WITH CHRIST
Paul Martin
1 Thessalonians 4: 15-17
Psalm 23
John 21: 20-22
These passages have come to me, beloved, as thinking of what it is to be with Christ, and also what it is to prove Him with us. Our sister is now with Christ: what we have before us here is her body which will be buried today, but she is not here, she is with Christ. Could there be anything better? Paul said he desired to be “with Christ, for it is very much better”, Phil 1: 23. He did not say better than what. It is better than everything; “being with Christ, for it is very much better”.
You will remember that on the cross the Lord Jesus spoke to the thief and He said, “To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise”, Luke 23: 43. I do not want to be fanciful, but the Lord Jesus has said that to our beloved sister; He said it just over a week ago: “To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise”. He selected her, His work was complete, and He said, “To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise”. Paradise must be very wonderful - the apostle Paul said he was caught up into paradise, 2 Cor 12: 4. It may have been when he was stoned in Acts 14, when they “drew him out of the city, supposing him to have died” (v 19), but he said to the Corinthians that he “was caught up into paradise”, and he gives us some inkling of what it is like. He said that he heard things said that could not be uttered in this lower world. That is what our sister is enjoying now; she is enjoying communications from our blessed Lord who died for her, and who lives, and she is now with Him.
Paul says here to the Thessalonians that we are not to be anxious about those who have fallen asleep. Our sister is only asleep as to what is here. Her duties as a wife, a mother and a grandmother, as well as in business, and her part in the local meeting, all those responsibilities are now complete and she is asleep as to those. Is that not wonderful - just to be in His presence, receiving His own communications? Paul says that we are not to be anxious as to those fallen asleep, but to look on to the moment when the Lord Himself will come, the One who has broken the power of death. He broke it when He went into it. How great that movement was. It was His own movement. He gave up His spirit, He went into death, and death had to flee. “What ailed thee, thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou turnedst back?”, Psalm 114: 5. Think of the mighty power of Christ going into death: He broke the power of death; and He has come out of it. He says, “I … have the keys of death and of hades”, Rev 1: 18. No one can take them out of His hand, and He uses them for the execution of His own will. Our dear sister has been put to sleep through Jesus and she enjoys now the greatest favour that anyone can possibly be enjoying; to be at rest in His presence, to enjoy the communications of His love and to be satisfied; and nothing can disturb that. While we are here, we may get touches of enjoyment of eternal things just for a moment, but because of what we are, in the mortal condition in which we are, we cannot sustain it. There is nothing to interrupt what she is enjoying; she is in His presence.
But He is coming, and He is coming for us, and He is going to come right out of heaven. The Lord Jesus will not stay where He is; He shall descend from heaven; He is coming for each one of us. He is not giving directions from afar or leaving us to find our own way, but He is coming to take us Himself; and it says, “thus we shall be always with the Lord”. What a wonderful moment that will be, and we are anticipating that moment when we shall all be forever with the Lord. You may ask what it will be like. I do not know. Ask Him. What will it be like to just be there? These bodies will be changed: our sister’s body will be raised, and it will be changed; and we shall be caught up together to meet Him in the air. Think not only of those who have fallen asleep through Jesus, believers who have been taken in this dispensation, but the myriads upon myriads of the dead in Christ, going right back to the first one who died in faith: they will all be caught up, raised and changed to meet the Lord in the air. What a meeting that will be - myriads upon myriads - and we who believe will be among them. The work of God in each soul will be complete.
It has impressed us recently at home that in Revelation 21 you have the city coming down, formed of the work of God in the souls of persons; it is “pure gold, like pure glass”, v 18. Think of the purity of that work: it will come down out of heaven, and its radiance will illuminate the earth, and it will have the glory of God, v 10. That is the work of God, which the Spirit has formed in the souls of persons like you and me, which will then be completed and translated to be with Christ to shine in all its radiance. Beloved, what a prospect believers have: we shall see Jesus, and we shall be like Him.
