504. I Know that my Redeemer Lives

A Sermon Delivered on Sunday Morning, April 12, 1863, by Pastor C. H. Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God: whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins are consumed within me. (Job 19:25-27)

1. The hand of God has been upon us heavily this week. An aged deacon, who has been for more than fifty years a member of this Church, has been removed from our midst; and a sister, the beloved wife of another of our Church officers, a member for nearly the same term of years, has fallen asleep. It is not often that a Church is called to sorrow over the departure of two such venerable members — do not let our ears be deaf to such a double admonition to prepare to meet our God. That they were preserved so long, and upheld so mercifully for so many years, was not only a reason of gratitude to them, but to us also. I am, however, so averse to the preaching of what are called funeral sermons, that I forbear, lest I appear to eulogise the creature, when my only aim should be to magnify the grace of God.

2. Our text deserves our profound attention; its preface would hardly have been written had not the matter been of the utmost importance in the judgment of the patriarch who uttered it. Listen to Job’s remarkable desire: “Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! That they were engraved with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!” Perhaps, hardly aware of the full meaning of the words he was uttering, yet his holy soul was impressed with a sense of some weighty revelation concealed within his words; he therefore desired that it might be recorded in a book; he has had his desire; the Book of books embalms the words of Job. He wished to have them engraved on a rock; cut deep into it with an iron pen, and then the lines inlaid with lead; or he would have them engraved, according to the custom of the ancients, upon a sheet of metal, so that time might not be able to eat out the inscription. He has not had his desire in that respect, except that on many and many a sepulchre those words of Job stand recorded, “I know that my Redeemer lives.” It is the opinion of some commentators that Job, in speaking of the rock here, intended his own rock hewn sepulchre, and desired that this might be his epitaph; that it might be cut deep, so that ages should not wear it out; that when any asked, “Where does Job sleep?” as soon as they saw the sepulchre of the patriarch of Uz, they might learn that he died in hope of the resurrection, resting upon a living Redeemer. Whether such a sentence adorned the portals of Job’s last sleeping place we do not know; but certainly no words could have been more fitly chosen. Should not the man of patience, the mirror of endurance, the pattern of trust, bear as his memorial this golden line, which is as full of all the patience of hope, and hope of patience, as mortal language can be? Who among us could select a more glorious motto for his last escutcheon?1 I am sorry to say that a few of those who have written upon this passage cannot see Christ or the resurrection in it at all. Albert Barnes, among the rest, expresses his intense sorrow that he cannot find the resurrection here, and for my part I am sorry for him. If it had been Job’s desire to foretell the advent of Christ and his own sure resurrection, I cannot see what better words he could have used; and if those truths are not taught here, then language must have lost its original object, and must have been employed to mystify and not to explain; to conceal and not to reveal. What I ask, does the patriarch mean, if not that he shall rise again when the Redeemer stands upon the earth? Brethren, no unsophisticated mind can fail to find here what almost all believers have discovered here. I feel safe in keeping to the old sense, and we shall this morning seek no new interpretation, but adhere to the common one, with or without the consent of our critics.

3. In discoursing upon them I shall speak upon three things. First, let us, with the patriarch, descend into the grave and behold the ravages of death. Then, with him, let us look up on high for present consolation. And, still in his admirable company, let us, in the third place, anticipate future delights.

