040. The God of the Living
The God of the Living
Luk 20:17-38. Then came to him certain of the Sadducees (which deny that there is any resurrection) and they asked him, saying, Master, Moses wrote unto us, if any man’s brother die, having a wife, and he die without children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise tip seed unto his brother. There were therefore seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and died without children. And the second took her to wife, and he died childless. And the third took her; and in like manner the seven also. And they left no children, and died. Last of all the woman died also. Therefore in the resurrection, whose wife of them is she? for seven had her to wife. And Jesus answering, said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage Neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.
One of the most obvious and natural consolations of reason, under the loss of those whom we dearly loved, and one of the most abundant consolations furnished by religion is the belief that our departed friends are, at their death, disposed of infinitely to their advantage. We weep and mourn while we reflect upon the deprivation of comfort which we have sustained; but we wipe the tears of sorrow from our eyes, when we consider that our loss is their unspeakable gain. “Rachel weeping for her children,” refuses to be comforted so long as she thinks “they are not;” but her soul is tranquillized and comforted when her eyes, in faith, look within the veil, and behold them softly and securely reposing in the bosom of their Father and God. It is an humbling and a mortifying employment to visit churchyards, to step from grave to grave, to recall the memory, while we trample upon the ashes of the young, the beautiful, the wise, and the good; but we find immediate relief, we rise into joy, we tread among the stars, when aided by religion, we transport ourselves in thought to those blessed regions where all the faithful live, and reign and rejoice; where “they that be wise shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.”[*]Dan 12:3 Distance is then swallowed up and lost, and we mingle in the noble employments and pure delights of the blessed immortals who encircle the throne of God.
It is astonishing to think, that there should have been men disposed willingly to deprive themselves of this glorious source of comfort; men ready to resign the high prerogative of their birthright, and by a species of humility strange and unnatural, spontaneously degrading themselves to the level of the brutes that perish. And yet there have been, in truth, such men in every age. But it is no wonder to find those who satisfy themselves with the pursuits and enjoyments of a mere beastly nature while they live, contented to he down with the beasts in death, to arise no more. They first make it their interest that there should be no hereafter, and then they fondly persuade themselves that there shall be none.
Error of every kind, both in faith and morals, prevailed in the extreme at the period when, and in the country where, the Savior of the world appeared for our redemption.--The nation of the Jews was divided, in respect of moral and religious sentiment, into two great sects or parties, who both pretended to found their opinions upon the authority of the inspired books, which were held in universal estimation among them; and particularly the writings of Moses. But they drew conclusions directly opposite, from the same facts and doctrines; and both deviated, in the grossest manner, from the spirit and design of that precious record which they both affected to hold in the highest veneration. The Pharisees, earnestly contending for the strict observance of the law, confined their attention to its minuter and less important objects, and paid “the tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin,” but omitted “the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith:” and, raising oral tradition to the rank and dignity of scripture, found a. pretence for dispensing with the plainest and most essential obligations of morality, when these contradicted their interests and opinions. Heinously offended at the neglect of washing of hands previous to eating, they were wicked enough to establish, by a law of their own, neglect of, unkindness, and disobedience to parents; thus, according to the just censure which our Lord passed upon them, “straining out a gnat, and swallowing a camel.” The Sadducees, on the other hand, the strong spirits of the age, disdaining the restraints imposed on mankind by a written law, thought fit to become a law unto themselves. They left the austerities of a strict religion and morality to vulgar minds; and that they might procure peace to themselves in the enjoyment of those sinful pleasures to which they were addicted, they denied the existence of spirit, the immortality of the soul, and a future state of retribution. They alleged that the law was silent on those points, and that this silence was a sufficient reason for rejecting the belief of them. They went farther, and contended, that were such doctrines contained in the law, they ought not to be admitted, because they implied a contradiction, or at least involved such a number of difficulties as it was impossible satisfactorily to solve. The chief of those difficulties they propose to our blessed Savior, in the passage which I have read; and they do this, not in the spirit of docility and diffidence to have it removed, but in the pride of their hearts, vainly taking for granted that it was insurmountable. My principal intention in leading your thoughts to this subject, at this time, is the occasion which it afforded to the great Teacher who came from God, of discoursing on a theme nearly connected with the design of these Lectures; and of disclosing to us sundry important particulars, respecting the venerable men whose lives we have been studying, and those which we are still to examine; and respecting that world in which we, together with them, have a concern so deeply, because eternally