2 Kings 20:21

REFLECTIONS

READER! what a series of delightful instructions open to our view, in looking at Hezekiah on his supposed death-bed. The greatest favorites of heaven are exposed, in common with others, to the humiliation of the grave. But oh! how different their state! and who is it hath made it so, Even thee, thou blessed, blessed Jesus. It is thou which hast converted the chambers of the grave into chambers of peace and safety. By thy death thou hast overcome death. And by thy finished salvation thou hast delivered them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Hail! O thou glorious, great I AM, who art the resurrection and the life.

Reader! let you and I listen to the sweet, swan-like note of the dying Hezekiah. He laments that he shall see the Lord no more in the land of the living; that he shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world. But Reader! you and I know that, when believers exchange by death the outward courts of God's house for the inner temple of his glory, we shall see Jesus as he is; we shall awake up after his likeness, and be with him forever. We leave, indeed, the inhabitants of the world when we drop off this earthly tabernacle. But is this matter of regret, to exchange this world for the upper; earth for heaven; sinners for saints; and evil men for angels and the spirits of just men made perfect? Chiefly, thou precious Lord Jesus, independent of every other, and indeed to the exclusion of every other, thy presence alone is better than life itself. Thy person, thy salvation, thy glory, and the heaven of heavens, thou givest to the souls of thy people; what a happy exchange do they make that die in thee, O Lord Jesus? Oh! for faith in lively exercise, when thou shall give the signal for my departure; when that solemn, glorious hour shall come, and I hear thy precious voice; The master is come and calleth for thee. Oh! for faith to mount up with holy joy and rapture inconceivable, and like the patriarch of old, may the last and most precious word that shall hang upon my dying lips be Jesus, as I utter the same words as he did; Into thine hands I commend my spirit, for thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, thou God of truth.