The Sepulchre

4. I. First of all then, with the patriarch of Uz, LET US DESCEND INTO THE SEPULCHRE.

5. The body has just been divorced from the soul. Friends who loved most tenderly have said — “Bury my dead out of my sight.” The body is borne upon the bier and consigned to the silent earth; it is surrounded by the earthworks of death. Death has a host of troops. If the locusts and the caterpillars are God’s army, the worms are the army of death. These hungry warriors begin to attack the city of man. They commence with the outworks; they storm the munition, and overturn the walls. The skin, the city wall of manhood, is utterly broken down, and the towers of its glory covered with confusion. How speedily the cruel invaders deface all beauty. The face gathers blackness; the countenance is defiled with corruption. Those cheeks once fair with youth, and ruddy with health, have fallen in, even as a bowing wall and a tottering fence; those eyes, the windows of the mind from where joy and sorrow looked out by turns, are now filled up with the dust of death; those lips, the doors of the soul, the gates of Mansoul, are carried away, and its bars are broken. Alas, you windows of agates and gates of carbuncle, where are you now? How shall I mourn for you, oh you captive city, for the mighty men have utterly spoiled you! Your neck, once like a tower of ivory, has become as a fallen column; your nose, so recently comparable to “the tower of Lebanon, which looks toward Damascus,” is as a ruined hovel; and your head, which towered like Carmel, lies low as the clods of the valley. Where is beauty now? The most lovely cannot be known from the most deformed. The vessel so daintily created upon the potter’s wheel, is cast away upon the dunghill with the vilest potsherds. You have been cruel, you warriors of death, for although you wield no axes and bear no hammers, yet you have broken down the carved work; and although you do not speak with tongues, yet you have said in your hearts, “We have swallowed her up, certainly this is the day that we have looked for; we have found it, we have seen it.” The skin is gone. The troops have entered into the town of Mansoul. And now they pursue their work of devastation; the pitiless marauders fall upon the body itself. There are those noble aqueducts, the veins through which the streams of life were accustomed to flow, these, instead of being rivers of life, have become blocked up with the soil and wastes of death, and now they must be pulled to pieces; not a single relic of them shall be spared. Notice the muscles and sinews, like great highways that penetrate the metropolis, carry the strength and wealth of manhood along — their intricate pavement must be pulled up, and they that do traffic on it must be consumed; each tunnelled bone, and curious arch, and knotted bond must be snapped and broken. Fair fabrics, glorious storehouses, costly engines, wonderful machines — all, all must be pulled down, and not one stone left upon another. Those nerves, which like telegraphic wires connected all parts of the city together, to carry thought and feeling and intelligence — these are cut. No matter how artistic the work might be, — and certainly we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and the anatomist stands still and marvels to see the skill which the eternal God has revealed in the formation of the body — but these ruthless worms pull everything to pieces, until like a city sacked and spoiled that has been given up for days to pillage and to flame, everything lies in a heap of ruin — ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But these invaders do not stop here. Job says that next they consume his reins. We are accustomed to speak of the heart as the great citadel of life, the inner keep and dungeon, where the captain of the guard holds out to the last. The Hebrews do not regard the heart, but the lower viscera, the reins, as the seat of the passions and of mental power. The worms do not spare; they enter the secret places of the tabernacle of life, and the standard is pulled down from the tower. Having died, the heart cannot preserve itself, and falls like the rest of the frame — a prey to worms. It is gone, it is all gone! The skin, the body, the vitals, all, all has departed. There is nothing left. In a few years you shall turn up the sod and say, “Here slept So-and-So, and where is he now?” and you may search and hunt and dig, but you shall find no relic. Mother Earth has devoured her own offspring.

6. Dear friends, why should we wish to have it otherwise? Why should we desire to preserve the body when the soul has gone? What vain attempts men have made with coffins of lead, and wrappings of myrrh and frankincense. The embalming of the Egyptians, those master robbers of the worm, what has it done? It has served to keep some poor shrivelled lumps of mortality above ground to be sold for curiosities, to be dragged away to foreign climes, and stared upon by thoughtless eyes. No, let the dust go, the sooner it dissolves the better. And what does it matter how it goes! If it is devoured by beasts, if it is swallowed up in the sea and become food for fish! What, if plants with their roots suck up the particles! What, if the fabric passes into the animal, and from the animal into the earth, and from the earth into the plants, and from the plant into the animal again! What, if the winds blow it along the highway! What, if the rivers carry it to the waves of the ocean! It is ordained that somehow or other it must be all separated — “dust to dust, ashes to ashes.” It is part of the decree that it should all perish. The worms or some other agents of destruction must destroy this body. Do not try to avoid what God has purposed; do not look upon it as a gloomy thing. Regard it as a necessity; indeed more, view it as the platform of a miracle, the lofty stage of resurrection, since Jesus shall surely raise again from the dead the particles of this body, however divided from one another. We have heard of miracles, but what a miracle the resurrection is! All the miracles of Scripture, yes even those performed by Christ, are small compared with this. The philosopher says, “How is it possible that God shall hunt out every particle of the human frame?” He can do it: he only has to speak the word, and every single atom, although it may have travelled thousands of leagues, though it may have been blown as dust across the desert, and immediately have fallen upon the bosom of the sea, and then have descended into its depths to be cast up on a desolate shore, sucked up by plants, fed on again by beasts, or passed into the fabric of another man, — I say that individual atom shall find its counterparts, and the whole company of particles at the trumpet of the archangel shall travel to their appointed place, and the body, the very body which was laid in the ground, shall rise again.

