences for his country and for the world. I have been impressed with the likeness of the relation of heaven to the Church below in the book of Revelation. Everywhere, so to speak, heaven looks in at the windows; and there are not only looks and sympathies, but voices, reminding those engaged in the earthly worship that a higher company is not far off from any one of them, and that where the shadow now falls the summit is also near. Considering the words of the text as in general descriptive of the heavenly blessedness, I shall endeavour to answer three questions regarding it which are here suggested:
I. How is this heavenly blessedness attested? We all profess to believe in heaven. How do we know that there are such a place and such a state? If we cannot give a good answer, the Apostle John could. Could he have written all this, even had he wished it, without inspiration from God? If the Apostles had seen all that they testified, would they not have been less than men if they had doubted it? And shall we be wiser men than they if we disbelieve it? But their testimony, of an outward kind, has an inward voucher to its own authenticity. It bears the stamp of the heaven whence it professes to come. Here is a heaven of holiness and purity, of likeness to God, and fellowship to Christ, and eternal worship, contemplation, and praise. Did this dream come out of the human mind and heart? Then there is a testimony in living epistles, written, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. This is our third evidence of there being a heavenly world, what may be called the evidence from Christian character. Had you been in company with the Apostle John, you would have said, "Here is heaven begun." The Christian Church in all its graces and in all its virtues, as it is a preparation for heaven, so is it a prophecy of heaven.
II. How is this heavenly blessedness gained? (1) Faith is needful to give a title to the heavenly blessedness; (2) holy obedience is necessary.
III. How is this heavenly blessedness to be enjoyed? (1) There is the rest of the worker; (2) there is the continued influence of the work.
J. Cairns, Christ the Morning Star,p. 160.
The Christian's Death.
I. Death is a curse. My text says, "Blessed are the dead." Still death is a curse. Separate and apart from the consolations of Christian faith, death is a tremendous evil. Nature shrinks from it shuddering. In most cases death presents the unmistakable features of a tremendous curse, being attended with sufferings which, however unpleasant to think of, it is well to anticipate, that we may be prepared for the worst, and, fortified by faith, may withstand the rude shocks of dissolution.
II. Death is a blessing. The union which is formed between Christ and His people being one of incorporation, and not merely one of co-operation, what the one is, the other is; and where the one is, the other is; and as the one feels, the other feels: and as our bodies and their limbs have all things in common, or the branches and trunk of a tree have sap in common, so Jesus and His people have all things in common. To be in Christ, then, to be in the Lord, implies that we shall infallibly enjoy all the blessings, temporal, spiritual, and eternal, which He shed His blood to purchase, these being secured to us by the great oath of God and the bonds of a covenant which is well ordered in all things and sure.
III. Death is a blessing as introducing us into a state of rest. (1) At death the believer rests from the toils of life. (2) At death the believer rests from the cares of life. Faith is often weak, and man is fearful; and so our life has many a troubled dream, that fills those with fears and terrors who are all the time safely folded in a Father's arms. (3) At death the believer rests from the griefs of life. "Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord will deliver him out of them," if never before, at death. Death cures all griefs; and his own best physic and physician, he applies the most healing balm to the wounds his own hands have made. No more true or beautiful way of announcing a good man's death than the old-fashioned phrase, "He is at rest"
T. Guthrie, The Way to Life,p. 372.
I. Observe that St. John introduces the subject with a singular solemnity; "Yea," as though it was worthy of some special asseveration; "Yea, the Spirit saith." He said all that John had written; but He said this with a stronger emphasis: "Yea, the Spirit saith," for the exceeding comfort of all the weary ones, who are now fighting through the hard day, "Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours." From their "labours" they "rest," not from their "works," but from the pain of work, for "their works do follow them." There are two senses in which we may take this last clause: the record of their works follows them to testify to the grace of God, to witness to them in the day of judgment, and to be the measure of their eternal reward; or, more literally, their works themselves do follow them, what they used to do and loved to do for God in this present world. It follows them, to be taken up again in some higher and holier manner there. The tastes they formed, the services in which they delighted, the ministrations which they occupied here they have not ceased to be, but are sweetly renewed in that higher state. And is it not an animating thought to think that all we now try to do for God is the beginning of something which we are to continue for ever and for ever, and for ever and for ever to continue to improve to do? Is it not very pleasant to realise those we love there carrying on still their loving occupations, which we remembered in them so well when they were with us here? But the struggle, the toil, the distress of work, is past for ever. "They rest from their labours," even though, ay, and because "their works do follow them." Work is never a hurtful thing. Work, in its own essence, is all happiness; it is the worry of work, it is the anxiety of work, it is the disproportionateness of work, it is the unkindness of work, it is the clashing of work, it is the incompleteness of work, it is the disappointment of work, this is the trouble and the discipline. Take away these, and work is heaven. Therefore we have all the elements of perfect joy combined when we say, "They rest from their labours, and their works do follow them."
