”PRESENT WITH THE LORD”
Roland H Brown
Hebrews 9: 24-28
We are gathered here this afternoon to bury the body of one that most of us have known and loved, one who will be much missed, particularly by his family, and of which he was a husband and father and grandfather, and by those with whom he enjoyed Christian fellowship locally. And by all of us, for our brother had an influence that extended beyond his family and his locality.
As I say, our brother was much loved, but there was One who loved him more than any of us in this room; One who loved him enough to die for him. One great man could say, “The Son of God who loved me”, Gal 2: 20. He was conscious of being loved by the Son of God. I wonder if everyone in this room is conscious of that. “The Son of God”, he says, “who has loved me and given himself for me”. It was as if the apostle Paul would say that, even if there was nobody else, He loved me enough to die for me; and He suffered and died for him in order to atone for his sins; so that he might dwell with Him eternally. It was not just that the matter of his sins should be dealt with. That is so important; it is so essential for every person in this room that the matter of their sins should be resolved with the Saviour. But He had in mind that he should dwell with Him eternally.
Now I understand that it is common in the world around us to have what is called a ‘memorial service’ on these occasions, where people gather to give thanks for the life of somebody, where it is customary to hear eulogies of them - the things that they said and they did in their lives. The effect of that is simply to emphasis the immensity of what we have lost, whereas if it is comfort we are seeking in a time of sorrow, it is to the resurrection world that we must look. There is to be found no comfort elsewhere. One of the remarkable features of our brother’s departure is that it was anticipated by him and provided for, and one of the things that he was most anxious about was that the eulogy on this occasion was not to be of him, but it was to be of Christ. And he was anxious that all present here this afternoon should enjoy the favour that he enjoyed; that the portion that was his might be the portion of everyone in this room.
That is why I read this passage, because it speaks of Christ. It speaks where I began to read of His present position. It speaks of His offering “in the consummation of the ages”: “He has been manifested for the putting away of sin by his sacrifice”. And He has “been once offered to bear the sins” - He does not say ’of all’ but the sins “of many”. Some of those many are here today. And the question I would raise with you is, ’Are you among them?’, dear hearer? Are you among the many whose sins He bore and removed? The putting away of sin and the bearing of sins was done once for all. It is a work that will never need to be repeated. And so this passage speaks of that; it speaks of His present position, it speaks of what He did in the sacrifice of Himself, and it speaks of His coming again. The great hope of the believer is that Christ is going to appear the second time. He came once and He was not wanted. He was not wanted then, and He is not wanted now in the world around. He “came into the world”, the scripture says, “to save sinners”, 1 Tim 1: 15. What grace, that the One who in His Person was intrinsically holy and sinless, should come down from heaven! He says, “For I am come down from heaven, not that I should do my will, but the will of him that has sent me”, John 6: 38. And that will involved that He should suffer, sufferings that to us are unfathomable, that He should suffer, that He should die, that His precious blood should be shed that God might be glorified in respect of sin and sins. It was that the challenge that sin is to God might be met and fallen creatures like ourselves might have a means of escape, a means of salvation, an opportunity for eternal blessing.
You see, the book that we have in our hands, the Holy Scriptures, tells us about the great issues of life. It tells how evil came into the world. People think about these things; some people consult philosophers, but the Scriptures are very plain, that by one man sin entered into the world. He was a disobedient man: “And by sin death; and thus death has passed upon all men, for that all have sinned”, Rom 5: 12. But the Scriptures close with the great heading up of these issues. All evil finds its place; it finds its place in the lake of fire. And all good is gathered up, in “new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness”, 2 Pet 3: 13. That is where God Himself will tabernacle with men. It must be righteous, you see. Righteousness will dwell in the new heavens and the new earth. There could be no rest for God if that were not the case. But God is going to tabernacle eternally with the objects of His grace. He has reached out in His grace and provided a Saviour for sinners. As one of our hymns says,
Christ is the Saviour of sinners
(Hymn 122):
- the Saviour of sinners. There is only One and He saved them not just that they might be rescued from judgment but that they might be brought into the greatest privilege and blessing in dwelling with God, tabernacling with God eternally in a new heavens and a new earth. Are these things fanciful to you, dear hearer, or are they real? To our brother they were real. They affected his walk and his ways; they were the joy of his heart. And now we have before us the burial of his body. Our brother is no longer in his body. The scripture speaks of his position as “absent from the body and present with the Lord”, 2 Cor 5: 8.