7. I am afraid I have been somewhat uninteresting while tarrying upon the exposition of the words of Job, but I think very much of the pith of Job’s faith lay in this, that he had a clear view that the worms would after his skin destroy his body, and yet that in his flesh he should see God. You know we might regard it as a small miracle if we could preserve the bodies of the departed. If, by some process, with spices and gums we could preserve the particles, for the Lord to make those dry bones live, and to quicken that skin and flesh, would certainly be a miracle, but not palpably and plainly so great a marvel as when the worms have destroyed the body. When the fabric has been absolutely broken up, the tenement all pulled down, ground to pieces, and flung in handfuls to the wind, so that no relic of it is left, and yet when Christ stands in the latter days upon the earth, all the structure shall be brought together, bone to his bone — then shall the might of Omnipotence be seen. This is the doctrine of the resurrection, and happy is he who finds no difficulty here, who looks at it as being an impossibility with man but a possibility with God, and lays hold upon the omnipotence of the Most High and says, “You say it, and it shall be done!” I do not comprehend you great God; I marvel at your purpose to raise my rotting body; but I know that you do great wonders! and I am not surprised that you should conclude the great drama of your creating works here on earth by recreating the human frame by the same power by which you brought from the dead the body of your Son Jesus Christ, and by that same divine energy which has regenerated human souls in your own image.

The Patriarch

8. II. Now, having thus descended into the grave, and seen nothing there except what is loathsome, LET US LOOK UP WITH THE PATRIARCH AND BEHOLD A SUN SHINING WITH PRESENT COMFORT.

9. “I know,” he said, “that my Redeemer lives.” The word “Redeemer” used here, is in the original “goel” — kinsman. The duty of the kinsman, or goel, was this: suppose an Israelite had alienated his estate, as in the case of Naomi and Ruth; suppose a patrimony which had belonged to a family, had passed away through poverty, it was the goel’s business, the redeemer’s business to pay the price as the next of kin, and to buy back the heritage. Boaz stood in that relationship to Ruth. Now, the body may be looked upon as the heritage of the soul — the soul’s small farm, that little plot of earth in which the soul has been accustomed to walk and delight, as a man walks in his garden or lives in his house. Now, that becomes alienated. Death, like Ahab, takes away the vineyard from us who are as Naboth; we lose our patrimonial estate; Death sends his troops to take our vineyard and to spoil its vines and ruin it. But we turn around to Death and say, “I know that my Goel lives, and he will redeem this heritage; I have lost it; you take it from me lawfully, oh Death, because my sin has forfeited my right; I have lost my heritage through my own offence and through that of my first parent Adam; but there lives one who will buy this back.” Brethren, Job could say this about Christ long before he had descended upon earth, “I know that he lives”; and now that he has ascended up on high, and led captivity captive, surely we may with double emphasis say, “I know that my Goel, my Kinsman lives, and that he has paid the price, that I should have back my patrimony, so that in my flesh I shall see God.” Yes, my hands, you are redeemed with blood; not bought with corruptible things, as with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. Yes, heaving lungs and palpitating heart, you have been redeemed! He who redeemed the soul to be his altar has also redeemed the body, so that it may be a temple for the Holy Spirit. Not even the bones of Joseph can remain in the house of bondage. No smell of the fire of death may pass upon the clothes which his holy children have worn in the furnace.