interesting. To these we shall be led by making a few cursory remarks on the preceding conversation which took place between Christ and the Sadducees. And this shall serve as an Introduction to the farther continuation of a Course of Lectures on the history of the memorable persons and events presented to us in the holy Scriptures of both the Old and New Testaments. The Sadducees insidiously begin their attack by professing the highest respect for the authority of Moses and of his writings: “Master, Moses wrote unto us.” The most pernicious designs, the most malevolent purposes, are frequently found to clothe themselves in smiles; often while mischief lies brooding in men’s hearts, “their words are smoother than oil.” The father of lies himself can have recourse to truth, if it be likely to serve his turn; and the enemy of all goodness will condescend to quote that scripture which he hates, if it can help him to an argument for the occasion. With this affected deference for Moses, the Sadducees are aiming at the total subversion of every moral and religious principle, by weakening one of the strongest motives to virtue, and undermining the surest foundation of hope and joy to man. They allege, that obedience to the law might eventually lead to much confusion and disorder: and they suppose a situation, for none such ever existed, in which compliance with the revealed will of God in this world would infallibly lead to discord and distress in that which is to come. In this we have an example of a very common case; that of men straining their eyes to contemplate objects at a great distance, or totally out of sight, and willfully neglecting or overlooking those which are immediately before them: troubling themselves about effects and consequences of which they are ignorant, and over which they have no power, while they are regardless of obvious truth and commanded duty, though these are their immediate business and concern. The Sadducees, in order to cloak their licentiousness and infidelity, affect solicitude about the regularity and peace of a future state, which in words they denied, if they did not from the heart disbelieve.
I make but one remark more before I proceed to our Lord’s reply. Eagerness and anxiety to bring forward and to establish an opinion, betray an inward doubt or disbelief of it.--Truth is not ever proclaiming itself from the house tops, is not forward to obtrude itself upon every occasion, but is satisfied with maintaining and defending itself when assaulted; but falsehood is eternally striving to conceal or strengthen its conscious weakness by a parade of words, and a show of reason. The zeal of the Sadducees to explode and run down the doctrine of the resurrection, plainly betrays a secret dread and belief of it. Our Lord, in his answer, points out directly the source of all error and infidelity, “ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, and the power of God.” Not knowing the Scriptures, ye suppose a doctrine is not in them, because ye have not found it there: because ye have willfully shut your own eyes, ye vainly imagine there is no light in the sun; and take upon you to affirm there is none. Not knowing the power of God, you call that impossible which you cannot do, deem that absurd which you do not comprehend, and pronounce that false which you wish to be so. The whole force of the objection to the truth of the resurrection, goes upon the supposition, that the future world is to be exactly constituted as the present; that the relations and distinctions which subsists among men upon earth, are to subsist in the kingdom of heaven. But the supposition is founded in ignorance and falsehood; and, the moment it is denied, the mighty argument built upon it falls to the ground. “In the resurrection,” says Christ, “they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” In these words, the condition of men in the world to come, is described, first, negatively, “they neither marry, nor are given in marriage.” The power which created the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, might undoubtedly, had it pleased him, have created the whole human race at once, as easily as he formed the first of men, Adam, and as easily as he rears up one generation of men after another, in the course of his providence. But, thinking it meet to people the earth by multiplying mankind gradually upon it, difference of sex, and the institution of marriage, were the means which he was pleased to employ. In the resurrection, the number of the redeemed being complete at once, that difference, and that institution, being unnecessary, shall be done away. Our Savior adds, “neither can they die any more.” Death, too, enters into the plan of Providence for the government of this world. Men must be removed to make room for men. But because this sphere is narrow and contracted, and unable to contain and support the increasing multitudes of many generations, is the Lord’s hand shortened, that he cannot expand a more spacious firmament, and compact a more spacious globe, to contain, at once, the countless nations of them that are saved? O how greatly do men err; not knowing the power of God! Death is no part of the plan of Providence for the government of that world of bliss. In our Father’s house above there are many mansions; there is bread enough, and to spare; there is room for all, provision for all: the father need not to die, to give space to the son, nor the mother to spare, that the child may have enough. For they are “as the angels of God,” says our Lord, according to Matthew, “equal to the angels,” says our evangelist, and are the children of God.” This describes their happiness positively. Men on earth “see in a glass darkly; know in part, prophesy in part,” are encompassed with infirmity; but the “angels in heaven” excel in strength, stand before the throne of God, serve him day and night in his temple, without wearying, see face to face, “know as they are known.” Their number is completed, their intercourse is pure and perfect, without the means of increase, and union which exist here below.
