15 Sermon Illustrations on Death of the Righteous

Arthur Brisbane once pictured a crowd of grieving caterpillars carrying the corpse of a cocoon to its final resting place. The poor, distressed caterpillars, clad in black raiment, were weeping, and all the while the beautiful butterfly fluttered happily above the muck and mire of earth, forever freed from its earthly shell. Needless to say, Brisbane had the average orthodox funeral in mind and sought to convey the idea that when our loved ones pass, it is foolish to remember only the cocoon and concentrate our attention on the remains, while forgetting the bright butterfly.

Men inspired by the Bible have called death by many names-the destroyer, the last enemy, the angel who summons our souls, a deep dark river. But here is Paul's picture of death from the believer's perspective-a man gazing at first into a metal mirror, seeing only baffling reflections and the fantastic shapes of half-facts, who suddenly wheels around and then sees things as they really are. He sees his fellows as they are; he sees the Savior as He is, in all His beauty-that is death for the Christian. No more peering through the mists of human ignorance to try to discern the face of the Savior; but clear, immediate, direct vision-face to face. We shall see Him as He is, and be forever like Him.

Christ has brought a new attitude toward death. He has invested it with a beauty, a peacefulness and a glory unknown before. This is what caused a Greek by the name of Aristeides to marvel, when trying to explain to one of his friends the reasons for the extraordinary success of Christianity. In a letter written about a.d. 125, he said: "If any righteous man among the Christians passes from this world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God, and they escort his body with songs and thanksgiving as if he were setting out from one place to another nearby." Those believers who are gone before are not lost, not separated from us permanently; they are only waiting in another place nearby for us to join them again.

Death comes at Christ's command to call the believer to himself; and, grim and ghastly though be the look of the messenger, surely that may well be welcome in the sweetness of the message he brings. Death comes to set the spirit free and rude though be the hand that knocks of the fetters, and painful though be the process of liberation, what need the prisoner care for that, when it is to freedom, life, home, he is about to be emancipated? Death strikes the hour of the soul's everlasting espousals; and, though the sound may be harsh, what matters that? To common ears, it may seem a deathknell; to the ear of faith, it is a bridal peal.

— Dr. Caird

There was a small Burman family, consisting of a young married pair and their little child, a boy of two years. This child was taken sick and died. A day or two after, the parents, attended by some friends, carried the little body into a waste place outside of the town; and, having constructed a funeral-pile, they laid the corpse on it, and burned it to ashes. The mother then scraped up the poor remains with her hands, and spread over them a thin covering of soil. Every morning after this, for several days, she was seen by the missionary as she passed by his house on her way to the grave, if such it could be called, sometimes with her hair wildly dishevelled, and uttering such piteous walls and howls as can come only from a broken-hearted and despairing heathen mother. One morning, the missionary was standing not far from the grave when the wretched woman made her accustomed visit. Bending in agony over the spot where lay the ashes of her boy, she suddenly became aware of the presence of a large serpent, which had probably been attracted thither by some slight remaining warmth in the ashes, and was just about to dart its poisonous fangs into her hand. Starting back with an expression of intense fear and horror, she fled from the spot, shriekin as she went. "Has my child become a serpent? Has my child become a serpent?"

Exchanged his poverty for eternal riches, and his rags for a crown which fudeth not away. At the Winchester poor-house, Nov. 5, James C. Smith, aged 67. The pall-bearers were few on this side, — not so many, perhaps, as they that waited on the "Shining Shore," and went up with the old man to his "Father's house."

— Connecticut Paper

The Rev. Mr. Hall, of Arns. by, Mr. Evans, of Foxton, and Mr. Christian, of Sheepshead, three eminently pious ministers of the gospel, attended a ministers' meeting at Mr. Woodman's, Sutton, in the Elms, Leicestershire. The day was solemn, and the discourses delivered were very interesting and appropriate. In the evening, these ministers spent their time together in the most agreeable conversation. Amongst other subjects, one of them proposed for discussion, that passage in Job ix. 23, "If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent." Deep seriousness pervaded the conversation, while each minister gave his thoughts on the text. When it came to Mr. Christian's turn to speak, he dwelt upon the subject with an unusual degree of feeling. He considered it as referring to the sudden death of the righteous; and was expatiating very largely on the desirableness of such an event, and the happy surprise with which it would be attended, when, amidst a flood of rapturous tears, he took his flight from the world while the words were yet faltering on his tongue!

A pious parent had three sons, who, notwithstanding all his admonitions and instructions, mingled with many prayers and tears, grew up to manhood in skepticism and profligacy. The father lay dying; and, conceiving that it might perhaps produce a good impression on the minds of his abandoned children, to let them see how a Christian dies, the friends of the family introduced them to the bedside of their expiring parent. But, to their unspeakable grief, the good man died without any expressions of Christian confidence, and appeared destitute of those strong consolations which believers in Jesus usually experience in the closing scene. It was now apprehended that the effect of this melancholy circumstance on the young men would be to confirm them in their prejudice against religion, and afford them, in their opinion, a sufficient evidence that it is all a cunningly devised fable. However, it was not so: the ways of God are not as our ways, neither are his thoughts as our thoughts. A few days after the funeral, the younger brother entered the room in which the other two were; and observing that he had been weeping, they inquired the cause of his grief. "I have been thinking," said he, "of the death of our father." "Ah," said they, "a dismal death it was; what truth or reality can there be in religion, when such a man as he died in such a state of mind?" "It has not affected me in this way," replied the younger brother; "we all know what a holy life our father led, and what a gloomy death he died; now I have been thinking, how dreadful our death must be, who lead such a wicked life!" The observation was like an arrow to their consciences; and they began to be alarmed. They repaired to the ordinances of religion, which, in their father's life time they had neglected, and ultimately became as eminent for piety as their exemplary parent had been.