10. Remember, too, that it was always considered to be the duty of the goel, not merely to redeem by price, but where that failed, to redeem by power. Hence, when Lot was carried away captive by the four kings, Abraham summoned his own hired servants, and the servants of all his friends, and went out against the kings of the East, and brought back Lot and the captives of Sodom. Now, our Lord Jesus Christ, who once has played the kinsman’s part by paying the price for us, lives, and he will redeem us by power. Oh Death, you tremble at this name! You know the might of our Kinsman! You cannot stand against his arm! You once met him foot to foot in stern battle, and oh Death, you did indeed tread upon his heel. He voluntarily submitted to this, or else, oh Death, you had no power against him. But he killed you, Death, he killed you! He rifled all your caskets, took from you the key of your castle, burst open the door of your dungeon; and now, you know, Death, you have no power to hold my body; you may set your slaves to devour it, but you shall give it up, and all their spoil must be restored. Insatiable Death, from your greedy gullet shall yet return the multitudes whom you have devoured. You shall be compelled by the Saviour to restore your captives to the light of day. I think I see Jesus coming with his Father’s servants. The chariots of the Lord are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels. Blow the trumpet! blow the trumpet! Emmanuel rides to battle! The Most Mighty in majesty girds on his sword. He comes! He comes to snatch by power, his people’s lands from those who have invaded their portion. Oh, how glorious the victory! There shall be no battle. He comes, he sees, he conquers. The sound of the trumpet shall be enough; Death shall flee in fright; and at once from beds of dust and silent clay, to realms of everlasting day the righteous shall arise.

11. To linger here a moment, there was yet, very conspicuously in the Old Testament, we are informed, a third duty of the goel, which was to avenge the death of his friend. If a person had been killed, the Goel was the avenger of blood; snatching up his sword, he at once pursued the person who had been guilty of bloodshed. So now, let us picture ourselves as being struck by Death. His arrow has just pierced us to the heart, but in the act of expiring, our lips are able to boast of vengeance, and in the face of the monster we cry, “I know that my Goel lives.” You may flee, oh Death, as rapidly as you wish, but no city of refuge can hide you from him; he will overtake you; he will lay hold upon you, oh you skeleton monarch, and he will avenge my blood on you. I wish that I had powers of eloquence to work out this magnificent thought. Chrysostom, or Christmas Evans could picture the flight of the King of Terrors, the pursuit by the Redeemer, the overtaking of the foe, and the slaying of the destroyer. Christ shall certainly avenge himself on Death for all the injury which Death has done to his beloved kinsmen. Comfort yourself then, oh Christian; you have an ever living one, even when you die, who avenges you, one who has paid the price for you, and one whose strong arms shall still set you free.

12. Passing on in our text to notice the next word, it seems that Job found consolation not only in the fact that he had a Goel, a Redeemer, but that this Redeemer lives. He does not say, “I know that my Goel shall live, but that he lives,” — having a clear view of the self-existence of the Lord Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and for ever. And you and I looking back do not say, “I know that he did live, but he lives today.” This very day you who mourn and sorrow for venerated friends, your prop and pillar in years gone by, you may go to Christ with confidence, because he not only lives, but he is the source of life; and therefore you believe that he can give forth from himself life to those whom you have committed to the tomb. He is the Lord and giver of life originally, and he shall be specially declared to be the resurrection and the life, when the legions of his redeemed shall be glorified with him. If I saw no fountain from which life could stream to the dead, I would still believe the promise when God said that the dead shall live; but when I see the fountain provided, and know that it is full to the brim and that it runs over, I can rejoice without trembling. Since there is one who can say, “I am the resurrection and the life,” it is a blessed thing to see the means already before us in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us look up to our Goel then who lives at this very time.