Having thus reproved their ignorance and presumption, respecting the “power of God,” our Lord proceeds to expose their ignorance respecting “the Scriptures,” and produces a passage from Moses, in whom they trusted, which they had hitherto overlooked or misunderstood, wherein the doctrine in dispute was clearly laid down; and which we had principally in view in leading your attention to this passage on the present occasion. The passage quoted, is that noted declaration of God to Moses, from the midst of the burning bush, “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”[*]Exo 3:6 That God should have condescended to hold this language concerning Enoch, “who was translated that he should not see death,” had been less wonderful; for that holy man, who walked with God upon earth, was exalted immediately to a more intimate union with God in heaven. But to speak thus of men who were long age moldered into dust, of whom nothing remained among men but their names, conveys an idea of human existence, before which the life of a Methuselah dwindles into nothing, an idea which swallows up mortality, and gives a dignity and a duration to man that bids defiance to the grave. That God should say to Abraham, while he lived, “I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward,”[*]Gen 15:1 was a miracle of grace and condescension; but to speak thus, more than three centuries after he had been consigned to the tomb, “I am the GOD of Abraham,” this exhibits a relation between God and the faithful, which perfectly reconciles the mind to the thoughts of dissolution. Indeed it is impossible to conceive any thing more elevating, any thing more tranquillizing to the soul, than the view of future bliss with which the text presents us. And this tranquillity and elevation are greatly heightened by the consideration, that Jehovah from the midst of flaming fire, under the Old Testament dispensation, and Jehovah, in the person of the great Redeemer, under the New, taught the same glorious truth to the world. And what is it? “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” When God was pleased to express his favorable regard to Abraham upon earth, what did it amount to? He led him through a particular district of land, in the length and the breadth of it, and said, “I will give it thee.” But Abraham now expatiates through a more ample region, and contemplates a fairer inheritance, an inheritance his own, not in hope, but in possession. Abraham, though following the leading of the Divine Providence, saw the Redeemer’s day only afar off: but, in virtue of his relation to God, he has now beheld the dawning of the morning expanded into the pure light of the perfect day. He once felt the events which affected his family, with the emotion natural to a man; he has since beheld them extending their influence to nations which he thought not of; and he now looks forward in holy rapture to that period when he, and his Isaac, and an earthly Canaan, and every thing of a temporal and transitory nature, shall bring their glory and their honor, and lay all at the feet of “Him, who sitteth upon the throne, and before the Lamb.” From Abraham we are removed to a distance of time and place, in which thought is lost, and we seem to have no more interest in him than if he had never existed. But the doctrine of the text brings us so close to him, that we recognize the friend of God, in the midst of myriads of saints in glory; we converse with him, and continue to be instructed by him. The dust of Abraham sleeps unnoticed and forgotten in the cave of Machpelah; but lift up thine eyes and behold Abraham on high, and Lazarus in his bosom; his spirit united to God “the Father of spirits,” and to all the spirits of just men made perfect.” “And even that dust” also “rests in hope:” It shall not always be left in the place of the dead; it shall not remain for ever a prey to corruption. Abraham purchased a tomb, and buried his Sarah out of his sight; but he has overtaken, regained her, in the regions of eternal day, where virtuous and believing friends meet, never more to be disjoined. Abraham received his Isaac from the wonder-working hand of Heaven, when nature was dead hope; at the command of God he cheerfully surrendered him again, and devoted him upon the altar: again he receives him to newness of life, and that darling son lives to put his hand upon his eyes. But they were not long disunited; the son has overtaken the parents: they rejoice in God, and in one another; they are the children and heirs of the resurrection; “they are as the angels of God in heaven.”