I would like to speak of that, briefly. He is absent from the body. The body that we bury is very precious; it is the body in which we have known and loved our brother. It is the body in which all that he is has been expressed. The work of God in him came out in expression in the body that we bury. But above all, it has been the temple of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God took up His abode in our beloved brother, and there was abundant evidence of that in the way that his own spirit was formed in divine grace. I would say that there are many in this room that knew our brother better than I did and for a longer period and more intimately, but from my own contact with him, one of the abiding impressions that I will retain is the graciousness of his spirit, the clarity with which he saw things. The grace of his spirit is something that I will treasure in remembrance of our brother. But our brother is no longer in the body; he is absent from it. We are gathered here today to hear, I trust, the word of God and that is for those that are living. Our brother is beyond the reach, or the need of that now; he is present with the Lord. What can that be dear hearer, but ecstasy?
Peter speaks of the portion of believers; he speaks of that in his epistle: “Jesus Christ: whom, having not seen, ye love; on whom though not now looking, but believing, ye exult with joy unspeakable and filled with the glory”, 1 Pet 1: 8. What Peter is describing there is what should be characteristic of a believer in the Lord Jesus. Now if that is the portion of a believer living here by faith - “whom, having not seen, ye love … ye exult with joy unspeakable”, what must the portion of that brother be as in the immediate presence of Christ. One could say, “in thy presence is fulness of joy”, Ps 16: 11 (KJV). He is awaiting, of course, his final portion. There is another remarkable passage in chapter 11; it says, “these all, having obtained witness through faith, did not receive the promise, God having foreseen some better thing for us, that they should not be made perfect without us”, v 39-40. Our brother’s portion is intensely blessed. It is not a state of oblivion or unconsciousness, but it is the state of conscious enjoyment of the love of Christ and the enjoyment of it without any distractions or sorrow. But he awaits, as we all do, we who love Christ, the final portion, because God has foreseen some better thing for us.. Jesus is coming again, as this passage says. It goes on, “it is the portion of men once to die, and after this judgment”. I do not think that is in the sense of condemnation, but it is a reminder for all of us that death is not the end. Persons would like to think that death is the end, but there is what is after death, and that is our responsibility to God, responsibility that rests upon everyone of us in this room, as made in the image and likeness of God. There is a responsibility to Him.
Now our beloved brother was among those whose sins have been borne by Jesus, who are looking for His return; the Lord has taken him before then. But when He comes He will never more have to deal with the question of sin. It has been dealt with to God’s eternal satisfaction. God will say of our brother, and myriads like him, “their sins and their lawlessnesses I will never remember any more”, Heb 10: 17. You think of that, the assurance that it brings, the peace with God that it brings into the heart and into the conscience to know that. To look ahead, as John said in his epistle, “with … boldness in the day of judgment” (1 John 4: 17) in the knowledge that “as he is, we also are in this world. God would clothe us with nothing less than the righteousness and the virtue and the acceptance of Christ: think of being clothed like that!
Well, our brother’s body that we bury today is going to be raised, and it is going to be very different when it is raised. Our brother is going to put on incorruptibility; he is going to put on immortality; he is going to be conformed eternally to the image of God’s Son. In a word, he is going to be glorified, but all with a view to the distinction of Christ; “so that he should be the firstborn among many brethren”, Rom 8: 29. Our brother will be among that vast company that will contribute to the glory of Christ personally. Christ is going to be glorified personally, but He is going “to be glorified in His saints”, and He is going to be “wondered at in all that have believed”, 2 Thess 1 10. Dear hearer, are you sure that you will be among that company? Are you sure of your destination if you were called upon to pass through death? Our brother was sure. For him it was not a leap into the unknown; he knew the Saviour that is seated at God’s right hand, the One who has entered, as this passage says, into heaven itself. Once He was the Sin-bearer, once the bearer of the judgment of God, but that matter having been resolved so entirely the One who was the Sin-bearer has entered into heaven itself, and He has entered in there to serve His own, to appear before the face of God for us.
I believe He Himself would appeal on an occasion like this. We are in the presence of death, the solemnity of it. We see the finality of it as regards all that is here, but where human life ends, where all indeed of this world comes to an end, that is God’s beginning. God begins with resurrection. And the resurrection of Christ as the first-fruits is the anticipation of what God will secure in a time scene: myriads, myriads like Him for God’s glory eternally.
I just leave that word, dear hearers. May we be comforted, those of us who are believers, in the assurance of these things. And if there is anyone here that is in any doubt at all about them, have to do with the Saviour for yourself. “The same Lord of all is rich towards all that call upon him”, Rom 10: 12. “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”, Acts 2: 21. You can call upon Him; you can prove what He is as a Saviour, as a mighty Saviour. He is One who has been into death and vanquished it. He has brought to light life and incorruptibility. He is One who is seated in heaven; One who is serving there on behalf of His own.
May He bless the word.
St Ives
28th September 2018
(At the meeting for the burial of Robert Hodge)