13. Still it seems to me the marrow of Job’s comfort lay in that little word “My.” “I know that MY Redeemer lives.” Oh, to get hold of Christ! I know that in his offices he is precious. But, dear friends, we must get a property in him before we can really enjoy him. What is honey in the woods to me, if like the fainting Israelites, I dare not eat? It is honey in my hand, honey on my lip, which enlightens my eyes like those of Jonathan. What is gold in the mine to me? Men are beggars in Peru, and beg their bread in California. It is gold in my purse which will satisfy my needs, purchasing the food I need. So, what is a kinsman if he is not a kinsman to me? A Redeemer who does not redeem me, an avenger who will never stand up for my blood, of what use is that? But Job’s faith was strong and firm in the conviction that the Redeemer was his. Dear friends, dear friends, can all of you say, “I know that my Redeemer lives?” The question is simple and simply put, but oh, what solemn things hang upon your answer, “Is he MY Redeemer?” I charge you do not rest, do not be content until by faith you can say, “Yes, I cast myself upon him; I am his, and therefore he is mine.” I know that very many of you, while you look upon all else that you have as not being yours, yet can say, “My Redeemer is mine.” He is the only piece of property which is really ours. We borrow everything else, the house, the children; indeed, we must return our very body to the Great Lender. But Jesus, we can never leave, for even when we are absent from the body we are present with the Lord, and I know that even death cannot separate us from him, so that body and soul are with Jesus truly even in the dark hours of death, in the long night of the sepulchre, and in the separate state of spiritual existence. Beloved, do you have Christ? It may be you hold him with a feeble hand, you half think it is presumption to say, “He is my Redeemer”; yet remember, if you have only faith as a grain of mustard seed, that little faith entitles you to say, and say now, “I know that my Redeemer lives.”

14. There is another word in this consoling sentence which no doubt served to give a zest to the comfort of Job. It was that he could say, “I KNOW” — “I KNOW that my Redeemer lives.” To say, “I hope so, I trust so,” is comforting; and there are thousands in the fold of Jesus who hardly ever get much farther. But to reach the marrow of consolation you must say, “I KNOW.” Ifs, buts, and perhapses, are sure murderers of peace and comfort. Doubts are dreary things in times of sorrow. Like wasps they sting the soul! If I have any suspicion that Christ is not mine, then there is vinegar mingled with the gall of death. But if I know that Jesus is mine, then darkness is not dark; even the night is light around me. Out of the lion comes honey; out of the eater comes forth sweetness. “I know that my Redeemer lives.” This is a brightly burning lamp cheering the dampness of the sepulchral vault, but a feeble hope is like a flickering smoking flax, just making darkness visible, but nothing more. I would not like to die with a mere hope mingled with suspicion. I might be safe with this but hardly happy; but oh, to go down into the river knowing that all is well, confident that as a guilty, weak, and helpless worm I have fallen into the arms of Jesus, and believing that he is able to keep what I have committed to him. I would have you, dear Christian friends, never look upon the full assurance of faith as a thing impossible for you. Do not say “It is too high; I cannot attain to it.” I have known one or two saints of God who have rarely doubted their interest at all. There are many of us who do not often enjoy any ravishing ecstasies, but on the other hand we generally maintain the even tenor of our way, simply hanging upon Christ, feeling that his promise is true, that his merits are sufficient, and that we are safe. Assurance is a jewel for worth but not for rarity. It is the common privilege of all the saints if they have only the grace to attain to it, and the Holy Spirit freely gives this grace. Surely if Job in Arabia, in those dark misty ages when there was only the morning star and not the sun, when they saw very little, when life and immortality had not been brought to light, — if Job before the coming and advent still could say, “I know,” you and I should not speak less positively. God forbid that our positiveness should be presumption. Let us test ourselves, and see that our marks and evidences are right, lest we form an ungrounded hope; for nothing can be more destructive than to say, “Peace, peace, where there is no peace.” But oh, let us build for eternity, and build solidly. Let us not be satisfied with the mere foundation, for it is from the upper rooms that we get the widest prospect. Let us pray the Lord to help us to pile stone on stone, until we are able to say as we look at it, “Yes, I know, I KNOW that my Redeemer lives.” Then in the prospect of departure, this is present comfort for today.