“I am the God of Isaac.” This Isaac the heir of Abraham’s possessions, of his faith, and of his virtues, was on earth united to the God of the spirits of all flesh, by many tender and important relations: by piety, by filial confidence, by goodness, by patience and submission, on his part; by election by special favor, by highness of destination, on the part of his heavenly Father. Yet these distinguished advantages exempted him not from the stroke of affliction. Many years did this heir of the promises, this chosen seed, in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed,” many years did he go childless. Early in life was he visited with the loss of sight, and thereby exposed to much mortification and dejection of spirit. Children are at, length given him, and they prove the torment of his life; they excite a war betwixt nature and grace in his own breast; discord and jealousy arm them against each other; he is in danger of “losing them both in one day.” The one must be banished from his father’s house the other mingles with idolators. Behold a wretched, blind old man, a prey to “grief of heart.” But these things, on the other hand, dissolved not, interrupted not his covenant relation to God: they served but to cement and strengthen the divine friendship: and death which, to human apprehension, separates every connection, and indeed tears asunder every mortal tie, only brought him into a clearer light, and to intercourse and intimacy, which can never expire.
“I am the God of Jacob.” In all the wanderings, in all the dangers, in all the distresses of this patriarch; in all his successes, all his acquisitions, all his joys, we discover the relation of God to him, expressed in these words; and we behold the presence of God with him whithersoever he went, constantly relieving the wretchedness of one state; dignifying and supporting the felicity of the other. This gave him security from the violence of an incensed brother; this cheered the solitude of Luz, and turned it into a Bethel; by this the slumbers of a head reposed on a pillow of stone were made refreshing and instructive; this repressed and overbalanced the rapacity of Laban; this supported and sanctified the loss of Joseph; this sweetened the descent into Egypt, and dissipated the gloom of death; by this, though dead, he exists, though silent, he speaketh, “absent from the body he is present with the Lord;” the moment of his departure is on the wing to overtake that of his redemption from the power of the grave. Before God, the distance shrinks into nothing. That word, that one little word, I AM, unites the era of nature’s birth with that of its dissolution, it joins eternity to eternity, “and swallows up death in victory.” The same gracious declaration applies, with equal truth and justice, to every son and daughter “if faithful Abraham,” to every “Israelite indeed.” We speak of departed friends in the past time, we “cannot but remember such things were; and were most dear to us;” but it is the glorious prerogative of Jehovah to employ eternally the present in describing his own essence, and his covenant relation to his people: “I AM THAT I AM.” “I AM the God of thy father,” of thy buried, thy lamented brother, friend, lover, child. And to us also is the word of this consolation sent, “Fear not, for I am with thee, be not dismayed, I am thy God.” “Thus with the Lord, that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel: Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by name, thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burnt; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior.” Believing and resting upon this sure foundation, the Christian triumphs in the prospect of “departing and being with Christ:” he smiles at the threatening looks of the king of terrors, exults and sings “with the sweet singer of Israel,” “yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me, thy rod, and thy staff, they comfort me. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever:”[*]Psa 23:4;Psa 23:6 and triumphs with the enraptured apostle of the Gentiles, “O death, where is thy sting; O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”[*]1Co 15:55;1Co 15:57
It is a transporting reflection, that the fond wishes and desires of the human heart are warranted, encouraged, and supported by the revelation of God: that the life and immortality which we naturally pant after, are brought to light by the gospel. It is pleasant to find wise and good men, guided only by the light of reason, and the honest propensities of nature, cherishing that very belief, cleaving to that very hope, which the text inspires. Cicero, in his beautiful treatise on old age, while he relates the sentiments of others, sweetly delivers his own on this subject. The elder Cyrus, according to Xenophon, thus addressed his sons before his death: “Do not imagine, O my dear children, that when I leave you, I cease to exist. For even while I was yet with you, my spirit you could not discern; but that it animated this body you were fully assured by the actions which I performed. Be assured it will continue the same, though still you see it not. The glory of illustrious men would sink with them into the grave, were not their surviving spirits capable of exertion, and concerned to rescue their names from oblivion. I can never suffer myself to be persuaded, that the man lives only while he is in the body, and dies when it is dissolved; or that the soul loses all intelligence on being separated from an unintelligent lump of clay; but rather that, on being liberated from all mixture with body, pure and entire, it enters upon its true intellectual existence. At death, any one may discover what becomes of the material part of our frame; all sinks into that from which it