Revelation 12

Neither Counted They Their Lives Dear

They loved not their life even unto death. Revelation 12:11.

Today I am going to give you a text and tell you three stories, and then I shall leave you to make the rest of the sermon yourselves.

Here is the text. You will find it in the eleventh verse of the twelfth chapter of Revelation. “They loved not their life even unto death.” That is just another way of saying they loved something better than life, they carried their not-love of self so far that they died.

And here are the stories:

1. The first is about a young artist who went to Paris to study. He was very clever, but, alas! he was as poor as he was clever. He was so poor that he had hardly enough money to feed or clothe himself, and he had to live in a bare little attic six stories up. But he didn't mind these discomforts a bit. He forgot everything but his art. He was a sculptor; and day after day he worked at his clay models trying to make real the pictures he saw in his brain.

One day a beautiful idea came to him, and he resolved that, cost what it might, he would model it in clay. So he worked harder than ever, and he ate even less than before, and he slept hardly at all; and though it was the dead of winter, and bitterly cold up under the roofs, he denied himself even a fire that he might buy the materials for his work. And the statue grew and grew beneath his fingers till at last, one freezing night, it stood complete a miracle of grace and beauty.

For a long time the artist gazed on it in rapture; then, hungry and starving, he crept into bed. But as he drew the bedclothes up to his chin the thought stabbed through him like a knife. What if the frost should touch the still moist clay and ruin his beloved statue? In an agony of anxiety he rose from his bed, and one by one he took off the blankets and wrapped them gently round his cherished work. Then colder than ever, but glad at heart, he lay down on the bare mattress.

There one of his fellow-students found him in the morning, stiff and cold, but with a smile on his face. And the statue? It was safe. And the wrappings told the story. And his friends and fellow-students had the artist's dream cast in bronze, and you may see it to this day a memorial of a man who counted not his life dear that his work might live.

2. The second story is a story of World War I. In one of the battalions training in England there was a certain little man who looked so much the part that really you couldn't blame his comrades for labeling him “ Softy.” He wasn't much good at drill, and still less at route marching, and he was no use at all at football, and a rifle scared him to death. So his comrades laughed and said, “You'll never make a man of ‘Softy'!”

Later the battalion went to France; and one day it was sent up to the front line to hold a trench. Now, about this time, the enemy was getting rather sick of fighting, and every day some Germans crept over “no man's land” to our lines and surrendered. On the day that “Softy's” company was holding the trench a great burly German crept up and was hauled in over the parapet. He was taken before an officer “Softy's” Captain and “Softy” himself was standing near. Leaning up against some sand-bags was a rifle, and suddenly the German shot out his long arm, grabbed the rifle, and before anyone could stop him, leveled it at the officer. But just as he fired, something happened. Somebody leapt up between and received in his own brain the bullet meant for the Captain. It was “Softy.”

They buried him with soldiers' honors, and they put a stone over his grave. And on it they carved these words “ ‘ Softy.' He gave his life for his Captain. ‘ Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.'”

“Softy” counted not his life dear that his Captain might live.

3. The third story you have all heard; but it can never be told too often. It is the story of One who could not be happy in Heaven because there was so much unhappiness on earth. He saw that men and women did not understand God's love, and that they were struggling with sin, and fearing death, and finding life a sad and hopeless thing. So He came to earth, and He lived there three-and-thirty years. And He showed men, just by His living day by day, what God was like and what God's love meant. He made it easy for them to know and trust in the Great Father.

But to live was not enough. He had to conquer sin and crush the power of death, and to do that He must die. So, of His own free will, He went to a shameful death. He allowed Himself to be nailed to a cruel cross. And He died there. He counted not His life dear chat we, plain you and I, might live for ever.