Future Delight

15. III. And now, in the third and last place, as THE ANTICIPATION OF FUTURE DELIGHT, let me call to your remembrance the other part of the text. Job not only knew that the Redeemer lived, but he anticipated the time when he should stand in the latter day upon the earth. No doubt Job referred here to our Saviour’s first advent, to the time when Jesus Christ, “the goel,” the kinsman, should stand upon the earth to pay in the blood of his veins the ransom price, which had, indeed, in bond and stipulation been paid before the foundation of the world in promise. But I cannot think that Job’s vision stayed there; he was looking forward to the second advent of Christ as being the period of the resurrection. We cannot endorse the theory that Job arose from the dead when our Lord died, although certain Jewish believers held this idea very firmly at one time. We are persuaded that “the latter day” refers to the advent of glory rather than to that of shame. Our hope is that the Lord shall come to reign in glory where he once died in agony. The bright and hallowed doctrine of the second advent has been greatly revived in our churches in these latter days, and I look for the best results in consequence. There is always a danger lest it is perverted and turned by fanatical minds, by prophetic speculations, into an abuse; but the doctrine in itself is one of the most consoling, and, at the same time, one of the most practical, tending to keep the Christian awake, because the bridegroom comes at such an hour as we do not think. Beloved, we believe that the same Jesus who ascended from Olivet shall so come in like manner as he ascended up into heaven. We believe in his personal advent and reign. We believe and expect that when both wise and foolish virgins shall slumber; in the night when sleep is heavy upon the saints; when men shall be eating and drinking as in the days of Noah, that suddenly as the lightning flashes from heaven, so Christ shall descend with a shout, and the dead in Christ shall rise and reign with him. We are looking forward to the literal, personal, and actual standing of Christ upon earth as the time when creation’s groans shall be silenced for ever, and the earnest expectation of the creature shall be fulfilled.

16. Notice that Job describes Christ as standing. Some interpreters have read the passage, “he shall stand in the latter days against the earth”; that as the earth has covered up the slain, as the earth has become the graveyard of the dead, Jesus shall arise to the contest and say, “Earth, I am against you; give up your dead! You clods of the valley cease to be custodians of my people’s bodies! Silent deeps, and you, you caverns of the earth, deliver, once and for all, those whom you have imprisoned!” Machpelah shall give up its precious treasure, cemeteries and graveyards shall release their captives, and all the deep places of the earth shall release the bodies of the faithful. Well, whether that is so or not, the posture of Christ, in standing upon the earth, is significant. It shows his triumph. He has triumphed over sin, which once like a serpent in its coils had bound the earth. He has defeated Satan. On the very place where Satan gained his power Christ has gained the victory. Earth, which was a scene of defeated goodness, from where mercy once was all but driven, where virtue died, where everything heavenly and pure, like flowers blasted by pestilential winds, hung down their heads, withered and blighted — on this very earth everything that is glorious shall grow and blossom in perfection; and Christ himself, once despised and rejected by men, fairest of all the sons of men, shall come in the midst of a crowd of courtiers, while kings and princes shall do him homage, and all the nations shall call him blessed. “He shall stand in the latter day upon the earth.”

17. Then, at that auspicious hour, Job says, “In my flesh I shall see God.” Oh, blessed anticipation — “I shall see God.” He does not say, “I shall see the saints” — doubtless we shall see them all in heaven — but, “I shall see God.” Notice he does not say, “I shall see the pearly gates, I shall see the walls of jasper, I shall see the crowns of gold and the harps of harmony,” but “I shall see God”; as if that was the sum and substance of heaven. “In my flesh I shall see God.” The pure in heart shall see God. It was their delight to see in the ordinances by faith. They delighted to see him in communion and in prayer. There in heaven they shall have a vision of another kind. We shall see God in heaven, and be made completely like him; the divine character shall be stamped upon us; and being made like him we shall be perfectly satisfied and content. Likeness to God, what more can we wish for? And a sight of God, what can we desire better? We shall see God, and so there shall be perfect contentment in the soul and a satisfaction of all the faculties. Some read the passage, “Yet, I shall see God in my flesh,” and hence think that there is here an allusion to Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the word made flesh. Well, whether this is so or not, it is certain that we shall see Christ, and he, as the divine Redeemer, shall be the subject of our eternal vision. Nor shall we ever want any joy beyond simply that of seeing him. Do not think, dear friend, that this will be a narrow sphere for your mind to dwell in. It is only one source of delight, “I shall see God,” but that source is infinite. His wisdom, his love, his power, all his attributes shall be subjects for your eternal contemplation, and since he is infinite under each aspect, there is no fear of exhaustion. His works, his purposes, his gifts, his love for you, and his glory in all his purposes, and in all is deeds of love — why, these shall make a theme that never can be exhausted. You may with divine delight anticipate the time when in your flesh you shall see God.