II. To this last release, not from "work," but from "labour," we mount up by many steps. The fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews gives the series of steps. There is a rest or release into which we all enter the moment we believe. "We which believe do enter into rest." It is a rest or release from the feeling of condemnation, from that awfully oppressive feeling of unforgiven sin. From that time "labour" continues, perhaps increases. The sin is more violent; and therefore the labour is more severe. But then it is the labour of a lightened heart; it is the labour of love. After that, after forgiveness, gradually another release takes place. The Christian escapes from the dominion of sin. It becomes rather his servant, that sometimes rebels, than his master, that always rules; and that is the release from the thraldom of the tyranny of sin. Nevertheless, after that release, sin is there. It meets him everywhere; he is never safe from it. He is pained by its contact; he is humbled by its force; he is grieved by its outbreak. He sees it; he feels it; he breathes it; he lives in the atmosphere of it, till at last a moment comes that he is released even from the touch, from the sound, from the breath, from the possibility, of it. And so the believer travels up, in a series of releases, step by step, to that grand dismissal at last when he is set free from the whole warfare of the cross of Christ. But what will the release be? You will come down from your watch-tower. How you are obliged to be always going up to that watch-tower! And how your eye is strained to descry the approach of evil, of which you knew it was somewhere, but from what quarter you could never tell how it would come, often from the most unlikely! And so night and day you had to keep your weary guard there. You may sheathe that sword; you may lay down that shield. There is no adverse occurrent now. Every one that rose up against you is laid dead at your feet. It is peace, peace, inviolable peace, and peace that can never be broken. And painful exercises there are now no more, no rushing tides of contending influences, no antagonism of a double nature, no warring of the flesh against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, no wrestling with the evil one, no importunate prayer, no baffling mysteries to the tired intellect, no delicate balancing of truth and error, no efforts failing through their own violence, no sinking of the spirit, no eclipse of faith, no mountains of pride, no valleys of despair. The besetting sin rears its conquered head again and again no more. All those are labours past, and, like all labours past, bitter in the present, pleasant, very pleasant, very humbling, but very glorifying to God, to look back upon. And the very capability of sin is gone. It would be as impossible to have a wrong as it is now impossible to have a right thought. You cannot help but love God intently, and please Him absolutely, for nature and grace run in one channel, in one world; and the whole man is one perfect image of one infinite Creator. Then, as I believe, in token of it all, God will give to every discharged soldier "the white stone, with the new name written, which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it," the sign of His approving favour, our dismission from sin, our admission into everlasting glory. So will the release come on; and that will be the Easter joy of our resurrection morn.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,6th series, p. 45.
Degrees of Glory.
We are justified casually by God's eternal grace; we are justified effectively by the blood of Jesus Christ; we are justified instrumentally by faith; we are justified evidentially by good works. Or, to put this a little more plainly, we are justified before God i.e.,we are accounted righteous and acceptable only by the faith in Christ which His Spirit creates and moves in our hearts. But how are we justified to ourselves in believing that we are justified before God? how are we justified to the world in saying that we are justified? By our good works. This harmonises the apparent discrepancy between St. Paul and St. James. We are "justified by our works," as St. James says, in believing that we are "justified" before God, as St. Paul says, "by faith" only. "They rest from their labours; and their works do follow them."
