1 Samuel 15:32

Surely, the bitterness of death is passed.

Death an advantage

So cried Agag, and the only objection I have go this text is that a bad man uttered it. Nevertheless, it is true, and in a higher sense than that in which it was originally uttered. We talk about the shortness of life, but if we exercised good sense we would realise that life is quite long enough. If we are the children of God, we are at a banquet, and this world is only the first course of the food, and we ought to be glad that there are other and richer courses of food to be handed on. We are here in one room of our Father’s house, but there are rooms upstairs. They are better pictured, better upholstered, better furnished. Why do we want to stay in the inte-room forever, when there are palatial apartments waiting for our occupancy? What a mercy that there is a limitation to earthly environments!

1. Death also makes room for improved physical machinery. Our bodies have wondrous powers, but they are very limited. Death removes this slower and less adroit machinery and makes room for something better. Mind you, I believe with all anatomists and all physiologists, and with all scientists and with the Psalmist that “we are fearfully and wonderfully made.” But I believe and I know that God can and will give us better physical equipment. Is it possible for man to make improvements in almost, anything and God not be able to make improvements in man’s physical machinery? Shall canal boats give way to limited express train? Shall slow letter give place to telegraphy, that places San Francisco and New York within a minute of communication? Shall the telephone take the sound of a voice sixty miles and instantly bring back another voice, and God, who made the man who does these things, not be able to improve the man himself with infinite velocities and infinite multiplication? Beneficent Death comes in and makes the necessary removal to make way for these supernatural improvements. “Well,” you say, “does not that destroy the idea of a resurrection of the present body?” Oh no. It will be the old factory with new machinery, new driving wheel, new bands, new levers, and new powers. Don’t you see? So I suppose the dullest human brain after the resurrectionary process will have more knowledge, more acuteness, more brilliancy, more breadth of swing than any Sir William Hamilton, or Herschel, or Isaac Newton, or Faraday, or Agassiz ever had in the mortal state or all their intellectual powers combined. You see God has only just begun to build you.

2. Then there are the climatological hindrances. We run against unpropitious weather of all sorts. Winter blizzard and summer scorch, and each season seems to batch a brood of its own disorders. Have you any doubt that God can make better weather than is characteristic of this planet? Blessed is Death! for it prepares the way for change of zones, yea, it clears the path to a semi-omnipresence. While death may not open opportunity to be in many places at the same time, so easy and so quick and so instantaneous will be the transference that it will amount to about the same thing. Quicker than I can speak this sentence you will be among your glorified kindred, among the martyrs, among the apostles, in the gate, on the battlements, at the temple, and now from world to world as soon as a robin hops from one tree branch to another tree branch. Distance no hindrance. Immensity easily compassed. Semi-omnipresence. Aye! to make that resurrection body will not require half as much ingenuity and power as those other bodies you have had. Is it not easier for a sculptor to make a statue out of silent clay than it would be to make a statue out of some material that is alive and moving, and running hither and thither? Will it not be easier for God to make the resurrection body out of the silent dust of the crumbled body than it was to make your body over five or six or eight times while it was in motion, walking, climbing, falling, or rising?

3. Now, if Death clears the way for all this, why paint him as a hobgoblin? Why call him the King of Terrors? Why sketch him with skeleton and arrows, and standing on a bank of dark waters? Why have children so frightened at his name that they dare not go to bed alone, and old reed have their teeth chatter lest some shortness of breath band them over to the monster? All the ages have been busy in maligning Death, hurling repulsive metaphors at Death, slandering Death. Oh, for the sweet breath of Easter to come down on the earth! I was told, at Johnstown, after the flood, that many people who had been for months and years bereft, for the first time got comfort when the awful flood came, to think that their departed ones were not present to see the catastrophe. As the people were floating down on the house tops, they said: “Oh, how glad I am that father and mother are not here,” or “how glad I am that the children are not alive to see this horror!” And ought not we who are down here amid the upturnings of this life be glad that none of the troubles which submerge us can ever afright our friends ascended? “Surely, the bitterness of death is past.” Further, if what I have been saying is true, we should trust the Lord and be thrilled with the fact that our own day of escape cometh. If our lives were going to end when our hearts ceased to pulsate and our lungs to breathe, I would want to take ten million years of life here for the first instalment. But we cannot afford always to stay down in the cellar of our Father’s house. We cannot always be postponing the best things. We cannot always be tuning our violins for the celestial orchestra. We must get our wings out. We must mount. We cannot afford always to stand out here in the vestibule of the house of many mansions. All these thoughts are suggested as we stand this morn amid the broken rocks of the Saviour’s tomb. The day that Christ rose and name forth the sepulchre was demolished forever, and no trowel of earthly masonry can ever rebuild it. “Now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept.” (T. De Witt Talmage.)

The bitterness of death

I. Why bitter. Because--

1. It is accompanied with physical sufferings.

2. It is the end of earthly hopes and advantages.

3. It separates from friends.

4. There is within us a fear of the unknown realities beyond the grave.

5. In each heart there is a consciousness of sin.

II. How this bitterness may be changed to sweetness. Faith in Christ.

1. Makes physical sufferings trivial.

2. Assures us of hopes and advantages infinitely more important than those which perish through death.

3. Introduces us to the friendship of all heaven, and this for all eternity.

4. Makes to know that Christ, our Brother, and God, our Father, dominate all other realities in the world to come.

5. It clothes us with the righteousness of Christ. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? (Homiletic Review.)