18. But I must have you observe how Job has expressly made us notice that it is in the same body. “Yet, in my flesh I shall see God”; and then he says again, “whom I shall see for myself, and my eye shall behold and not another.” Yes, it is true that I, the very man standing here, although I must go down to die, yet I shall as the same man most certainly arise and shall behold my God. Not part of myself, although the soul alone shall have some view of God, but my entire self, my flesh, my soul, my body, my spirit shall gaze on God. We shall not enter heaven, dear friends, as a dismasted vessel is tugged into harbour; we shall not get to glory some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship, but the whole ship shall be floated safely into the haven, body and soul both being safe. Christ shall be able to say, “All that the Father gives to me shall come to me,” not only all the people, but all of the bodies — each man in his perfection. There shall not be found in heaven one imperfect saint. There shall not be a saint without an eye, much less a saint without a body. No member of the body shall have perished; nor shall the body have lost any of its natural beauty. All the saints shall be all there, and all of all; the same people precisely, only that they shall have risen from a state of grace to a state of glory. They shall be ripened; they shall be no more the green blades, but the full kernel in the ear; no more buds but flowers; not babes but men.

19. Please notice, and then I shall conclude, how the patriarch expresses it as being a real personal enjoyment. “Whom my eye shall behold, and not another.” They shall not bring me a report as they did the Queen of Sheba, but I shall see Solomon the King for myself. I shall be able to say, as they did who spoke to the woman of Samaria, “Now I believe, not because of your word, but because I have seen him for myself.” There shall be personal communion with God; not through the Book, which is only as a glass; not through the ordinances; but directly, in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be able to commune with the Deity as a man talks with his friend. “Not another.” If I could be a changeling and could be altered, that would mar my comfort. Or if my heaven must be enjoyed by proxy, if draughts of bliss must be drunk for me, where would be the hope? Oh, no; for myself, and not through another; I shall see God. Have we not told you a hundred times that nothing except personal religion will do, and is not this another argument for it, because resurrection and glory are personal things? “Not another.” If you could have sponsors to repent for you, then, depend upon it, you would have sponsors to be glorified for you. But just as there is not another to see God for you, so you must yourself see and yourself find an interest in the Lord Jesus Christ.

20. In closing let me observe how foolish have you and I been when we have looked forward to death with shudders, with doubts, with loathings. After all, what is it? Worms! Do you tremble at those base crawling things? Scattered particles! Shall we be alarmed at these? To meet the worms we have the angels; and to gather the scattered particles we have the voice of God. I am sure the gloom of death is altogether gone now that the light of resurrection burns. Disrobing is nothing now that better clothing await us. We may long for evening to undress, so that we may rise with God. I am sure my venerable friends now present, in coming so near as they do now to the time of the departure, must have some visions of the glory on the other side of the stream. Bunyan was not wrong, my dear brethren, when he put the land Beulah at the close of the pilgrimage. Is not my text a telescope which will enable you to see across the Jordan; may it not be as hands of angels to bring you bundles of myrrh and frankincense? You can say, “I know that my Redeemer lives.” You cannot want more; you were not satisfied with less in your youth, you will not be content with less now. Those of us who are young, are comforted by the thought that we may soon depart. I say comforted, not alarmed by it; and we almost envy those whose race is nearly run, because we fear — and yet we must not speak thus, for the Lord’s will be done — I was about to say, we fear that our battle may last long, and that maybe our feet may slip; only he who keeps Israel does not slumber nor sleep. So since we know that our Redeemer lives, this shall be our comfort in life, that although we fall we shall not be utterly cast down; and since our Redeemer lives, this shall be our comfort in death, that although worms destroy this body, yet in our flesh we shall see God.

21. May the Lord add his blessing on the feeble words of this morning, and to him be glory for ever. Amen.

Grave, the guardian of our dust!
 Grave, the treasury of the skies!
Every atom of your trust
 Rests in hope again to rise.
Hark! the judgment trumpet calls;
 Soul, rebuild your house of clay,
Immortality your walls,
 And Eternity your day.