arose, every thing is resolved into its first principle; the soul alone is apparent neither while it is with us, nor when it departs. What so much resembles death as sleep? Now the powers of the mind, in sleep, loudly proclaim their own divinity: free and unfettered, the soul plunges into futurity, ascends its native sky. Hence we may conclude how enlarged those powers will be, when undepressed, unrestrained by the chains of flesh. Since these things are so, consider and reverence me as a tutelary deity. But, granting that the mind were to expire with the body, nevertheless, out of reverence to the immortal gods, who support and direct this fair fabric of nature, piously, affectionately cherish the memory of your affectionate father.” The great Roman orator puts these words into the mouth of Cato, in addressing his young friends Scipio and Laelius: “Those excellent men, your fathers, who were so dear to me in life, I consider as still alive: and indeed, as now enjoying a state of being which alone deserves to be dignified with the name of life. For as long as we are shut up in this dungeon of sense, we have to toil through the painful and necessary drudgery of life, and to accomplish the laborious task of an hireling. The celestial spirit is, as it were, depressed, degraded from its native seat, and plunged into the mire of this world, a state repugnant to its divine nature and eternal duration.” And again, “Nobody shall ever persuade me, Scipio, that your father Paullus, and your two grandfathers, Paullus and Africanus, and many other eminent men whom it is unnecessary to mention, would have attempted and achieved so many splendid actions, which were to extend their influence to posterity, had they not clearly discerned that they had interest in, and a connection with the ages of futurity, and with generations yet unborn. Can you imagine, that I may talk a little of myself, after the manner of old men, can you imagine, that I would have submitted to so many painful toils, by night and by day, in the forum, in the senate, in the field, had I apprehended that my existence, and my reputation, were to terminate with my life? Were this the case, would it not have been much better to doze away in indolence an insignificant and useless life? But I do not know how the soul incessantly exerting its native vigor, still sprung eagerly forward into ages yet to come, and seized them as its own.
“I feel myself transported with delight at the thought of again seeing and joining your fathers, whom on earth I highly respected and dearly loved; and, borne on the wings of hope and desire, I am speeding my flight to mingle in the Honored society, not of those only whom on earth I knew, and with whom I have conversed; but of those also of whom I have heard and read, and the history of whose lives, I myself have written, for the instruction of mankind. I have the consolation of reflecting, that I have not lived wholly in vain: and I quit my station in life without regret, as the wayfaring man, whose face is towards home, bids farewell to the inn where he had stopped for a little refreshment on his way. O glorious day, when I shall be admitted into the divine assembly of the wise and good! When I shall make an eternal escape from this sink of corruption, and the din of folly! When, amidst the happy throng of the immortals, I shall find thee also, my son, my Cato, best, most amiable of men! On thy ashes, I bestowed the honors of the tomb. Ah! why did not mine rather receive them from thy hand! But your spirit, I know it, has never forsaken me; but, casting back many a longing, lingering look to your afflicted father, has removed to that region of purity and peace, whither you were confident I should shortly follow you. And I feel, I feel our separation cannot be of long continuance.
“If, indulging myself in this fond hope, my young friends, I am under the power of delusion, it is a sweet, it is an innocent delusion. I will hold it fast and never let it go, while I live. I despise the sneer of the witling, who would attempt to laugh me out of my immortality. Suppose him in the right, and myself under a mistake, he shall not have the power to insult me, nor shall I have the mortification of feeling his scorn, when we are both gone to the land of everlasting forgetfulness.”
How pleasing the thought my dear Christian friends, I again repeat it, how pleasing the thought, that the honest propensities of nature, the fairest conclusions of unassisted reason, and the most ardent breathings of truth and virtue, are here in unison with the clearest and most explicit declarations of the holy Scriptures! But the sacred Dove soars into a region which nature and reason could never have explored. Revelation, to the immortality of the soul, has added the resurrection of the body. And “wherefore should it bethought a thing incredible that God should raise the dead?” The Spirit says to “these dry bones, Live.” “We believe that Jesus died and rose again.” What a sure ground of hope, that “them also who sleep in Jesus, God will bring with him!” Delightful reflection! Who would be so unjust to God, and so unkind to himself, as to part with it? How it smoothes the rugged path of life, how it tempers the bitterness of affliction, how it dissipates the horrors of the grave! One child sleeps in the dust the diameter of the globe separates me from another, but the, word of life, “I AM the God of thy seed,” rescues that one from corruption, and puts the other in my embrace. Time dwindles into a point, the earth melts away, “the trumpet sounds,” “the dead arise incorruptible.” Behold all things are made new! “New heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” “Arise, let us go hence,” and “sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God.”