I come to Psalm 23 because we are still here, but we are not left alone. It is recorded in Hebrews, “I will not leave thee, neither will I forsake thee”, chap 13: 5. What an assurance! The Lord Jesus has committed Himself to us. At the end of Matthew He said, “All power has been given me in heaven and upon earth”, Matt 28: 18. There is no one greater. There is no one that can exercise greater power than Jesus. “All power has been given me … And behold, I am with you all the days”, v 20. The One who has all the resource, all the power to carry us through, is the One who is with us “all the days”. The psalmist here knew that; He knew something of the divine presence, and he says -
Jehovah is my shepherd; I shall not want
- I will not need another - “Jehovah is my shepherd”. Everything I need, everything we need, we have in Christ. We have a poem about an old lady lying with nothing of this world’s goods and she said -
I have Christ - what want I more?
(Mrs Mary J Walker)
The psalmist is saying that here and he says -
… though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
Beloved, we go through the shadow of it; the Lord Jesus went into the actuality of it: He tasted death for every thing, Heb 2: 9. For the believer, the sting of death has been taken away, but we pass through its shadow. We have the consciousness of that as we are at such an occasion, that we move through a world where the shadow of death is on every hand, but he says, “thou art with me”. We pray that our dear brother and all the family might prove that, that the Lord is with them. He says -
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
I think the rod may be a reference to the word of God guiding our path and the staff to His priestly service to sustain us in keeping with His word. How wonderful He is, “thy rod and thy staff”. He sustains us in relation to what is living. Aaron’s rod was living, it sprouted, Heb 9: 4. David says, “thy rod”; it is living; the word of God is living, and directs our path in a living and feeling way in relation to Christ Himself. He says, “and thy staff”. What sympathy there is in the staff, what priestly service upholding His own. He does not pass us through anything that He has not passed through Himself, sin apart, but He knows, He understands and He feels in a way that no one else can. I might say to someone, ‘I feel sorry for you’. The Lord Jesus does not say that; He brings in the resource to lift you above the circumstance and to bring you into the very scene, in your spirit, where He is, in which everything is established and secure and where nothing can intrude. How wonderful a blessed Shepherd we have.
The psalmist says -
… thou art with me …
Surely, goodness and loving-kindness shall
follow me all the days of my life;
and I will dwell in the house of Jehovah
for the length of the days.
What a privilege, “the house of Jehovah”; we are not there on our own: we have one another. That is part of God’s loving kindness and goodness, that we have one another, and we can go on, enjoy together the great things that are in the house of Jehovah. It is part of His loving kindness and goodness.
I come to John, which is a very well-known passage; the Lord Jesus says, ‘I have committed Myself to be with you; I want you to follow me’. There could be no greater committal than what He has made, “behold, I am with you all the days, until the completion of the age”. Nothing will ever change that. He will never deviate from it, but He would say, if I have committed Myself to be with you, just follow Me. What a follower Peter became! He spoke of the sufferings of the Christ and the glory after. Peter knew what that was; he had seen both the glory on the Mount and the sufferings; he had seen them. Peter became a follower. The Lord would strengthen us to follow. We cannot follow in our own strength. We have the gift of the Holy Spirit, the One who would bring livingly into our hearts the glory of the person of our Lord Jesus, and cause our hearts to well forth in response to that blessed One. What a wonderful Saviour we have! An ‘all the way home’ Saviour! One who can carry us on His shoulders, One who would say to us, ‘Just put your hand in mine’. When I was a boy we used to sing a hymn:
Take Thou our hand, Lord Jesus,
Thou knowest best;
Guide us at last, blest Saviour
To God’s own rest,
We cannot tread without Thee
The pathway true;
We need thee near, whatever
We say or do.
Hymn 95
[Hymns For the Little Flock, 1951 Revision]
How true that is. We need Him every hour.
I just commend these words to us. Our sister’s portion is a very blessed one. She is not missing anything here because she is satisfied with Jesus. We miss her, and we are intended to, and the Lord Jesus understands that fully, but He has committed Himself to be with us and He will never leave us, neither will He forsake us. When Jacob was dying he said, “Behold, I die; and God will be with you”, Gen 48: 21. May we prove the sense of that as we go forward; that the Lord is with us and supporting us and giving all the grace that is needed because the resources are all in Himself.
May the Lord help us, for His Name’s sake.
Glasgow
1 December 2020
At the burial of Helen Newberry