I. Observe that it does not say, "They rest from their works" for that would imply that where they are gone they cease from work, which is entirely the contrary to the fact but, "They rest from their labours; and their works do follow them." Now labour is work's distress. Work itself as such is joy. There is no happiness without work. Every man must work, some with their heads, some with their minds, some with their hands; but all must work. The secret of all the wretchedness that there is in the world is the absence of work. Whoever you are, you can never lead a happy life if you do not work, really work, work hard. If your circumstances do not define your work for you, you must define your work for yourself. You must work. It is God's universal law in His government of this world, "If any man will not work, neither let him eat" eat of any of the pleasant things which I spread for My children. But then, in this present state, the law of work has its dark shadows: fatigue, infirmity, too great tension, ill-health, disappointments, mistakes, waitings, suspensions, and sins. There is the miserable, depressing sense of inadequacy for the task; there is the perplexity of what is the line of duty and all the entanglements of self on every point; there is the feeling, "After all, all this is but a drop out of the ocean of misery!" I do not wonder that even in His work, Jesus "sighed." Now, all this, and much more, makes the labour. The Greek word has for its root the verb "to cut" it cuts to the heart. It is like that other word, "Take no thought for the morrow," which is in the original, "Do not cut or split your heart about the morrow." But yet all this that cuts to the quick is necessary now to make work what work was intended to be in this stage of existence. The labour of work is the discipline of work; it is the education, the discipline, the school. It was not the work which was the punishment of Adam and Eve doubtless they would have worked in paradise but it was the excess of the work above the power of the being of the worker, work's pressure: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." And therefore, because it is the needful discipline, the rule holds good, whether it be the bread for the body, or whether it be the bread for the mind, or whether it be the bread for the soul, you can never get what is really satisfying but by dint of real, hard fag, hard toil: "in the sweat of thy brow." It is not work only, but it is labour, which is the condition of the peace of life. Therefore it was that Christ chose the word for He knew how wide it was "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest."
II. If a man is in Christ, and that man works, and that man casts the labour of his work upon Christ, its vexings and its harassings, then that man has entered into rest so far, for he does the work, and he casts the labour. Absolutely, however, death is the point when the believer perfectly and for ever exchanges labour for work. Death might be defined as going from labour to work. For do not think that those busy minds which were so active and so earnest here when they were among us, who are gone to their prepared places, are leading there a life of mere receptive enjoyment or meditative peace. They have not so unlearned their natures. "His servants shall serve Him." "They rest not day and night," while they glorify God, in His boundless ministrations, still "each upon his wing," while he soars away for activity in his vast circumference. It is tolerably clear, then, what it is the Spirit saith when He saith, "Yea, that they may rest from their labours."
III. We have now to examine a little further how it is that "their works do follow them." It certainly admits of the interpretation that those works in which Christians are engaged here continue to interest them in the next world. Why should it not be so? Do we not make too much of death if we look upon it as destroying any of the interests of life? For what is death but as if a person should go into some foreign land? He can see no longer what he used to love so well, and what he called home. But do those things which lie beyond the sea become indifferent to him? Are his affections closed to them? Nay, are not those things, in some sense, dearer to him than ever they were before? Surely we may believe that those high and busy enterprises, which had so large a place in the hearts of God's children here, are not forgotten by them in their perfected happiness! The conversion of the Jews, the missions to the heathen, the flock, the schools, things once so near and bound up with their very life-blood do you think they are passed away? And if not, if the interest lasts, and is imperishable, then may we not say that, in this way, "their works do follow them"? Nay, may we not go a step further, and hold it probable that there is a continuity between the special tastes, and occupations, and habits of thought, which characterised us here, and that which shall stamp our condition and our services in another state? Do not let us make the gulf between the two worlds greater than it is. There are two offices which the works we have done on earth are fulfilling in another world. (1) The one is to be our witnesses in the day of judgment. The matter which will be examined into at that tribunal will not be acts, but character. It will be, Did you love God? What was Christ to you? What were you to Christ? But, to determine the answer to that inquiry, acts will stand out in evidence; words will be an index. Therefore "by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned." Deeds of charity will stand out in evidence: "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these My brethren, ye did it not to Me"; "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me." Thus, then, just as our justification was justified by our good works when we were here, so there God, though He needs it not, will be justified before the universe, in His final award to all men, by their works, which will be manifest then before men and angels. (2) The second purpose for which our "works will follow us" will be to determine, as I believe, the measure of our glory and our place in heaven, our place, not geographically, but morally, not so as to separate one saint from another for the communion will be perfect in all saints but just as Christians here meet in one, but yet are of various capacities and degrees, so there it will be in glory: they are all one, all filled, but the vessels are of different sizes.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,6th series, p. 90.
References: Revelation 14:13. S. King, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxii., p. 51; R. Thomas, Ibid.,vol. vii., p. 40; H. W. Beecher, Ibid.,vol. xviii., p. 92; Bishop Barry, Sermons for Passiontide and Easter,p. 104; R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons,1st series, p. 262; Homilist,3rd series, vol. iv., p. 83: Preacher's Monthly,vol. iii., p. 363.Revelation 14:15. H. Robjohns, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxi., p. 271; Preacher's Monthly,vol. viii., p. 142.